It is precisely the true and exact naturalist who can never become a materialist and deny the soul, freedom, and God. M. Schleiden [1] Lecturer. Today I would like to continue talking about man, his nature and origin. You've probably heard that some scientists are trying to prove that a human being is just a very smart ape, while others are trying to prove that a human being is something very similar to a computer (biorobot, etc.)? Audience. Of course, you have. Lecturer. My job is to try to demonstrate to you that this is not the case. To begin with, let's continue the discussion of the "monkey problem". Despite the fact that the origin of man from an ape is very problematic from the point of view of "pure science", and the data in favor of such an origin are very scarce and ambiguous (which we discussed last time), some scientists still believe that we evolved from apes, relying not on the data of archaeology and paleontology, but on the data of modern psychology and ethology - sciences studying human and ape behavior (see 9), and you've probably heard something about it? Audience. Heard. Monkeys are said to be very intelligent. It is also said that a monkey can be taught to speak the language of the deaf and dumb. Lecturer. So let's talk about these observations and facts. So, "monkeys are very smart". Indeed, the behavior of monkeys has some important features, which are sometimes very clearly manifested in experiments. For example, some scientists claim that a monkey can "figure out" how to get a banana with a stick, although no one has ever taught it this, etc. However, experimental studies of animal behavior show, according to a number of scientists, that the ability to react adequately in new, unknown situations is not unique to monkeys, but is quite widespread in the world of animals and even birds (8), and anthropoid apes do not even occupy leading positions here. A similar "intelligence" is observed in many species of animals. So, based on this principle, it is possible to "deduce" the origin of man not only from an ape, but, say, from a dog or a dolphin. Audience. Monkeys have well-developed hands, and they can do a lot with them, their movements are very similar to our movements with our hands, doesn't this testify in favor of our origin from monkeys? In addition, they use tools with their hands. Lecturer. In fact, the chimpanzee, for example, uses external objects (e.g., sticks) as tools, and even stores them for future use (22). However, this is not a monopoly ability of anthropoid apes. Some birds also use tools, but it seems that none of the scientists has yet tried to build an evolutionary ladder of the origin of man from birds. As for movements, cats sometimes yawn almost as much as people, but what does this mean? Audience. And what about teaching monkeys to speak sign language, sign language - isn't that a confirmation that we're descended from them? Lecturer. This is worth talking about in detail, since one of the big "ducks" of psychology and biology of the XX century is associated with it. But first we must consider in the most thorough way, albeit briefly, what we know about man from Divine Revelation, from the Holy Tradition of the Orthodox Church. The first thing to be said is that man is made up of two parts, soul and body, which we shall probably touch upon in more detail later. Science calls man Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens. And this is true, because man is created in the image and likeness of God [3]. The property of rationality, according to Divine Revelation, is a monopoly property of man, that is, not a single living creature of the visible world possesses this property [4]. How does our mind work? This is a great mystery. And yet, the divinely revealed teaching gives us much for understanding the specifics of the human mind. St. John of Damascus wrote that a person is rational by virtue of the fact that he has the ability to speak - internal or external, but first of all internal: "And in turn, the rational part of the soul is divided both into the inner word and into the spoken one. The inner word is the movement of the soul, which takes place in that part which reasons without any exclamation; For this reason, often, and silently, we fully expound all speech in ourselves, and we also speak during dreams. That is why we are all rational (οοο)" (Exact Exposition, Book 2, Chapter XXI, St. Petersburg, 1894). A specific feature of our being is the incessant generation of thoughts clothed in some sign forms (not necessarily verbal, but also expressed, for example, in the form of gestures (in the case of deaf and dumb people), etc. [5] What are the sign forms of the inner speech of an adult is a mystery to others. What forms of the inner speech of an infant, especially at the pre-speech stage of development, is a great mystery [6]. when his rationality (in the understanding of St. John of Damascus) begins to manifest itself outwardly, and those around him begin to see how his consciousness constantly generates new thoughts, clothed in new verbal forms. This is expressed in the emergence of word-making, when the child creates new, "his" words, with his own special meanings and sounds (4), and phrasal speech, which in itself is an amazing phenomenon. The child begins to speak in short phrases of two, then three words, but the peculiarity of this speech is its amazing independence. At the same time, a child, as many authors state, has the ability to construct an almost unlimited number of new phrases, which makes him strikingly similar to an adult. His phrasal speech in the first stages is in no way limited to memorized word combinations, it has the property of "productivity" (31), that is, the number of phrases that a small person can build is limited only by the narrowness of his vocabulary, and what is very remarkable, new phrases have a surprising orderliness, that is, sentences are not built randomly, but in an orderly way, more or less corresponding to the grammatical norm (15, p. 31). These observations have led some psychologists to believe that the child has some intuitive mechanism, such as knowledge of the rules of grammar, with the help of which he constructs a potentially unlimited number of phrases. Knowing the rules for the construction of English phrases, we can compose as many of them as we want, the same is done by a child, as scientists assume, but he knows the rules intuitively, not even understanding what a rule is. According to some authors, these rules can be very different from the rules of the adult language norm. However, attempts to algorithmically describe how a child's speech is generated according to these rules have been unsuccessful (31). The child seems to speak the way he wants, not the way he wants to speak, scientific uncles with advanced degrees who try to imagine a small person as a small computer [7]. Now let's go back to the monkeys. For about 10 years in the United States, a group of scientists tried to teach chimpanzees (named Washaw) the speech signs of the deaf and dumb (13, 29). They managed to train the monkey in such a way that, for example, if it wanted strawberries, it built a short "phrase" with the help of gestural conventional signs of the alphabet of the deaf and dumb, such