Bridging Science and Religion Together: SELF, SOUL & CONSCIOUSNESS

Journal of the Dialogue between Science and Theology

DIA LOGO Volume 3 - Issue 2 - May 2017

Edited by Cosmin Tudor Ciocan

Bridging Science and Theology together:

Self - Soul Consciousness www.dialogo-conf.com

DIALOGO Proceedings of the annual Conferences on the Dialogue between Science and Theology

Journal of RCDST (Research Center on the Dialogue between Science & Theology), Ovidius University of Constanta, Romania

DIALOGO Journal has articles indexed and abstracting in the following international Databases:

and subject for evaluation and rating for other Databases

DIALOGO CONF 2017 SSC volume 3 - issue 2:

Bridging Science and Religion Together: SELF, SOUL & CONSCIOUSNESS

Organized by the RCDST - Romania in collaboration with other Institutions from Slovakia - Pakistan - Switzerland - Poland India - Egypt - Uganda - Jordan - Turkey Argentina - USA - Canada - Germany held on May 19 - 26, 2017 venue:

www.dialogo-conf.com

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this volume do not necessarily represent those of the Dialogo Organizers, and are attributable only to the authors of the papers as according to their declaration of copyright transfer.

Publication Series: Description: ISSN (CD-ROM): ISSN (ONLINE): ISSN (PRINT): ISSN-L: Editors:

DIALOGO (Proceedings of the Conferences on the Dialogue between Science and Theology) 2392 – 9928 2393 – 1744 2457 – 9297 2392 – 9928 Fr. lecturer Cosmin Tudor CIOCAN, Ph.D. (Romania) - In-Chief - and Ing. Stefan BADURA, Ph.D. (Slovak Republic)

Series Publisher: RCDST (Research Center on the Dialogue between Science & Theology), from Ovidius Univesity of Constanta. Romania Volume 3, Issue 2 Title: Bridging Science and Religion Together: SELF, SOUL & CONSCIOUSNESS subtitle: ISBN: DOI: Published by: (DOI issuer) Pages: Printed on: Publishing date:

DIALOGO-CONF 2017 SSC 978-80-554-1338-9 10.18638/dialogo.2017.3.2 EDIS - Publishing Institution of the University of Zilina Univerzitna 1, 01026 Zilina - Slovak Republic 220 100 copies 2017, May 30

Note on the issue: This is a the volume of the Proceedings of the conference “Dialogo” held in May 2017.

*All published papers underwent blind peer review. *All published papers are in English language only. Each paper was assigned to 3 reviewers and went through two-level approval process. * The ideas and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of RCDST. Authors only hold responsability over their papers and content.

Open Access Online archive is available at: http://www.dialogo-conf.com/archive (proceedings will be available online one month after the publication release).

In case of any questions, notes or complaints, please contact us at: info(at)dialogo-conf.com.

Warning: Copyright © 2014, RCDST (Research Center on the Dialogue between Science & Theology), Romania.

All rights reserved. Reproduction or publication of this material, even partial, is allowed only with the editor’s permission. Unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable laws.

Dialogo by RCDST is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License This is in an Open Access journal by which all articles are available on the internet to all users upon publication.

doi: 10.18638/dialogo.2017.3.2

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DIALOGO

3 : 2 (2017)

Proceedings of the Conferences on the Dialogue between Science and Theology May 19 - 26, 2017

CONFERENCES & JOURNAL

Conference Sponsors and Parteners

Ovidius University of Constanta (UOC/Romania) www.univ-ovidius.ro

University of the Punjab (Lahore) www.pu.edu.pk

The Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi (UAIC/Romania) www.uaic.ro

“Vasile Goldis” Western University of Arad (UVVG/Romania) www.uvvg.ro/

The Institute for the Study of Christianity in an Age of Science and Tech- Horizon Research Publishing, HRPUB - USA nology (ISCAST/Australia) http://www.hrpub.org/ www.iscast.org

Research and Science Today www.lsucb.ro/rst

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www.The-Science.com (Slovakia)

Maritime University of Constanta “Mircea cel Batran” Naval (UMC/Romania) Academy (ANMB/Romania) www.cmu-edu.eu www.anmb.ro

Global Ethics (Geneva/Switzerland) www.globethics.net

Faculty of Educational Sciences (WNP) Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland www.pedagogika.umk.pl

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Proceedings of the Conferences on the Dialogue between Science and Theology May 19 - 26, 2017

CONFERENCES & JOURNAL

Conference Sponsors and Parteners

Faculty of Theology (UOC), Romania teologie.univ-ovidius.ro

Faculty of Orthodox Theology (UAIC), Romania www.teologie.uaic.ro

Faculty of Medicine (UOC), Romania www.medcon.ro

Faculty of Law (UOC), Romania drept.univ-ovidius.ro

Faculty of Theology (UAB), Romania www.fto.ro

Faculty of Psychology and Sciences of Education (UAIC), Romania www.psih.uaic.ro

Faculty of Psychology and Sciences of Education (UOC), Romania pse.univ-ovidius.ro

Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering (UOC), Romania fcetp.univ-ovidius.ro

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Volume published by

EDIS Publishing Institution of the University of Zilina Univerzitna 1 01026 Zilina Slovak Republic

RCDST Research Center on the Dialogue between Science & Theology Ovidius University of Constanta Romania

