Axiom # 7 – Humankind is a dichotomy

We live in a contingent world which is to say that we know a thing because of some other thing upon which it depends. This may be described as a duality of knowledge or, stated another way, recognition through the two aspects or dichotomy inherent in all information.

Each piece of information that we acquire, each event that we observe, each particle of evidence that we analyze, each experience that we encounter, and each emotion that we undergo cannot reach the intellect until it has first been filtered through the process of comparison by which likeness and/or difference is identified and enables us to distinguish one piece of information from another.

The process of comparison extends from the tangible world of concrete information into the intangible and abstract world of thought and ideas. We cannot know that something is hard unless we have something against which to compare it that we know to be soft. We cannot know that something is cold unless we have already determined what it is to be hot. The knowledge of one condition depends on the knowledge of the other. This is the world of contingency and it is the world of dependence and all our knowledge, one way or another, is filtered and acquired through this process. The very language that we use is an expression of this process and is the very sophisticated tool that we have invented by which to describe that which is intangible, and which belongs to the world of ideas and thought, by associating it with that which is tangible and which belongs to the world of the senses.

This is the dichotomy of humankind. It lives in two different worlds simultaneously. It occupies the world of thought while at the same time occupying the world of matter. It has an animal nature and it has a spiritual nature and, despite their separate and distinct identity, they co-exist and struggle for dominance throughout each and every human lifetime. This elemental truth is not only reflected in our language and inherent in the process by which we acquire information but is also strongly suggested by the way in which we think of our bodies and by the implied mechanism by which certain phenomena operate.

Firstly, let us examine the universal way with which each and every person considers their body. When you think of your body you always think of it in terms of ownership, that is to say, you think of you and your body as two separate entities. One is owned and the other is the owner. When you describe your body you say, ‘this is my arm’ or ‘this is my leg’ or ‘this is my head’ or even ‘this is my brain’ but at no time do you ever think that the ‘you’ that is doing the describing is the same as the arm, the leg, the head, or the brain. It is implicit in the way that you describe your body that ‘you’ are one entity and that the body is another that belongs to you and without which you would still continue to exist. You know that if you lost both arms, both legs, both eyes, both ears, one lung, one kidney, or part of your stomach and bladder that ‘you’ would still exist and that the most that could be said is that your ability to function in a physical world was severely impaired. There is no doubt that trauma would arise, that emotional adjustment would be necessary, or that the remainder of your life would be irreversibly altered but, and this is the universal axiom of human existence, your mind and soul would remain whole and intact. Each and every person believes both intuitively and instinctively that their body belongs to them but is not them and that when the body dies that ‘they’ go somewhere else wherever that may be.

Let us examine a phenomena that reflects this dichotomy between the animal and spiritual natures of humankind. A phenomena that has been rigorously and thoroughly studied and employed by the scientific community and one whose underlying mechanism seems to corroborate and exhibit the characteristics that suggest that the animal and spiritual nature are two separate and distinct entities. This phenomena is called hypnosis and, although its most minute elements of operation may not be fully understood, its existence is, nonetheless, recognized and its behavioural effects employed.

Various institutions have conducted serious and long term studies of the phenomena of hypnosis with similar observations but with varying conclusions as to the nature of the mechanism involved, however, none of these studies advanced the theory that this phenomena had as an essential root of its operation the dichotomy of animal and spiritual partners. It is only when this dichotomy is introduced as an essential element in the operation of the phenomena that the differences in the conclusions by each of the studies coalesce into an integrated whole.

When we observe the phenomena and then reduce it to its simplest elements it becomes clear that the person under hypnosis is giving way to and allowing the hypnotist to give commands directly to their body which strives to execute those commands as literally and completely as is within its ability. The notable difference being that the body will perform and accomplish for the hypnotist what it will not necessarily or seems incapable of normally performing and accomplishing for its lifelong host and partner. This enigma although recognized and utilized was not understood because the separate and distinct nature of the body and the spirit that inhabits it was neither considered nor accepted as a contributing factor. The body and spirit were considered as one, indivisible, entity and, had this really been the case, the phenomena of hypnosis may never have emerged.

Hypnosis occurs because each person is both a physical being and a spiritual being that are separate and distinct entities that co-exist in a perfect partnership. Let us, however, before a person encounters a hypnotist for the first time, retreat into the past and trace the process that has preceded this encounter.

Each person is endowed at birth with a DNA blueprint that dictates all of their physical attributes and abilities. Whether they are male or female, white or black, tall or short, blonde or brunette, agile or clumsy, healthy or sickly, strong or weak, is predetermined by their ancestry and genetically encoded in their DNA blueprint from which their is no escape and within whose restraints and limitations their entire lifetime is dictated. But, and this is the pivotal point, the DNA blueprint is a product of a physical world and dictates only the shape, form, and ability of the body. The body is simply an instrument, a tool, a vessel that enables a non-physical soul to manifest itself in a physical world. In the same way that the artist is separate and distinct from the portrait that they have shaped upon the canvas, and in the same way that the artisan is separate and distinct from the tools they employ in the practice of their trade, so too is the human soul separate and distinct from the human body that enables it to emerge and express itself in a physical world. The survival of the soul after death is a universally held belief and reflects the intuitive, instinctive, and intellectual recognition by every society in ever age that the soul and the body are distinct and separate entities that only co-exist in this physical world and that, upon the dissolution of the elements that form the body back into the bosom of nature, the soul is free to pursue whatever path its Creator intended. This dichotomy is the common property of every sentient being.