as "I want strawberries", etc. The monkey never learned to construct phrases on his own; the combinations of words produced by it are too disordered to be considered as sentences composed according to the rules, as is the case with all normally speaking people [8], including children who master the speech of adults (15, 31). Neither new thoughts nor new phrases arose in the ape, as it was to be expected, due to the human monopoly on thought processes, on reason [9]. If you think about it, the result obtained by these authors is not much different from ordinary training. In fact, it is not so difficult to teach a monkey to make certain delicate and complex movements with the fingers of the hands - after all, bears are also taught to ride a bicycle. And it is also not difficult to force them to perform certain actions in certain situations. Anyone who keeps a cat at home is probably familiar with the picture when the cat, not paying any attention to the bowl of porridge, begins to make heart-rending sounds, smelling a piece of fresh fish lying on the table, "demanding" it. Isn't that "phrase" "I want fish" like the "phrases" Washaw "said"? Probably, it is relatively easy to teach a cat to press in such situations, say, the white and red keys, which will mean "I want fish", etc. So there is no intelligence in the speech of the Washou monkey, and the results of the experiments do not show anything in favor of the closeness of a person and a chimpanzee in terms of speech-thinking activity. However, not everyone thinks so. For some reason, the above-mentioned "successes" (and in fact, "failures") in attempts to teach chimpanzees the language of the deaf and dumb are evaluated in the university textbook on anthropology as an achievement of science of the 20th century, and the portrait of the beauty who taught the monkey with a chimpanzee in her arms is placed on the title page of this book (22) - it is not clear why. Audience. Did you say that man is created in the image of God? Lecturer. Yes of course. Audience. Therefore, if God is one, as you assert, then the soul of man, created in the image of God, must be one, and in one body cannot two souls be formed from one? Lecturer. Of course it is. Audience. Then how do you explain those cases where the human brain was cut in two and two intelligent, conscious human personalities were obtained? Where, then, is your uniqueness? Lecturer. What you are talking about has a special history and needs careful consideration. American surgeons at one time performed several operations - dissection of the corpus callosum, connecting the cerebral hemispheres - on several persons who were seriously suffering from an incurable form of epilepsy, a disease accompanied by terrible seizures, in the hope of a therapeutic effect of such an operation. R. Sperry and his collaborators, after correction, studied the behavior of these patients under normal conditions and in a variety of experimental psychological situations (1, 11, 27). Indeed, as has been observed by many, the behavior of these patients sometimes resembled that of not one, but two unrelated people. Sometimes it came to the point that the right hand grabbed the left, in the event that the left did something "wrong" (11). R. Sperry evaluated these situations as a doubling of consciousness (1). Subsequently, based on the results of experiments with these patients, a new interdisciplinary direction in science was formed - research on the functional asymmetry of the human brain hemispheres, and R. Sperry eventually received the Nobel Prize in Medicine. However, what R. Sperry and others observed requires careful analysis. Because facts are one thing, and their interpretation is another. I mean that the philosophical positions of R. Sperry and his co-authors are clear, this is biological materialism, and it is from this position that they interpreted what they observed. Audience. So, after all, did you get one personality after the separation of the hemispheres or two? Lecturer. So let's try to answer this question from the position of Orthodoxy. It seems that R. Sperry really received the fact of the existence of two relatively isolated sources of intelligent behavior. How can this be interpreted? The presence of such a plurality of subjects in one body is not the first discovery of R. Sperry. In the psychiatric clinic, the syndrome of "multiple personality" and the phenomenon of "psychic automatism" (7) are well known, when, as a result of mental illness or under the influence of hypnosis, the presence of several (and not even necessarily two, but maybe more) subjects can be observed in one body [10]. The facts obtained by R. Sperry are somewhat analogous to these well-known phenomena in psychiatry. The only difference is what led to the "splitting" of the personality. Audience. So what do you think it means? Lecturer. This may mean something completely different from what R. Sperry and P. Janet assumed long before him. The presence of meaningful rational behavior "in a human body" can be conditioned not only by the rational soul of a given person, but also by a completely different reason: "What has been said before does not in the least contradict what happens to the possessed, when, possessed by unclean spirits, they say and do what they do not want, and are forced to pronounce words that they do not understand. It is known that not everyone is equally exposed to the influence of spirits. Some are so mastered by them that they are not at all aware of what they are doing or saying, while others are aware of them and then remember. Both are caused by the influx of an unclean spirit, and it is not so that it penetrates the very substance of the soul, and, as if merged with it and somehow clothed with it, pronounces words and speeches through the mouth of the sufferer. There is no way they can do this. It happens that the unclean spirit, dwelling in our members, through which the soul acts, and imposing on them an unbearable burden, closes the rational feelings of the soul by a terrible obscuration and stops their activity (through such suppression of the organs of this activity). Which, as we see, sometimes happens from wine, as well as from fever, from excessive cold, and other diseases that come from outside. In order that the devil, who had received power over his flesh, should not plot to do the same to the blessed Job, the Lord forbade him by a special command, saying: "Behold, I deliver him into your hands, only save his soul" (Job 2:6), that is, only do not make him mad by upsetting the seat of the soul, making an invasion of his mind and damaging the organ of reason, by means of which he (Job) must resist you" (St. Cassian the Roman, Struggle with Thoughts and Spirits of Evil - in the book: Philokalia, vol. 3. - Moscow, 1993). I would like to remind you that all the patients examined by R. Sperry, without exception, are patients with a severe form of epilepsy, and when it comes to this disease, we, the Orthodox, understand well what (or rather, who!) can "smell here." The case of demon possession described in the Holy Gospel (Mark 9:17-21) is an accurate description of the so-called "unfolded" epileptic seizure. Audience. Well, you won't convince us with that. Demons are only in your books, and