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Proceedings of the Conferences on the Dialogue between Philosophy and Theology May 19-26, 2017

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International Scientific Committee, Reviewers and Contributers of Dialogo Journal Christoph STUECKELBERGER Globethics.net Executive Director and Founder; Prof. PhD. (Switzerland)

Ahmed KYEYUNE Islamic University in Uganda

Maria Isabel Maldonado GARCIA Directorate External Linkages/Institute of Language University of the Punjab; Head of Spanish Dpt. / Assistant Professor (Pakistan)

Ahmed USMAN University of the Punjab (Pakistan)

Filip NALASKOWSKI

Mihai Valentin VLADIMIRESCU Faculty of Orthodox Theology, University of Craiova; Professor PhD. (Romania)

Faculty of Educational Sciences - Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun; Dr. (Poland)

Mohammad Ayaz AHMAD University of Tabuk; Assistant Professor PhD (Saudi Arabia)

Lucian TURCESCU Department of Theological Studies - Concordia University; Professor and Chair (Canada)

IPS Teodosie PETRESCU Archbichop of Tomis disctrict; Faculty of Orthodox Theology; “Ovidius” University of Constanta; Prof.

PhD. (Romania)

Francesco FIORENTINO Dipartimento di Filosofia, Letteratura e Scienze Sociali; Universita degli Studi di Bari «Aldo Moro»; Researcher in Storia della Filosofia (Italy)

Edward Ioan MUNTEAN Faculty of Food Sciences and Technology - University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine, Cluj–Napoca; Assoc. Professor PhD. (Romania)

Dagna DEJNA NCU Faculty of Educational Sciences (Poland)

Altaf QADIR University of Peshawar (Pakistan)

Panagiotis STEFANIDES Emeritus Honoured Member of the Technical Chamber of Greece HELLENIC AEROSPACE IND. S.A. - Lead engineer; MSc Eur Ing (Greece)

Eugenia Simona ANTOFI “Dunarea de Jos” University (Romania)

Wade Clark ROOF J.F. Rowny Professor of Religion and Society; Emeritus and Research Professor Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life; Director Department of Religious Studies - University of California at Santa Barbara (United States of America) Cristiana OPREA European Physical Society; member Joint Institute for Nuclear Research - Frank Laboratory of Neutron Physics; Scientific Project Leader (Russia) Gheorghe ISTODOR Faculty of Orthodox Theology - “Ovidius” University of Constanta; Prof.

PhD. (Romania) Nasili VAKA’UTA Trinity Methodist Theological College University of Auckland; Ranston Lecturer PhD. (New Zealand)

D. Liqaa RAFFEE Jordan University of Science and Technology (Jordan) George ENACHE Faculty of History, Philosophy and Theology „Dunarea de Jos” University of Galati; Associate professor PhD. (Romania) Ahed Jumah Mahmoud AL-KHATIB Faculty of Medicine - Department of Neuroscience University of Science and Technology; Researcher PhD (Jordan) Ioan-Gheorghe ROTARU ‘Timotheus’ Brethren Theological Institute of Bucharest (Romania) Akhtar Hussain SANDHU Department of History, University of the Punjab; Associate professor PhD. (Pakistan) Richard WOESLER European University press, PhD. (Germany)

Dilshad MAHABBAT University of Gujrat (Pakistan) Adrian NICULCEA Faculty of Orthodox Theology, “Ovidius” University of Constanta; Prof.

PhD. (Romania) Tarnue Marwolo BONGOLEE Hope for the Future; Executive Director (Liberia)

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Coli NDZABANDZABA Rhodes University (South Africa)

Riffat MUNAWAR University of the Punjab; Dr. PhD. (Pakistan) Hassan IMAM Aligarh University, PhD. (India) Ioan G. POP Emanuel University of Oradea; PhD. (Romania) Farzana BALOCH University of Sindh Associate professor PhD. (Pakistan)

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DIALOGO

3:2 (2017)

Proceedings of the Conferences on the Dialogue between Philosophy and Theology May 19-26, 2017

CONFERENCES & JOURNAL

International Scientific Committee, Reviewers and Contributers Petru BORDEI Faculty of Medicine - “Ovidius” University of Constanta; Prof. PhD. (Romania) Khalil AHMAD University of the Punjab; Prof. PhD. (Pakistan)

Fouzia SALEEM University of the Punjab, Dr. PhD. (Pakistan)

Maciej LASKOWSKI Politechnika Lubelska; Prof. PhD. (Poland)

Mihai CIUREA University of Craiova, PhD. (Romania)

Muhammad HAFEEZ University of the Punjab; Prof. PhD. (Pakistan)

Mohammad Ayaz Ahmad University of Tabuk, Assistant Professor PhD. (Saudi Arabia)

Muhammad Shahid HABIB International Islamic University; Lecturer Ph.D. (Pakistan)

Mirosaw Zientarski Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toru, PhD. (Poland)

Muhammad Zakria ZAKAR University of the Punjab; Prof. PhD. (Pakistan)

Manisha MATHUR G.N.Khalsa College; University of Mumbai; Assistant Professor (India)

R S Ajin GeoVin Solutions Pvt. Ltd.; PhD. (India)

Pratibha GRAMANN Saybrook University of San Francisco, California (United States of America)

