History of OhWhereIsMySoul

Source: http://www.science.uva.nl/~seop/entries/pineal-gland/

In a treatise called On the difference between spirit and soul, Qusta ibn Luqa (864-923) wrote that people who want to remember look upwards because this raises the worm-like particle, opens the passage, and enables the retrieval of memories from the posterior ventricle. People who want to think, on the other hand, look down because this lowers the particle, closes the passage, and protects the spirit in the middle ventricle from being disturbed by memories stored in the posterior ventricle (Constantinus Africanus 1536, p. 310)

DESCARTES

“I suppose the body to be nothing but a statue or machine made of earth, which God forms with the explicit intention of making it as much as possible like us” (AT XI:120, CSM I:99).

MEMORY:
The pores or gaps lying between the tiny fibers of the substance of the brain may become wider as a result of the flow of animal spirits through them.


MOVEMENT:

He thought that there are two types of bodily movement. First, there are movements which are caused by movements of the pineal gland. The pineal gland may be moved in three ways: (1) by “the force of the soul,” provided that there is a soul in the machine; (2) by the spirits randomly swirling about in the ventricles; and (3) as a result of stimulation of the sense organs.




SOUL:
“We need to recognize that the soul is really joined to the whole body, and that we cannot properly say that it exists in any one part of the body to the exclusion of the others. For the body is a unity which is in a sense indivisible because of the arrangement of its organs, these being so related to one another that the removal of any one of them renders the whole body defective. And the soul is of such a nature that it has no relation to extension, or to the dimensions or other properties of the matter of which the body is composed: it is related solely to the whole assemblage of the body's organs. This is obvious from our inability to conceive of a half or a third of a soul, or of the extension which a soul occupies. Nor does the soul become any smaller if we cut off some part of the body, but it becomes completely separate from the body when we break up the assemblage of the body's organs” (AT XI:351, CSM I:339). But even though the soul is joined to the whole body, “nevertheless there is a certain part of the body where it exercises its functions more particularly ... which is a certain very small gland situated in the middle of the brain's substance and suspended above the passage through which the spirits in the brain's anterior cavities communicate with those in its posterior cavities. The slightest movements on the part of this gland may alter very greatly the course of these spirits, and conversely any change, however slight, taking place in the course of the spirits may do much to change the movements of the gland” (AT XI:351, CSM I:340).

hylomorphist: thinks that the soul is not a substance but the first actuality or substantial form of the living body
epiphenomenalist: views the passions as causally ineffectual by-products of brain activity



PINEAL GLAND TODAY:
The hormone secreted by the pineal gland, melatonin, was first isolated in 1958. Melatonin is secreted in a circadian rhythm, which is interesting in view of the hypothesis that the pineal gland is a vestigial third eye.
(Images from Google images search)

Lapping up memory

We hadn't bothered to turn on the lights.

You backed me up until I hit the wall, kissing me.

You kissed my chest. You kissed strings down my arm. You kissed my grey hands. I watched you.

I thought, I always wanted to be with the person who laps up every inch. You pressed your lips on every finger pad to inhale as much of my spirit as your lungs could take. Then you made your way back up my arm, and I was there with my face waiting for you.

At some point along the path of forever, your ghost started to move away, at a slow shutter speed. Then it stirred down the hallway, into the next room, where something solid of you sat firmly on the stool and banged on the snare drum behind a drum set and a golden cymbal. When I lose my father behind the drum set, he bites his lip and squints his eyes. I can't remember your concentrated-drum-playing-expression, but I know you had one.

I swam through the noise. I went back to the dark living room to grab a conga drum. I dragged it down the hallway. I dragged it into the brightly lit room, where you were crashing on the flickering golden cymbal. You gave me a nod and a smile when you saw that I had dragged in the conga drum. Later, you would say, "Most girls would just be annoyed. But you grabbed your own drum." I was tired, and it was all noise, but I beat it and tuned my head into the banter. I tried to insert myself into the beats, until you were spent. But by then I soaked into the noise and the bright lights like a ball rolling down a hill. It wasn't until you faced me and said you were done that I slowly staggered up.

But I
was still
there,
at the wall.

My silhouette had stuck there. The blades of my back, the backs of my hands, and the tips of my heels had half-melted to the wall like a plastic bowl accidentally left leaning against the hot microwave.

And now. The drum set is sold, that house has been demolished, and you are miles and miles away.

But I am still there. 3 months later.
I am a
silhouette
sprawled against the wall,
watching fingers lap up
your lips.
Finger by finger, as
if
to count how many fingers make up forever.