even in horror films. Lecturer. This may not be convincing to you, however, many Orthodox Christians know from experience that these beings exist in reality, and not only in the imagination. For those who do not believe in their existence, there is another argument. If splitting the brain leads to a doubling of consciousness, then from the point of view of materialism this doubling is reversible, or not? Audience. Of course, irreversibly. Nerve cells do not regenerate. Lecturer. Yes, the corpus callosum, which connects the hemispheres, once cut, is not restored and does not reappear. But the psychological effects of the separation of the hemispheres for some reason disappear even under the most inexplicable circumstances from the point of view of biological materialism. According to one study that examined behavior toward split-brain patients, they disappear in hypnosis and continue to be absent in the post-hypnotic state (30). If this is so, then the "splitting effects of the psyche" obtained in patients with a "split brain" are the result of something else, and not only the separation of the hemispheres as a result of surgery, and this situation cannot be reduced to a simple scheme - "two hemispheres - two consciousnesses", as R. Sperry believed. It seems that when analyzing the data obtained from patients with a "split brain", it is necessary to remember that our body (brain) has a well-developed ability for very complex automatisms, the course of which, as Blessed Augustine believed, can occur independently of the activity of consciousness: "And what else is the soul, and the other - its bodily servants, or vessels, or organs, or if it is possible to call them in some other way, This is clearly seen from the fact that very often, under a strong strain of thought, it is distracted from everything, so that it does not know much that is before open and perfectly healthy eyes. But if the tension is still greater, then he suddenly stops while walking, no doubt, because his soul ceases to control the organs of movement with which his legs are occupied, and if the tension of thought is not strong enough to chain the walker to one place, but is such that he is not free to listen to the middle part of the brain, which serves as a messenger of the movement of the body, then he sometimes forgets, whence and whither he goes, and mechanically passes by the dacha to which he was going, although by the nature of his body he is healthy, but only distracted from it to another" (Blessed Augustine. "On the Book of Genesis", book. VII, ch. XX. - Creations. - Kiev, 1893). In connection with this approach to the analysis of human behavior, it is necessary to mention one of the interpretations of the situation with the "split brain", according to which the human consciousness controls the activity of the left hemisphere only, while the right hemisphere is only a container of automatisms (D. K. Ickles, Nobel Prize winner in medicine, see 32). Audience. But you won't deny that our psyche is connected to the brain, will you? For example, with brain lesions in different parts of it, different disorders of mental functions occur. In some cases, speech is impaired, in others - counting or the ability to recognize objects, etc.? Doesn't this mean that there is no trace of your "soul" at all? Lecturer. I really will not argue that different defects in the course of mental processes are observed in different brain lesions. These are well-known facts. Facts are very important for neuropathologists and, by the way, known long before the 20th century, and not just anywhere, but in the Orthodox Church (see Blessed Augustine. "On the Book of Genesis", book. VII, ch. XVII-XX). As for your second statement, I cannot agree with you in any way. The soul and the body are completely different things, which, under certain conditions, for example, after death, can exist independently of each other. However, as long as we are alive, they are connected, and they are connected very closely, even to such an extent that not only psychopharmacological drugs, alcohol, and similar substances have a strong influence on the state of the soul, but, as the Church teaches, even the nature of food, for example, what kind of fish we eat - sea or river, has an important, significant influence on its condition [11]. Moreover, such major physiological changes in the work of the brain as massive lesions of its individual areas very often cannot pass without a trace for the state of the soul and the many bodily automatisms that our body (brain) provides us with. It should also be noted that brain lesions sometimes lead to the strangest results - that is, not to the loss of a person's functions, but on the contrary, to the emergence of new mental abilities. For example, the world-famous Russian researcher of disorders of higher mental functions in local brain lesions, A.R. Luria, and his colleagues observed and studied in detail the case of the appearance of the ability to "see" objects hidden from view at long distances in a patient with lesions of the right hemisphere (a report to the author in a personal conversation with A.R. Luria's colleagues - E.G. Simernitskaya, N.K. Korsakova, L.I. Moscovičute). Such facts, as they say, do not fit into any materialistic framework. However, their ascertainment is not an achievement of the science of the 20th century - a similar case was described in the first centuries after the birth of Christ by Blessed Augustine (On the Book of Genesis, Book 12, Chapter XVII). So the cases of brain pathology do not prove anything to us in favor of materialism. Matthias Schleiden, together with Theodor Schwann, is considered the creator of the theory of the cellular structure of living matter. ^ "For as the soul of the word and the flesh are man, so God and man, one is Christ" - the symbol of St. Athanasius of Alexandria. ^ "By the word: in the image means the power of the mind and the power of freedom, in the word: in the likeness - likeness to God in virtue, as far as possible." - St. John of Damascus Exact Exposition, book. 2, ch. XII, p. 70. St. Petersburg, 1894. ^ "Question 27. What is freedom? Answer: Man's freedom is a voluntary, independent desire, proceeding from the mind or rational soul, to do good or evil. For rational creatures must have an autocratic nature, and act freely under the guidance of reason..." "Answer to question 30: ... However, these words should refer only to man. For the rest of the creatures (except for the Angels, who are in a firm and unchangeable state) are not subject to predestination, because they have no freedom: and therefore there can be no sin in them..." - Orthodox Confession of the Catholic Apostolic Church of the East. Moscow, 1900. From these two statements, one can easily conclude that only man is rational among the beings of the visible world. Science has not yet found any signs of the existence of other intelligent beings in the visible part of the Universe (in exact accordance with the Orthodox doctrine), which in itself should be a mystery for materialists who try to explain the appearance of reason by simple material causes. From the monopoly of man on the mind it follows, in particular, that all phenomena associated with the so-called "aliens", "UFOs", etc.