Mustfeez Ahmad ALVI Lahore Leads University; Prof. PhD. (Pakistan)

Adrian GOREA Concordia University, Montreal (Canada)

Radu NICULESCU Ovidius University of Constanta; Assist.prof. PhD. (Romania)

Richard Alan MILLER

Navy Intel (Seal Corp. and then MRU); Dr. in Alternative Agriculture, Physics, and Metaphysics (United States of America)

Fermin De La FUENTE-CALVO De La Fuente Consulting (Corporative Intelligence) B.Sc. Physics and Professor PhD. (United States of America)

Maria CIOCAN “Mircea cel Batran” Naval Academy; teacher PhD. (Romania)

Kelli COLEMAN MOORE University of California at Santa Barbara (United States of America) Osman Murat DENIZ Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart Üniversitesi; Associate Professor PhD. (Turkey) Daniel MUNTEANU The International Journal of Orthodox Theology (Canada) Dragos HUTULEAC Stefan cel Mare University of Suceava; Assistant Lecturer, PhD candidate (Romania) Shiva KHALILI Faculty of psychology and education - Tehran University; Associate Professor PhD. (Iran) Mihai HIMCINSKI Faculty of Orthodox Theology - „1 December 1918” University of Alba Iulia; Prof. PhD. (Romania) Richard Willem GIJSBERS The Institute for the Study of Christianity in an Age of Science and Technology - ISCAST (Australia) Flavius Cristian MARCAU Constantin Brancusi” University of Targu Jiu; Phd. Candidate (Romania)

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Stanley KRIPPNER Association for Humanistic Psychology, the Parapsychological Association; President; Prof. PhD. (United States of America)

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Sorin Gabriel ANTON Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi; PhD. (Romania) Sultan MUBARIZ University of Gujrat; PhD. (Pakistan) Gheorghe PETRARU Faculty of Orthodox Theology, Iasi; Prof. PhD. (Romania) Rania Ahmed Abd El-Wahab Mohamed Plant Protection Research Institute; PhD. (Egypt) Rubeena ZAKAR University of the Punjab; Prof. PhD. (Pakistan) Mihai GIRTU The Research Center on the Dialogue between Science & Theology (RCDST); President Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering - “Ovidius” University of Constanta; Prof. PhD. (Romania) Cosmin Tudor CIOCAN The Research Center on the Dialogue between Science & Theology (RCDST); Executive Director Faculty of Orthodox Theology - “Ovidius” University of Constanta; Lecturer PhD. (Romania)

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DIALOGO

3:2 (2017)

Proceedings of the Conferences on the Dialogue between Philosophy and Theology May 19-26, 2017

CONFERENCES & JOURNAL

International Scientific Committee, Reviewers and Contributers of Dialogo Journal Mihaela RUS “Ovidius” University of Constanta; Professor PhD. (Romania) Sónia MORGADO Instituto Superior de Ciências Policiais e Segurança Interna, (ISCPSI); Aux. Prof., PhD (Portugal)

Mahesh Man Shrestha International Network on Participatory Irrigation Management (INPIM); Lecturer PhD. (Nepal) Muhammad Shahzad Aslam Universiti Malaysia Perlis; Assistant Professor PhD (Pakistan) Shoaib Ahmad SIDDIQI Faculty of Biological Sciences, Lahore Garrison University; Assistant Professor PhD (Pakistan) Sugiarto TEGUH Budi luhur and AAJ Jayabaya; Lecturer PhD. (Indonesia)

Jean FIRICA

University of Craiova; Assoc. Professor PhD. (Romania) Ahmed ASHFAQ Assistant Professor PhD (Saudi Arabia) Shoaib Ahmad SIDDIQI Faculty of Biological Sciences, Lahore Garrison University; Assistant Professor PhD (Pakistan) Rehman ATAUR

Lahore Garrison University; Senior Lecturer PhD. (Pakistan) Kuang-ming Wu

Yale University Divinity School; Senior Lecturer PhD. (Pakistan) Nursabah SARIKAVAKLI “Ovidius” University of Constanta; Professor PhD. (Turkey) Laurentiu-Dan MILICI “Stefan cel Mare” University of Suceava; Professor PhD. (Romania) Michael STEVENS Illinois State University; Professor PhD. (United States) Emad Al-Janabi “Al-Mussaib” Technical College; Asist. Prof. Dr. (Iraq) Sugiarto TEGUH Budi luhur and AAJ Jayabaya; Lecturer PhD. (Indonesia)

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DIALOGO

3:2 (2017)

Proceedings of the Conferences on the Dialogue between Philosophy and Theology May 19-26, 2017

CONFERENCES & JOURNAL

Organizing Committee Cosmin Tudor CIOCAN - SCIENTIFIC PROGRAMME OFFICER RCDST Executive Director and Founder; Lect. ThD. Faculty of Orthodox Theology, Ovidius University of Constanta (Romania) Mihai GIRTU RCDST President and Founder; Professor PhD. Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering , Ovidius University of Constanta (Romania)

RESPONSIBLES FOR SESSION 1. SELF MIHAELA RUS Ovidius University of Constanta; Prof., PhD (Romania)

RESPONSIBLE FOR SESSION 2. SOUL ANY DOCU-AXELERAD Ovidius University of Constanta; Assist. Prof., PhD (Romania)

