Mind, body and soul

Mind, body and soul are strightly related. They constitute a unique organic system, that is our being. The mind can be considered the central, the “capital”of that system. But it functions and it expresses itself only through the body; and the body is stimulated by external inputs, that are received and elaborated by the mind. But we must not forget the role of the soul in constituting nature and shaping sensations and feeligs: we can considered it that what permeates the body and the mind themselves, the essence and the mistery of our organic being and our existence.

During the human history, these tree parts were not always considered indivisible and in relationship. For example, from the ancient Greek metaphysical tradition to the Christian culture, the soul was judged superior than the body: the soul was the immaterial and spiritual substance, closer to that of the metaphysical sphere, the body was the material one, belonging to the everyday life and reality, with all its negative features. In opposition to this tradition, it developed indipendently from the antiquity another way of thinking that put the body and the materiality in a central position. They put first the body and its relations with the real world, whitout a teleological perspective. Now, in contemporary times, the human being is considered in all its complexity, and we have the possibility to reconsider its position in the world, in the reality and in the human history.