^ "Image of the Trinity-God - Trinity-Man. The three persons in the trinity-man are the three forces of his soul, by which his existence is manifested. Our thoughts and spiritual sensations manifest the existence of the mind, which, while manifesting itself with all obviousness, is at the same time completely invisible and incomprehensible. Our mind is the image of the Father; our word (we usually call an unspoken word a thought) is the image of the Son; the spirit is the image of the Holy Spirit. Just as in the Trinity-God the Three Persons inseparably and inseparably constitute one Divine Being, so in the Trinity-man the three Persons constitute one being, without mixing with each other, without merging into one person, without dividing into three beings. Our mind gave birth to thought, and does not cease to give birth to thought; Thought, having been born, does not cease to be born again, and at the same time remains born, hidden in the mind. The mind cannot exist without thought, and thought without the mind. The beginning of the one is necessarily the beginning of the other; The existence of the mind is necessarily the existence of thought. In the same way, our spirit proceeds from the mind and cooperates with thought. That is why every thought has its own spirit, every way of thinking has its own separate spirit, every book has its own spirit. Thought cannot exist without spirit; The existence of one is necessarily accompanied by the existence of the other. In the existence of both is the existence of mind. What is the spirit of man? - The totality of heartfelt feelings belonging to the verbal and immortal soul, alien to the souls of cattle and beasts. The heart of man differs from the heart of animals in its spirit. The hearts of animals have sensations that depend on blood and nerves, they do not have a sense of spirituality, this feature of the Divine image, the exclusive belonging of man. The moral strength of man is his spirit. Our mind, word and spirit, by the simultaneity of their origin and by their mutual relations, serve as the image of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, co-eternal, co-beginningal, equal in honor, of one nature" (St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, On the Image and Likeness of God in Man, Ascetic Experiments, vol. 2, Moscow, 1998, pp. 129-131). "A person cannot be without thoughts and feelings. Thoughts and feelings are a sign of a person's life. If they were to cease for any time, it would be at the same time the cessation of human life, of human existence" (St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, An Offering to Modern Monasticism, St. Petersburg, 1905). ^ "… Even then I knew how to suck, calmed down from bodily pleasure, cried from bodily inconveniences - as long as that was all. Then I began to laugh, first in my sleep, then in my wakefulness. This is how I was told about me, and I believe it, because I saw the same thing in other babies: I do not remember myself at that time. And so gradually I began to understand where I was; I wanted to explain my desires to those who would fulfill them, but I could not, because my desires were in me, and those around me were outside of me, and they could not enter my soul by any external sense. I floundered and shouted, expressing with the few signs I could and as much as I could, something similar to my desires - but these signs did not express my desires" (Blessed Augustine, Confessions, Book 1, Ch. 6. - Moscow, 1991). ^ In trying to explain how the first children's phrases are constructed, scientists have discovered, among other things, that the process of their construction is not reduced to simple imitation and cannot be described as a chain of conditioned reflexes, cannot be explained from the standpoint of the reflex theory; Thus, the mechanisms of this process can in no way be analogous to the supposed mechanisms by which animals are trained (for example, bears riding a bicycle, etc.) ^ "All races of men, even the scattered primitive inhabitants of the jungle, the bestial man-eaters who have lived for centuries on islands isolated from the rest of the world, have a complete and structured language. There do not seem to be primitive, amorphous, and imperfect languages such as one would probably assume should be observed in primitive civilizations. People who did not reach the invention of fabrics, living under roofs made of branches, having no idea about the need for solitude, purposefully engaged in debauchery and roasting their enemies for dinner,... talk to each other during their brutal festivals in a language no less grammatically perfect than Greek, and no less fluent (bluent) than French" (S. Langer, cited by 27). This problem is also discussed in N. Fraser's article "The Origin of Languages". Poisk, No 43 (545), 20.10.99. ^ Theoretically, a special mechanism is not excluded, so to speak, which determines the appearance of similarity in the speech of man and apes, when trying to teach them human speech, is the action of another rational principle from the outside. It seems that St. Anthony the Great would hardly have been surprised by a monkey who spoke the language of the deaf and dumb. He saw plenty of such demonic "tricks" in his life (see below for more on these mechanisms). ^ However, these observations are also not the first discovery of such phenomena (see the Gospel of Mark 5:1-13). ^ "Proud man! You dream so much and so high about your mind, and it is in complete and uninterrupted dependence on the stomach. The law of fasting, being outwardly a law for the belly, is in essence a law for the mind... He who does not observe moderation and proper discernment in food, cannot preserve either virginity or chastity, cannot restrain anger, gives himself over to laziness, despondency and sorrow, becomes a slave of vanity, a dwelling place of pride, which is introduced into a person by his carnal state, which is most of a luxurious and well-fed meal" (St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, On Fasting. - Ascetic Experiments, vol. 1. - St. Petersburg, 1905). ^

Conversation FiveThe Mystery of Man

Who called me by His powerFrom insignificance?A.S. Pushkin Lector. Today it is necessary to continue the conversation about man. Man and his life are studied by many sciences - first of all, psychology, and in the XX century man - his soul and body - is the subject of intensive study by physiologists. Surprisingly, despite the enormous expenditure of effort, time and financial resources, science, in fact, knows very little about man. The essence of human nature, for all its obvious specificity, eludes researchers like a sunbeam [1]. This reason lies in the fact that man is a special being in the universe, he, and only he, is created in the image and likeness of God (not even the Angels and Archangels), and his disposition is a special mystery of God, which is revealed by God as necessary, as necessary for man himself [2]. Man is a mystery closed from researchers, if only because his physiological processes are extremely complex, practically inaccessible for study in full. Audience. Explain what you mean. Lecturer. You probably know well from the biology course that the human nervous system consists of nerve cells - neurons, cells have short processes - dendrites and long - axons. According to scientists (based on the data obtained during observations), a kind of electrical signals are transmitted through these processes - nerve impulses, as a result of which, as they believe, the work of the brain occurs. For example, some of them claim that the neurons of the retina transmit impulses along axons to the brain, these impulses carry information about what is in front of the eyes, the brain