RESPONSIBLES FOR SESSION 3. CONSCIOUSNESS Maria Isabel MALDONADO GARCIA University of the Punjab; Assist. Prof., PhD (Pakistan)

RESPONSIBLE FOR SESSION 4. ALL IN DIALOGUE Bruno MARCHAL Université Libre de Bruxelles; Prof . PhD. (Belgium) Stefan BADURA - RESPONSIBLE FOR I.T. Publishing Society of Zilina; Ing. PhD. (Slovakia)

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Welcome Address

INTRODUCTION On behalf of the Organizing Committee, we welcome you to the events of DIALOGO Conferences & Journal, an international endeavor targeting Conferences on the Dialogue between Science, Philosophy and Theology, jointly organized by “the Research Centre for Dialogue between Science and Theology” (RCDST) from “Ovidius” University of Constanta (Romania) along with international partners from 31 academic institutions, faculties and research centers within 21 countries, made the conference truly international in scope.

This Spring the topic of Dialogo multidisciplinary conference was directed towards a more focused aim, envisioning a dialogue between religion, medicine-neurosciences, and psychosociology, Bridging Science and Theology together: Self-Soul-Consciousness (Dialogo 2016 SSC), and it held virtually on our website/platform, from 19 to 26 May 2017, presenting to the public at our official website, www.dialogo-conf.com/archive.

In contrast with the past Dialogo events - when we have approached this interdisciplinary debates in a general topic under each and separate section - this time a very useful interaction was created due to this more specific topic that brought together theologians and scientists to identify and resolve some of the problems that arise in this clash which came about in this conference. In the questionary launched at the end of this conference, many requests we have received from our actual and former attendees and Dialogo visitors to join, at least once per year, a conference will be always held with this virtual formula of a mutual topic for only few fields of research, besides the general presentation that are the core of Dialogo November conferences. Due to the interest in debating on specific issues, we consider useful to engage this dialogue under particular and distinctive aspects of our society and understanding for every second issue we will have from now on, in Spring.

The success of the conference is due to the joint efforts of so many people. Therefore we would like to thank you all for trusting and considering Dialogo endeavor a trustful and credible forum for academic debates so that we all carry on this dialogue with other domains of human knowledge. We would like to thank all the participants, philosophers, scholars, theologians, and many other, that have presented interesting and useful papers; unfortunately, for several reasons, we could not gather all the presentation in this volume, for there are many not yet written or translated on time to be included in this main volume of Dialogo Journal. We also recognize the merits of the Scientific Committee and the Reviewers for their valuable contribution. All accepted papers have been precisely reviewed with a double peer-review process. Furthermore, we are proud to announce that all these concerted efforts are international endorsed and till the moment of this volume Dialogo Journal of Proceedings received recognition in the following well-known Databases. Dialogo Journal is now indexed in The European Reference Index for the Humanities and the Social Sciences (Erih Plus), Social Science Research Network (SSRN), The CiteFactor, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Advanced Science Index (ASI), Index Copernicus, The Philosopher’s Index, Religious and Theological Abstracts (R&TA), Central and Eastern

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Welcome Address

European Online Library (CEEOL), The American Theological Library Association (ATLA), EBSCO, SCIPIO (Romania), and the subject for indexing under evaluation in JSTOR, SCImago, Summon by ProQuest, and Cabell’s.

Dear all, we proudly want to announce you that, due to our mutual efforts - organizers and attendees - Dialogo Journal has received the highest indexation from Web of Science,

by Thomson Reuters, which has already accepted and indexed our Journal. A well-received improvement was regarded the endorsement of Dialogo Journal & Conferences accredited by several international Databases that indexed our Journal starting with the volume from 2016 in this notorious Database, as mentioned on the page of indexing, and we are grateful and honored once again for this endorsements.

This proves that our endeavor is on the right track and it encourages us to step forward.

We thank you all - team members, partners, participants - for this endorsement.

Be welcomed to enjoy this accomplishment!

See you again for the DIALOGO 2017 November exciting event!

your host, lect. Ciocan Tudor Cosmin, PhD Executive Director of The Research Center on the Dialogue between Science & Theology (RCDST) „Ovidius” University Constanța / Romania Scientific Programme Officer of DIALOGO international conferences E-mail: office(at)dialogo-conf.com

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Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.

Eleanor Rosevelt

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t h e Di a l ogue b et ween Sci en c e a n d Th eol ogy

4 6 7 9 12 13 17

Database List Description Conference Sponsors and Parteners International Scientific Committee, Reviewers and Contributers Organizing Committee Preface by Ciocan Tudor Cosmin Table of Content

session 1 - self

20

80 Self and its anxieties in existential psychotherapy Mircea Adrian Marica

88

21 The Relationship with Yourself when Praying to

session 2 - soul

91 Aspects of Immortality in Terms of Conditionalism

Transcendent God and to an Immanent God

Larisa Ileana Casangiu; Loredana Gabi Ciobănescu

33 The Self-Knowledge and the Phenomenon of

Estrangement/Alienation of the Human in Gnosticism Stelian Manolache

Ioan-Gheorghe ROTARU

103 The Holly Confession and the Holly Sacrament – fundamental secrets of the spiritual life in Orthodoxy Vasile Miron

110 How Can a Confessor Better Call Upon Believers to Achieve Perfection?

42 Self image and place of control

Mircea Adrian Marica; Mariana Floricica Călin

Nicolae Popescu

50 Research on effectiveness of therapy used for children with grapho-motor problems applying the authorial grapho-motor questionnaire Jacek Szmalec

