A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c6.s3.2

c6.s3.2

17. The first question with which a Rational Psychology may be concerned is the question of the seat of the soul. And when this question is asked, it is not unusual to answer it by taking a spatial view of the habitation of the soul. It is likely to be ignored that the soul is an unextended entity, and that as such it is bereft of all spatial connotation. And yet, Rational Psychology has concerned itself with a discussion of the part or parts of the body with which the soul comes more directly into contact. Prof. James says: "In some manner our consciousness is present to everything with which it is in relation. I am cognitively present to Orion whenever I perceive that constellation, but I am not dynamically present there, I work no effects. To my brain, however, I am dynamically present, inasmuch as my thoughts and feelings seem to react upon the processes thereof. If, then, by the seat of the mind is meant nothing more than the locality with which it stands in immediate dynamic relations, we are certain to be right in saying that its seat is somewhere in the cortex of the brain."' The views that have been held in regard to this question have been many and various. I. H. Fichte, as we know, supposed that the soul was a space-filling principle. Descartes imagined that the seat of the soul was the pineal gland, while Lotze maintained that the soul must be located somewhere in the "structureless matrix of the anatomical brain-elements, at which point....all nerve-currents may cross and combine." We have already seen the opinion of Prof. James that if the soul's activity is to be referred to one part of the body more than to any other, it ought to be referred to the cortex of the brain. Aristotle supposed that the seat of the soul was in the heart; and he came to this conclusion by observing "(1) that the diseases of the heart are the most rapidly and certainly fatal, (2) that psychical affections, such as fear, sorrow, and joy cause an immediate disturbance of the heart, (3) and that the heart is the part which is the first to be formed in the embryo."' The Upanishadic psychology agrees with the Aristotelian in locating the soul in the heart. We have already seen how important a part the "pericardium" plays in the Upanishadic psychology of sleep. The Upanishadic philosophers felt no difficulty in locating the soul in the heart; and it is not till we reach a later era in the evolution of Indian thought that we find that the seat of consciousness is transferred from the heart to the brain. It is only in the Yogic and the Tāntric books² that the cerebro-spinal system comes to be recognised, and it is there that consciousness comes to be referred to the brain instead of to the heart.