processes it, due to this, as a result, recognition of objects is obtained, etc. Some scientists who view the human brain as a computer-like system argue the following: "To put it simply, the human brain is a natural computer made up of 10-100 billion neurons, each connected to about 10,000 others, all of which work together in parallel... In the system of neurons, the process of performing the complex functions of vision and speech consists of about 100 stages, while in an electronic computer this would require billions of steps" (17). It is very difficult to understand this complex system, and to have complete information about what is happening in it is almost unattainable. The creation of a device that simultaneously observes everything that happens in the human brain and provides us with a complete picture of what is happening there, or at least what is happening to nerve impulses, is simply impossible at present and is unlikely to ever be possible. But now I would like to draw your attention not to neurons, but to other phenomena and entities related to humans, which, as they say, are always at our fingertips. To begin with, I would like to conduct a simple psychological experiment, in which I invite all of you to participate. Audience. We agree. Come on. Lecturer. Look carefully at this image. What do you see here? Audience. "An Indian!" - "I saw an Eskimo!" - "Both of them!" Lecturer. Raise your hands to those who saw the Indian from the beginning. And now those who first saw the Eskimo... Some of you have seen one thing, and some of you have seen another. This is the usual result in the perception of such pictures, which have, so to speak, a double meaning. And now, is there any of you who did not see anything? Audience. No, no one. Lecturer. Now let's think together about what happened. Some of you saw one thing, and some saw another. For example, some can firmly say that they saw an Indian, and others - "I saw an Eskimo". This is the basic fact in our study. Some of the strict positivists (along with the strict solipsists) would probably try to challenge it by saying that your vocal apparatus simply produced motor reactions corresponding to the words, and that there was no vision at all. However, to no sensible lawyer is this fact that we have discovered can be doubted; in jurisprudence, the words of several witnesses are the truth, just as in Orthodox doctrine: in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word will be firm (2 Corinthians 13:1). So, let's look at the basic fact that you have witnessed. Let us consider, in particular, what is behind the words: "I saw the picture of an Indian." In such statements, there are, as it were, two semantic parts, behind which there are two entities that can be analyzed. Firstly, the researcher in this situation may be interested in the question why, say, one person saw one thing, and the other saw another (in our situation, an Indian and, accordingly, an Eskimo). There is a lot of research on the psychology of visual perception on this topic, and I don't want to delve into this topic now. I am interested in another semantic part: the statement "I saw the image of an Indian" contains other information - "I saw", and for some reason I could not see, for example, if the room was dark. So why did a person see and not see? Audience. Why? You yourself have just told me. From the retina of the eye, neurons transmitted impulses to the brain, and so on. Lecturer. That's exactly what "so on". In this "so on" lies the essence of the question and the mystery. And the point is not at all where impulses are actually transmitted and how they are arranged, their forms (patterns [3]) in time and space, and how the patterns of their consequences that arise in the tissues of the brain are arranged in space and time [4], although this is also a mystery (we talked about this at the beginning). The mystery lies in the fact that while some "patterns" of neuronal activity and their consequences are accompanied by the appearance of a conscious image ("Indian"), others are not accompanied by the appearance of a conscious image, do not lead to its appearance. The question is why some of these "patterns" lead to the appearance of an image in the mind, while others do not. Audience. Well, this is probably a practical question, scientists will find out over time. Lecturer. No, the difficulty here is more theoretical than practical. Audience. What is difficult here theoretically? There are computers, they also recognize objects, for example, "zebra" on consumer goods. In the same way, probably, the systems of nerve cells somehow recognize the "Indian". Lecturer. The fact is that the nervous system seems to provide the body with recognition of visual, auditory and other stimuli in a really amazing way and even an adequate reaction to them, but images of conscious perception may not arise in this case, this is completely unnecessary. It happens that a stimulus is recognized, but not recognized by human consciousness. So it turns out that there is recognition, but there is no awareness. Audience. How can this be? Lecturer. Here's how. Psychologists have described and studied several situations when, according to many researchers, this is so. The first phenomenon is the phenomenon of subthreshold perception, when a visual or other stimulus is not perceived by a person consciously ("Indian" is not visible), due to the fact that the characteristics of the stimulus do not reach the threshold of conscious perception, but the nervous system with such characteristics of the stimulus can recognize it and give an appropriate reaction, objectively registered by physiological methods or in some other way (5). The nervous system has recognized, and the human consciousness - its master - has no idea what it has learned! Another example, which may also be useful, is the well-known psychological situation of the so-called "cocktail party." Imagine that you are in a large room where there are a large number of people, divided into small groups of 2-3 people, and each group is talking about a different topic. You are in one of the groups. Your attention is riveted on the content of the conversation in your group, and you do not follow what is happening in the neighboring groups. But! At one point, it may switch to a conversation in a neighboring group if your name or surname is mentioned in this conversation. Recognition takes place against your will and consciousness. First there was a recognition of the word and its significance for you, and only after that and only by virtue of this significance did this word "penetrate" into your consciousness. According to D.C. Ickles, experiments with patients with "split brains" already known to you have shown, in particular, that under certain conditions a person who has undergone such an operation can only be aware of the emotional significance of the stimulus (for example, that he has been shown something indecent), and is not aware of what exactly was shown. According to D.C. Ickles, in these situations, the nervous system recognizes the stimulus automatically, while the human consciousness is satisfied only with the emotional experience of this stimulus (32). According to many physiologists, automatically, that is, without the control of will and consciousness, the human nervous system also regulates many different physiological functions and their parameters, for example, the lumen of the pupil, the accommodation of the lens of the eye, etc., which presupposes, of course, the recognition of what properties this or that stimulus has. So recognition and awareness of a stimulus are not identical to each other at all. Once again, it remains a mystery to physiologists why one pattern