65 The conscious life - the dream we live in Cosmin Tudor Ciocan

72 The Psychosocial Integration of Seropositive Persons Raluca Matei

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Tabel of Content

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125

session 3 - consciousness

185

127 Non-locality of the phenomenon of consciousness

187

Self and Soul, from Logic to Experience

198

Two Interlocked Triads in Pat Kinevane’s Recent Plays: Self-Soul-Conscousness and Birth-Death-Rebirth

according to Roger Penrose

Bruno Marchal

Rubén Herce

135

session 4 - all in dialogue

Artificial Consciousness or Artificial Intelligence Florin Spanache

207

144 The Impaired Consciousness

Any Docu Axelerad; Daniel Docu-Axelerad

Nicoleta Stanca

The ecotheological consciousness in environmental studies Cristiana Oprea; Cosmin Tudor Ciocan; Alexandru Oprea

Conscience and responsability in choosing the

151 teaching profession

Daniela Căprioară

157 The Consciousness and the role of valorization. How

219

and why the Self-awareness subjectively administers consciousness

Guidelines for the Authors

Cosmin Tudor Ciocan

168 The state of being awake Any Docu Axelerad; Daniel Docu-Axelerad

Basis on Human Consciousness and its Complex

177 Perception

Emanuel George Oprea; Cristiana Oprea / Alexandru Oprea

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Tabel of Content

Session 1

SELF

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DIALOGO

This paper was presented in the

Bridging Science and Religion together: SELF - SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS. (DIALOGO-CONF 2017 SSC)

CONFERENCES & JOURNAL

held online, on the Journal’s website, from May 19 - 26, 2017

journal homepage: http://dialogo-conf.com

The Relationship with Yourself when Praying to a Transcendent God and to an Immanent God 1. Assoc. Prof. Larisa Ileana Casangiu, PhD

2. Teacher Loredana-Gabi Ciobănescu

Department of Psychology and Social Work Ovidius University of Constanta, Constanta, Romania

Gingerbread House Kindergarten, Constanta, Romania

ARTICLE INFO

ABSTRACT

Article history: Received 25 April 2017 Received in revised form 29 April Accepted 10 May 2017 Available online 30 May 2017 doi: 10.18638/dialogo.2017.3.2.1.1

In this article, we aim to discuss on prayer, trying to identify a kind of relationship with yourself during the praying to a transcendent God and an immanent God, according to the religious literature and the Romanian social reality. For this purpose, we have conducted an experimental research ascertaining the investigation based on interview and questionnaire aimed the relationship with yourself indirectly when praying to a transcendent God and an immanent God among the believers/faithful persons who pray (almost) daily.

Keywords: transcendent God; immanent God; prayer; self; research;

© 2014 RCDST. All rights reserved.

I. INTRODUCTION

Traditionally (from twenty centuries ago), the most of the people that consider themselves faithful, believe in a Transcendent God as a masculine authority ruling over everything /…/ who created heaven and earth and all living creatures ’[1]. From this point of view, the prayer Our Father is the most representative and the most known among the Christians prayers. In the last years, after

metaphysical experiences, after discovering Dead Sea Scrolls/ Qumran Cave Scrolls (after 1946) and as a consequence of some research in neuropsychology, when more and more intellectuals consider God as Immanent God, the prayers are reformulated alike „mantras” because if God is the creation, instead of above watching over the world and the whole reality is created by God, and a part of God [2], every human being seek for an inside/inner God.

Session 1. SELF

eISSN: 2393-1744, cdISSN: 2392-9928 printISSN: 2457-9297, ISSN-L 2392-9928 ISBN 978-80-554-1338-9

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CONFERENCES & JOURNAL on th e D ial o gu e b e t we e n S ci e n c e a nd T heology

II. ON PRAYER A. Prayer’s Importance

The fact that “the need for prayer of the believer is beyond doubt”[3] is axiomatic. For the religious people, and ”the prayer is the queen of all virtues, is the invisible staircase, which the soul ascends to God; Prayer plants in the soul those seeds from which the flowers of heaven flourish forever. If there is no prayer, the spirit of man is paralyzed, his spiritual life petrifies” [4], ”, it is said in The Prologue to The Prayer by Saint Theophan the Recluse. At the same time, „The one who prays becomes aware of its roots in personal reality, in the infinite reality of God, and it is not allowed to surrender to the superficial waves of life, of life closed only in the earthly horizon. He can fill his life with infinite content.” [5] B. Perspectives on Prayer

There are many perspectives on prayer, starting with the definition of the term, the ways to pray, the types of prayer, prayerrelated experiences. Not only theology focuses on prayer, but many other sciences, especially psychology.

Father Dumitru Stăniloae, in The Jesus’ Prayer and experience of the Holy Spirit, tells: „words of Holy Scripture have power over us when we feel as the words of God that He addressed during the reading. / ... / So reading is joined with the prayer” [6].

In (the monk) Hrisostom (Chrysostom) Filipescu’s point of view, „prayer is / ... / love” [7], but silence and obedience (“To pray means to be silent, to leave thoughts and let God speak into bottom of my heart”[8]), and Scripture is God’s “love letter” [9].

