The Potential of the Spiritual

[coberst]

The Potential of the Spiritual

 

I suspect most people consider the dichotomy (two mutually exclusive entities) of mind/body is ‘real’. Body is a material entity and mind is a spiritual entity and these two entities are mutually exclusive.

 

Those who hold such views consider that this spiritual world is of a ‘heavenly’ substance, it is the substance of the gods or God. It is a marvelous reality unsoiled by materiality; it is a substance that is holy whereas material substance is soiled and often evil.

 

Let us say that in this spiritual world there is a specific reality called ‘honor’, and honor is a great and wonderful entity. Then let us suppose that someone is capable of reifying (to make into a material concrete entity) honor and to reify honor in the form of a golden colored paint.

 

Then suppose someone takes this golden colored paint and paints the concrete act of killing with this paint. These suppositions might help us understand how it is possible for an Islamic family to stone to death their own daughter and sister.

 

This is just one example of all of the things one might do with this paint and to any other heavenly substance in order to make some actions acceptable to people who would find such actions in a non dichotomy world to be impossible to accept.