should lead to awareness and another should not. And this is a mystery, apparently unsolvable. It seems that the most that can be learned here is a statement of facts that such and such patterns evoke a conscious image, and such and such do not. The question of why one of the patterns that provide recognition leads to awareness, and the other does not, is very likely to remain unanswered at all. It is "not written" on neurons that their activity leads to the appearance of a conscious image. Even if a catalogue of the patterns that usually accompany the emergence of conscious images is ever created, there can never be a definite guarantee that some other form of neuronal activity (other patterns) cannot "suddenly" produce a conscious image, and vice versa - a pattern already known as generating awareness will not suddenly fail, will not lead to the absence of a conscious image, contrary to what is expected. Audience. It's strange, for example, we have such a device as a TV. Everything that happens in it is known to electronics specialists, but there are no questions about why the image on the screen appears or does not appear. Aren't the problems you mention simply due to the fact that we don't know enough about how the brain works, while we know almost everything about how television works? Lecturer. The position of a scientist trying to answer questions like whether you see an Indian or not is in some ways analogous to that of an engineer analyzing why an image appears on a television screen or not. Let's assume that both know "their" patterns that lead and, conversely, do not lead to the appearance of either an image in the mind or a picture on the screen; Accordingly, the first has neuronal and other brain patterns, the second has patterns of electrical phenomena occurring in the elements of the television apparatus. But here's the difference, given that both know, as we've assumed, what patterns give rise to images: the neurophysiologist can't directly observe what's going on in the mind of the person he's studying. An engineer, on the other hand, has the opportunity to look at the TV screen; assuming that both know which patterns lead to the appearance of images (in the mind or on the TV screen, respectively), then the engineer can tell us why (in his opinion) an image must necessarily appear on the screen under certain (so to speak, "good") patterns, and why not - under others, based on the laws of physics. A neurophysiologist cannot do this, even if he has a 100% guarantee of the presence of a conscious image (for example, if he studies only himself, that is, his brain patterns and his images of consciousness given to him in self-observation: there can be no doubt that "I see"), since there are no laws in physics that connect material and mental phenomena [5]. This is the secret. How a brain pattern can lead to the appearance of a conscious image in general (by virtue of which very special laws of nature go beyond the ordinary laws of nature and connect brain phenomena and phenomena of human mental life) and why this one, and not another, which also provides recognition, is a mystery that will very likely never be solved. Audience. So there is no way for physiologists to determine whether we really see something or not? Lecturer. Quite so. There are no ways for physiologists to objectively register the presence of conscious images in you or me, and it is unlikely that they can exist at all. Even if a person has a registered activity of nerve formations (pattern) typical of the situation of awareness, and the person even says "Indian", there is no guarantee that this did not happen automatically, without awareness [6]. A conscious image remains in the hands of physiologists like a sunbeam. Audience. If this is the case, then there is no physiological way to determine whether a person is alive or dead? Lecturer. With the exception of such obvious signs as, for example, the decomposition of the corpse, etc., I think not. The existing electrophysiological method of ascertaining the fact of death - registration of the absence of brain biocurrents on the electroencephalogram (the so-called "brain death"), strictly speaking, is conditional and sometimes does not give obvious results. I personally had to examine a patient who, after a severe craniocerebral injury, had this lack of biocurrents, he was a normal person. But whether he suffered death or not, I cannot answer this question, and it is unlikely that any of the physiologists will give a convincing answer to this question [7]. Man is a mystery. And his life is a mystery. His death is also a mystery [8]. Psychic phenomena, so obvious to each of us, are completely incapable of direct observation by other people, nor of study by traditional scientific methods. Neither thoughts, nor emotions, nor sensations can be directly seen by another person, nor registered by any devices, nor measured. For their research, psychologists try to resort to indirect methods - first of all, the self-report of the subjects is used, as in our experience. So modern psychology to a large extent literally rests on the "word of honor" of the subjects it studies. Psychologists also use indirect physiological methods based on correlation, coincidence in time of mental phenomena and physiological processes [10]. It is striking: the existence of psychic phenomena is a most obvious fact, and at the same time they are completely inaccessible to an outside observer, even armed with the most modern methods and techniques. Indeed, "someone else's soul is in the dark", you can't say anything [11]. What we have been discussing today is called the "psychophysiological problem" in philosophy, and many great thinkers (for example, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and at the end of the 20th century, K. Popper) thought intensively about it. Unfortunately, many of the physiologists and psychologists of the 20th century believe that if we now know a lot about neurons, then this problem has been solved. No! Science still cannot really answer the question of whether you see an Indian or not, if you do, then why, and in general, what this very vision is. Trying to pretend that there are no problems is usually a bad way of doing things that don't lead to a solution. The mystery of the nature of mental phenomena and their connection with bodily phenomena (neuronal, etc.) remains a mystery for science [12]. The Holy Church reveals to us much that is essential about this mystery. Man consists of two parts - soul and body - and each of them belongs to a special world. The body is that which belongs to the visible world. The soul is that which belongs to the world of spirits, the objects and beings of which are not subject to sensory perception under normal conditions (however, they can have a strong influence on events taking place in the material world). And only when, by the will or permission of God, a window to this world miraculously opens [13], a person begins to see what belongs to this world and in some special cases directly observes what is happening in the soul of another person, which, however, is exclusively a manifestation of a special Divine gift [14]. In connection with the psychophysiological problem, I think it is necessary to mention one more issue. You have probably heard this question from your younger brothers and sisters. Sometimes small children ask the question: "Where did I come from?" Older children, as a rule, are frightened by this question, believing that it means something related to gender issues, which need to be explained somehow urgently and, most importantly, safely. However, it seems that something else and much deeper in meaning may be meant here. Audience. What can be meant