Gregg Braden evoke the four ways prayer found predominantly in the Western world [10]: ”Modern prayer researchers have identified

Session 1. SELF

four broad categories that are believed to encompass all the many ways that we pray. In no particular order, they are (1) colloquial, or informal, prayers; (2) petitionary prayers; (3) ritualistic prayers; and (4) meditative prayers.

When we pray, the researchers suggest that we use one of these four modes - or a combination” [11].

Isaac of Nineveh/Saint Isaac the Syrian distinguishes between delight in prayer and contemplation in prayer [12], showing that the last of these is higher than the other one. Also, for the same Christian saint, the converse of the mind with God is the highest and the most important spiritual activity of a Christian, and cannot be compared with any other endeavor: ‘Just as nothing resembles God, so there is no ministry or work which resembles converse with God in stillness.’ [13] In a taxonomy of religious people, operated

by Osho, considering the degree of authenticity of their faith, one of the first category is the childish, immature, who “desires a God with a paternal figure”, their religion being rather, a “branch of psychology”, born out of necessity and fear, in this situation being 90 percent of the so-called religious people are [14]. A second category of religious people is characterized by the fact that their religion is born of intelligence, being “an abstract religion, a true intellectual masterpiece” [15], but nothing more authentic than the former, since “people believe, but faith does not transforms, does not change their lives” [16]. Only the third category of religious people is the authentic one, stating that “you can only address God in a personal manner” [17], experience with God is not “neutral and banal” but “passionate and alive” [18], even profoundly human, since “you feel that you love and hate Him simultaneously, that he is your friend, but also your enemy” [19].

Obviously, the initiate’s option is heading for this last category, because “as long as it does not become personalized, individual, while it does not become real and does not affect you

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to its roots, religion is useless” [20].

which the Creator belongs. God was no longer perceived as above, but everywhere, especially in the depths of human being.

III. YOURSELF WHEN PRAYING, IN

IV. RESEARCH REGARDING THE RELATIONSHIP WITH YOURSELF WHEN PRAYING TO A TRANSCENDENT GOD AND TO AN IMMANENT GOD

RELIGIOUS LITERATURE

Following a recommendation by St. Mark the Ascetic, to offer as a sacrifice to Christ the representation (or thought) of everything at the very moment when it appears in our thought, Father Dumitru Stăniloae understands this offering as an entrance to the innermost depth and The most sensitive of our being, where “Christ dwells in us since Baptism”, as follows: „Our approach includes / ... / three aspects: thinking in a true manner and so disinterested to everything; our offering to Christ and, through him, to all those who love Him; and searching our inner center and updating it whenever we think of something, so basically without interruption” [21].

The same theologian states that “the man who prays has the feeling that he is lost in a personal infinite” [22] and during the prayer, the mind must descend into the heart, and “the mind lowered in the heart no longer meets God through the intercession of ideas, but by the presence of His presence” [23].

Saint Theophan the Recluse considers ”Prayer without elevation of mind and heart to God is not prayer” [24] and ”Living with God is unceasing prayer without words” [25].

Saint Isaac the Syrian/ Isaac of Nineveh shows that after the termination of his mouth, tongue, heart, and mind in prayer, pure prayer follows (to which few people have come), this being neither demand, nor prayer, nor thanksgiving nor glory, when the mind enters contemplation.[ ] Through the above ideas, Father Dumitru Stăniloae and Saint Isaac the Syrian, although adhering to transcendent God, approach an immanent God, because they think the self, during prayer, merges into the Creation to

A. General coordinates

During March 2017, we have conducted an experimental research ascertaining the investigation based on interview[ ] and questionnaire aimed indirectly the relationship with yourself when praying to a transcendent God and to an immanent God among the believers/faithful persons who pray daily. This research is more a qualitative one.

Only the data given by subjects who answered affirmative to the first question (from only those who said they pray daily/ almost daily) were processed.

B. Purpose of study

The main objective of present study is to identify to the ordinary people (adults, none of them priest/monk/ spiritual teacher/guru) their relationship with yourself when praying to a transcendent God and to an immanent God (as the case).

C. Research Hypotheses

• It is assumed that people that usually pray to God are in a particular relation with Him/Her; • It is supposed that people who pray (almost) every day strongly believe either in a transcendent God or in an immanent God; • There is a different relationship with the self when people believe in a transcendent God vs. in an immanent God; • During the practice of prayer, there

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were subjects that experienced remarkable/ unusual results/things.

D. Respondents. Variables. Limits

The research group consists of a sample of 48 ordinary people (adults, none of them priest/monk/ spiritual teacher/ guru). There is an imbalance in the representation of respondents by sex (11 – male, 22.92%, and 37 – female, 77.08%).

• Respondents’ Distribution by Age The age of three respondents (6.25%) is between 26 and 27 (years old), thirteen respondents (27.08%) are between 30 and 39 (years old), eleven respondents (22.92%) are between 40 and 49 (years old), seventeen respondents (35.42%) are between 50 and 59 (years old), three respondents (6.25%)

are between 61 and 63 (years old) and one respondent (2.08%) is 76 (years old). So, there is a preponderance of subjects aged over 40 years (32 respondents/ 66.67%).

Figure 1.

