استادم بلندقبلامن واردشد Concerning Abū Alī Sīnā

The Persian Sufi philosopher-physician, Abū ‘Alī al-Husayn ibn ‘Abd Allāh ibn Sīnā' elaborated on the Aristotelian understanding of the soul. He made a distinction between the soul and the spirit, and in particular, Ibn Sīnā's doctrine on the nature of the soul was influential among the Scholastics (1100-1500 A.D.). Some of his views on the soul included the idea that the immortality of the soul is a consequence of its nature, and not a purpose for it to fulfill. In his theory of "The Ten Intellects", Ibn Sīnā viewed the human soul as the tenth and final intellect.

While he was imprisoned, Ibn Sīnā wrote his famous "Floating Man" thought experiment to demonstrate human self-awareness and the substantiality of the soul. He instructed his readers:

"imagine yourselves suspended in the air, isolated from all sensations, which includes no sensory contact with even your own bodies. In this scenario, would you still have self-consciousness?"

He concluded that the idea of the "self" is not logically dependent on any physical thing, and that the soul should not be seen in relative terms, but as a primary given, a substance - in fact An Essence apart from corporality. His argument was later refined and simplified by René Descartes in epistemic terms when he stated:

"I can abstract from the supposition of all external things, but not from the supposition of my own consciousness."

For the most part Ibn Sīnā' supported Aristotle's idea that the soul originating from the heart, whereas the Arab philosopherIbn al-Nafis rejected this idea and instead argued that the soul:

"is related to the entirety and not to one or a few organs."

He further criticized Aristotle's idea that every unique soul requires the existence of a unique source, in this case the heart. Ibn al-Nafis concluded that:

"the soul is related primarily neither to the spirit nor to any organ, but rather to the entire matter whose temperament is prepared to receive that "soul" and he defined the soul as nothing other than "what a human indicates by saying 'I'."

Years ago, I undertook a series of experiments-

I was seeking to discover the essence of the dissociated trance state as a part of ethnographic research I was conducting into altered states of consciousness attainable via ecstatic dance at Southern Methodist University. I was seeking to discover, or perhaps rediscover, my essence as well.

On many occasions and over the course of many days, I floated alone in the total quiet of complete sensory depravation. For hours at a time, I was suspended in a silent, dark, warm, liquid womb-like existence. Therein I simultaneously observed and experienced my physical body exploded into a million, million bits of sentience.

It would wait nearly 30 years

Ibn Sīnā,

you were there before me . . .



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