here? Lecturer. Let's try to answer this question, and then it will become clear what else a child can mean when asking such questions. Audience. But in order to answer such a question, it is probably necessary first to answer the question of what "I" means, and only then to answer the question of its origin? Lecturer. Certainly. So let's try to answer this question. A materialistic biologist would probably answer this question something like this: "You are your body, its brain, and so on. Potentially, in principle (and not in reality), you can make a complete description of what your body is made of, down to atoms, down to elementary particles [15], with a precise indication of all the elements, their properties, etc., and everything that happens in it. To this should be added a complete description of what happened to this system in time, from the moment of your conception, that is, what was done with all the elements, their interconnections, processes, etc. (up to the atomic level) with an indication of all the spatial and temporal coordinates of the elements of the system [16]. This will be the answer to the question of what you are and where you came from." A psychologist who stands on the position of dualism (that is, who recognizes the presence of two essences - the body and the soul) will probably say that to this global "super description" you need to add another "superdescription" - everything that is happening now and everything that has been happening in your soul from the beginning. And in this way a complete description of you as a human being composed of soul and body will be obtained. And in this way, in principle, we can get a complete description of each of you and what has happened to you (with your body and soul) throughout your life. But the question is, can such a "super description" answer the question of what is "you"? Audience. I don't understand, explain. Lecturer. Let's see - is it possible in principle that your double would live instead of you, who has a hundred percent resemblance to you not only in facial features, but also in all other features of anatomy, physiology and psyche? And not only "here and now", but also possessed all these similarities throughout the entire life you have already lived, who had exactly the same life as you have, with everyone else

I will repeat this thought once again - why couldn't another person live instead of you with the same features of body and soul, with the same events that took place in the soul and body as in your whole life, with exactly the same life and fate as you, but not you, but your exact copy, Wouldn't you be there at all? What determined that it was you who appeared in the world, and not your copy? "Where did I come from?" Where is the root, where is the reason for the birth of me? [17] The answer to this question is given by the Holy Church: "Thy (God's) hands have created me and created me," says an Orthodox priest on behalf of any person during the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. Yes, man is a great mystery, and this should not be forgotten [18]. Science tells us a lot about the world and about man, but a number of questions remain unanswered by scientists who adhere to the position of materialism. Let me remind you of them. Why is the world so complicated, and not otherwise? As a result of accidental causes, the materialists (Darwinists and Co.) answer. Why is the world so amazingly beautiful? As a result of accidental causes, materialists answer. Why is the earth so convenient for human habitation, in contrast to the great multitude of celestial bodies known to astronomers, like a single oasis in the desert? As a result of an accidental confluence of circumstances [19], the materialists answer. Why is it that only man, unlike other living beings on Earth, has intelligence and no signs of intelligence have been found in the material world outside the Earth? As a result of an accidental confluence of circumstances, the materialists answer [20]. Why do images appear in human consciousness? For unknown reasons, materialists answer. Why do I live, and not someone else instead of me? For some unknown reason, the materialists answer. Why are there no contradictions between Orthodox doctrine and the facts obtained by science? As a result of accidental coincidences, the materialists answer. If you look closely at these questions and look at them with an open mind, you will realize that the materialistic king is "naked." This king is also naked when he tries to explain by his own means the miracles that occur in the Orthodox Church. Audience. What? Lecturer. For example, the miracle of the descent of the Holy Fire on Holy Saturday in Jerusalem, on the eve of Easter - the bright Resurrection of Christ, when before the eyes of the entire civilized world (and this is filmed on TV and videotapes) there is a miraculous ignition of the Holy Fire through the prayer of the Orthodox Patriarch (and only the Orthodox, although there are plenty of representatives of other confessions standing nearby), which marks the triumph of Orthodoxy, its truth and superiority over atheism and false religions; fire that does not burn or burn, which is easy to verify both on the basis of many testimonies and from video films (12, 24, etc.). I would like to conclude the cycle of our talks with the divinely inspired words of the great teacher of the Russian Orthodox Church, St. Ignatius Brianchaninov: "Man! Understand your dignity. Look at the meadows and fields, at the vast rivers, at the boundless seas, at the high mountains, at the magnificent trees, at all the beasts and cattle of the earth, at all the beasts and fish that wander in the expanses of water, look at the stars, at the moon, at the sun, at the sky: all this is for you, everything is assigned to your service. In addition to the world we see, there is also a world that is not visible to the bodily eyes, incomparably more excellent than the visible. And the invisible world is for man. How the Lord honored His image! What a lofty destiny he had destined for him! The visible world is only the preparatory threshold of the monastery, incomparably more magnificent and vast. Here, as in the vestibule, the image of God must be adorned with its final features and colors, in order to obtain the most perfect resemblance to its most holy, all-perfect Original, in order to enter in the beauty and elegance of this likeness into that palace in which the Original is present incomprehensibly, as if limiting Its unlimitedness, for the manifestation of Itself to His beloved, rational creatures" (St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, On the Image and Likeness of God in Man. T. 2. - St. Petersburg, 1905). "Many inventions and discoveries in other fields of science would have shocked and puzzled Aristotle, but the most striking and unexpected results of psychological research... would make him raise his eyebrows only for a moment" (E. Tulving). "… The results of 100 years of memory research are somewhat discouraging. We have established reliable empirical generalizations, but most of them are so obvious that they are known even to a ten-year-old child" (W. Neisser) (3). ^ "Man is a mystery to himself. Is it possible that this mystery has been sealed definitively and there is no way to reveal it? Yes! Sin sealed it for man, his fall sealed it for him. Man is devoid of true self-conception and self-knowledge. As long as I remain in my fall, the mystery of man remains inexplicable to me: my perverted, blind mind is not sufficient to reveal it. I do not understand my soul, I do not understand my body; The notions which I think I have of them turn out to be, when not superficial and frivolous, very inadequate, and for