Respondents’ Age Distribution

• Respondents’ Distribution by Jobs/ Occupation Among respondents, there are twentythree (47.92%) teachers, seven (14.58%) are retired persons and eighteen (37.5%) have different jobs (analyst, accountant, bookseller and secretary, caretaker in

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kindergarten, commercial worker, cook, inspector, IT specialist, nurse, optometrist, school counselor, store manager, soldiers).

Figure 2.

Respondents’ Distribution by Occupation

• Respondents’ Religion From forty-eight respondents, thirty (62.5%) are orthodox, thirteen (27.08%) are Seventh-day Adventists, three (6.25%) are Christians, and two (4.17%) are muslins.

Figure 3.

Respondents’ Distribution by Religion/ Faith

E. Results of the Research

As we said earlier, we only processed the questionnaires with an affirmative answer to the first question.

Respondents declare as follows: To the second question (What kind of

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prayer do you say?), eighteen respondents (37.5%) affirmed that they use to said only traditional prayers (already formulated/ from religious books), fourteen respondents (29.17%) affirmed that they prayed in a personal manner/ through personally formulated prayers, twelve respondents (25%) declared they used traditional prayers and personal prayers, one respondent (2.08%) declared that said personal and combined prayers, one respondent (2.08%) declared that said traditional and personal and combined prayers, one respondent (2.08%) declared that said traditional and combined prayers and one respondent

respondents (8.33%) focus on feeling, no respondent focuses only on language and two respondents (4.17%) focus only on other elements.

Figure Focusing

(2.08%) declared that said combined prayers.

None of the respondents declared using as modern prayers like “mantras” or another situation.

Figure 4.

Respondents’ Distribution by Prayers’ Type

To the third question (When you pray, whose aspect focus on?), most respondents (twenty-six, it means 54.17%) declared that was focused only on God/ divinity, and another thirteen respondents (27.08%) focused both on God/divinity and another aspect(s)/element(s) (myself/my inside, feeling, language; relationship/ the neighbor/ short prayer). Two respondents (4.17%) focus on the self, one respondent (2.08%) focuses on the universe, four

5.

Respondents’

Distribution

by

To the fourth item (In your opinion, God is…), for eighteen respondents (37.5%) God is “a male authority omnipotent, omniscient, governing everything”, for another sixteen respondents (33.33%), God is very similar seen, but “no male” or described in more detail. For two respondents (4.17%), God is “a part of creation (which He/She created)”.

Two respondents (4.17%) answered metaphorically: God is ” Hope, faith, love, life” and ”Creator, Redeemer, Savior, Lifesaver, My Father”, and one respondent (2.08%) gave only a synonymous (Divinity).

For one respondent (2.08%), God is both ”a part of creation (which He/She created)” and ”something above his/her ability to comprehend, an entity I can not imagine at its full and real dimension, but which directs the positive energy”. For eight respondents (16.67%), God is something else, but some explanations are very similar with the first and second situations.

Thus, for more than 70,83% of respondents, God is perceived as transcendent, and more than 8.33% of respondents perceived God as immanent, but there are two respondents (2.08%) for which God is both transcendent and

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immanent, the rest being irrelevant.

At the fifth item 37 respondents (77.08%) declared they had remarkable experiences regarding the prayer and only 17 (35.42%) of them have told us in detail about their experience. Because some of the answers

exceed the space allocated to our article, we marked with a “plus” where we received explanations, giving examples in the following. Eight respondents (16.67%) gave us a negative answer and three respondents (6.25%) did not answer.

Figure 6.

Respondents’ Distribution by Declared Experiences

F. Interpretation. Case study - remarkable

experience during/regarding the prayer practice

Because ’a case study provides more realistic responses than a purely statistical survey’ [26], and because we have not very relevant answers at the fifth question/item, we consider necessary to present some testimonials in this sense.

Most of the people who affirmed that they had no any remarkable experience during/regarding the prayer practice, following an exhortation that I found at Saint Theophan the Recluse: “If you can, hide as much as possible your acts of spiritual life, neither in sight, nor in conversation, nor in

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other circumstances, to discover them, but to work as simple as possible” [27].

Some people gave an affirmative answer, without exemplification (14 respondents/ 29.17%) or in a vague way (6 persons/ 12.5%).

There are also respondents who shared their experiences with us in detail, in a very expressive and interesting way (17 respondents/ 35.42%). For instance, O.A. told us that she used to pray in front of a Christian icon of Virgin Mary (at home, in a small town) in order to succeed engaging as teacher in a good school in Bucharest, and that, after this thing happened, she discovered in the secretariat of that school an identical icon to hers.

N.O.A. (51 years old) told us after praying, she no longer feels the worldly need to eat, feeling “fulfilled” until the evening.

In her childhood, V.M. (42 years old) had a kind of covenant with the Divinity and what prayed was fulfilled, as long as no one knew about this pact. When she “betrayed”, it never happened.

D.M. (40 years old) told us she suffered a lot of complicated surgery and during his prayers, she heard voices encouraging her, feeling close to God and the Virgin Mary.

S.N. (62 years old) told us he has survived a serious accident due to prayer.

After a year of inactivity, L.M.V. (63 years old) was treated by the “writer’s cramp”, an incurable disease due to prayer.

R.R. (26 years old) and P.L. (57 years old) solve different problems only with the power of collective prayer.