the most part erroneous. Wandering in the darkness of self-deception and error are the wise men of the world, who have dreamed and pronounced arbitrary and vain teachings about man, substituting conjectures for truth; into the same abyss of self-deception and error the blind are dragged under the guidance of the blind. The mystery of man is opened to the degree accessible and necessary for us by the incarnate God, our Lord Jesus Christ, in Whom all the treasures of wisdom and understanding are hidden (Col. 2:3). The knowledge of man acquired through Divine revelation is still relative: relative to the limitation of our comprehension, relative to the essential need for knowledge. God grants us self-contemplation and self-knowledge, which are necessary for repentance, for salvation, or, what is the same thing, for our eternal bliss; but the main cause of the creation of man, the essential condition of his existence, his very essence are known to God alone" (St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, A Word about Man. - St. Petersburg, 1995, pp. 8-9). ^ The word "pattern" means "pattern" in English. ^ Presynaptic changes, postsynaptic, etc. ^ The ascertainment of the existence of such laws of nature would probably be tantamount to the recognition of the special physical status of psychic phenomena (such as electrical, magnetic, and others), the properties of which would thus turn out to be beyond the properties prescribed for other material phenomena by the laws of modern physics. A situation in which a person investigates "one-on-one" only what is accessible exclusively to his own observation is, from the point of view of "bad" positivist epistemology, a situation unsuitable for rigorous scientific investigation. Therefore, the situation when a person investigates on himself the physiological causes of the appearance of conscious images observed only by himself, is considered by positivists to be a situation, so to speak, "forbidden by the rules of the game." ^ It is believed that such reactions can occur automatically in the states of the so-called "epileptic trances", sleepwalking (sleepwalking), dreaming, etc. ^ Since the physiological methods of ascertaining death are conditional, it is difficult to understand how to treat the numerous experiences of people who have experienced the so-called "clinical death" based only on these methods, since relying only on the above-mentioned methods of ascertainment, it is impossible to exclude the possibility that that these experiments are by no means postmortem, but lifetime. It is possible that such experiments in many cases are the result of the vital abnormal functioning of the brain (the so-called "oneiroid states" described in psychiatry, as well as the conditions that arose in W. Penfield's patients during electrical stimulation of the cerebral cortex, are very similar to them), for example, as a result of a morbid state of the brain, or as a result of demonic influence (see The Life of the Holy Martyrs Timothy and Maura). ^ "Death is a great mystery. It is the birth of man from earthly temporal life into eternity. In the performance of the mortal sacrament, we lay aside our coarse shell - the body, and with a spiritual being, subtle, ethereal, we pass into another world, into the abode of beings homogeneous to the soul" (St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, A Word on Death. - Works, vol. 3. - St. Petersburg, 1886, p. 69). ^ Surprisingly, scientists can register the presence of countless different natural phenomena of the external world, measure a huge number of parameters and characteristics of these phenomena, but the statement that an image of an "Indian" has arisen in your mind, especially since the measurement of its parameters by sensors and measuring devices is an inaccessible thing for science. ^ The well-known lie detector is based on this principle, but it can only directly detect the physiological reactions that usually accompany certain emotional experiences. He cannot detect either the deliberate lie itself, or these emotional experiences themselves. ^ In principle, direct penetration into the world of thoughts of another person is inaccessible not only to the human mind, but also to the mind of a much more perfect one - the mind of the demon. "But how do unclean spirits know our thoughts? - They do not read them directly in their souls, but learn them from their discovery in external sensory signs, that is, from our words and actions. But they cannot penetrate into those thoughts that have not yet come out of the inner soul..." (St. Cassian the Roman, The Struggle with Thoughts and Spirits of Evil, p. 169. - Philokalia, vol. 3. - Moscow, 1993). ^ This conclusion was reached as a result of their research by the already mentioned D.K. Ickles and W. Penfield, one of the most famous specialists in the field of brain electrophysiology. "After years of trying to explain the mind solely on the basis of brain activity, I have come to the conclusion that it is much easier (and more logical) to accept the hypothesis that our being is made up of two basic elements" (soul and body). "Apparently, the mind acts independently of the brain, just as a programmer acts independently of his computer, although in some things it may depend on the work of the computer" Wilder Penbield. The mystery of the mind, pp. 70-80. Princeton, 1975 - op. cit. to 17, p. 83). ^ See: St. Ignatius Brianchaninov. A Discourse on the Sensual and Spiritual Vision of Spirits. - Ascetic Experiments, vol. 3. St. Petersburg, 1886. ^ See: St. Ignatius Brianchaninov. Letters about the ascetic life. Letter No 203 (324, 54). Paris - Moscow, 1996. ^ Such a complete description is the "blue" and pipe dream of physiologists. Note that just one simple sound signal (click), according to physiologists, activates (that is, fires, so to speak) about 10 million neurons (27). ^ This is another pipe dream, immeasurably more impossible than the first. ^ A few more questions can be asked that are similar to this basic question. Why was I born in this era, in this century, in this year, day and hour, and did it not happen sometime else? Why was I born in this country (Russia) and not in another? In this city, and not in another, with these parents, and not with others? ^ "Among the objects of the immense universe I see myself - a man. Who am I? From whence and for what purpose do I appear on earth? What is the purpose of my existence in general? What is the reason and purpose of my earthly life, this pilgrimage, short in comparison with eternity, long and tiring in relation to myself? I come into existence unconsciously, without any consent on my part; I am leaving this life against my will, at an uncertain, unforeseen hour. I appear and leave as a slave. More! I appear and leave as a creation. I live on earth, not knowing the future. I don't know what will happen to me in a day, in a few minutes. I constantly encounter the unexpected. I am constantly under the influence of circumstances and surroundings that enslave me. One habit, one life spent recklessly, reconciles with such a strange situation. It cannot hide from the observer. What happens to me when, having spent an urgent time on earth, I disappear from its face, disappear into the unknown, like all other people? The way of my departure from earthly life is terrible: it is called death" (St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, A Word about Man. - St. Petersburg, 1995). ^ It seems that with the help of the words "due to an accidental combination of circumstances" it is possible to avoid answering any question. ^ This means, of course, the materialists who answer questions honestly. ^

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