Those who share their remarkable experiences of prayer practice and in a persuasive manner are mostly among the respondents who believe in a transcendent God, some of them describing ”Him” a little bit different from our definition (item 4. a), but also that believe in an immanent God, and even in both transcendent and

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immanent (!).

The writing style of all respondents that shared with us their experiences demonstrates good skills and abilities in communication, correctness and even artistic talent (in telling the stories). The accuracy of writing has often been related to the truth expressed, which is why we believe in the authenticity of the answers formulated by the respondents, even though they sometimes refer to unusual facts.

V. CONCLUSIONS

There is a great variety of experiences regarding the practice of prayer. They are neither conditioned by religion nor by the respondents’ opinion / perspective on God. The first research hypothesis (It is assumed that people that usually pray to God are in a particular relation with Him/ Her) is validated, and the second one (It is supposed that people who pray every day/almost daily strongly believe either in a transcendent God or in an immanent God) is only partially validated, because we identify some undecided subjects, two of them believing in God both transcendent and immanent. The third hypothesis (There is a different relationship with the self when people believe in a transcendent God vs. in an immanent God) was not validated in our research, while the fourth hypothesis has been validated in most cases.

While Orthodox people are reluctant to confess their faith and religious practices, Seventh-day Adventists are eager to share both beliefs and experiences.

We believe that an extensive research with the same objectives as we have proposed should bring out more relevant results if the subjects would show more openness in answering.

REFERENCES h t t p : / / w w w. m e t e c k . o r g / g o d . h t m l (17.02.2017) [2] Stăniloae, Dumitru. Rugăciunea lui Iisus și experiența Duhului Sfânt [The Jesus’ Prayer and the experience of the Holy Spirit], in Romanian by Maria-Cornelia Ică jr., Sibiu: Ed. Deisis, 2003, p. 29.

[3] Idem [4] Sfântul Teofan Zăvorâtul [Saint Theophan the Recluse], Rugăciunea [The Prayer] (in Romanian translated by Florentina Cristea), Ed. Egumenița, Galați, Ed. Cartea Ortodoxă, Alexandria, 2008, p. 5 [5] Stăniloae, Dumitru, The Jesus’ Prayer and experience of the Holy Spirit, p. 42.

[6] Ibidem, p. 31.

[7] Filipescu, Hrisostom (ieromonah). Puţine cuvinte, multă iubire, Iaşi: Ed. Pim, 2013, p.

141 [8] Ibidem, p. 241.

[9] Ibidem, p. 151-152.

[10] Braden, Gregg. Efectul Isaia [Isaiah Effect], in Romanian by Monica Vișan, București: Ed. For You, 2006, pp. 170-171.

[11] Gregg, Braden. Secrets of the Lost Mode of Prayer [12] Isaac Sirul, Sfântul [Isaac of Nineveh/ Saint Isaac the Syrian], Cuvinte despre nevoință, Bacău: Ed. Bunavestire, 1997, p. 154.

[13] apud http://www.orthodoxprayer.org/ Articles_files/Isaac-On%20Prayer.html (27.03.2017).

[14] Osho. Omul care iubea pescărușii [The Man Who Loved Seagulls], in Romanian by Cristian Hanu, Brașov: Ed. Mix, 2006, pp.

21-22.

[15] Ibidem, p. 23.

[16] Ibidem, p. 24.

[17] Ibidem, p. 25.

[18] Idem.

[19] Idem.

[20] Idem.

[21] Dumitru Stăniloae, Rugăciunea lui Iisus și experiența Duhului Sfânt, transl. in Romanian

by Maria-Cornelia Ică jr., Sibiu: Ed. Deisis, [1]

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2003, p. 36 Ibidem, p. 68.

[23] Ibidem, p. 69.

[24] Sfântul Teofan Zăvorâtul [Saint Theophan the Recluse], Rugăciunea [The Prayer] (in Romanian translated by Florentina Cristea), Galați: Ed. Egumenița, Alexandria: Ed. Cartea Ortodoxă, 2008, p. 76.

[25] ibidem, p. 101 [26] https://explorable.com/case-study-researchdesign [27] Teofan Zăvorâtul, Sfântul [Saint Theophan the Recluse], Rugăciunea [The Prayer] (in Romanian translated by Florentina Cristea), Galați: Ed. Egumenița, Alexandria: Ed. Cartea Ortodoxă, 2008, p. 23 [22]

single author and more than 60 articles.

Second author, Loredana Gabi Ciobănescu Alexe is born in Tulcea City on 4th of August 1977.

She graduated Pedagogical High School in Tulcea (1997) and Faculty of Letters from Ovidius University of Constanța (2004).

She is teacher at Gingerbread House Kindergarden in Constanta City.

Biography First author, Larisa-Ileana Casangiu is born on 26th of December, 1973, in Curtea de Argeș city (Romania).

She graduate Faculty of Letters from Ovidius University of Constanța (1997) and has a PhD in the field of Philology Cum laude (from University of Bucharest, 2002).

Larisa Ileana Casangiu teaches in University since 1999 and is Associated Professor since 2012. She published more than 10 books as

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ANNEXES A. Questionnaire regarding the relationship with yourself when praying to a transcendent God and to an immanent God

Initials:…………

Age:…. years Sex …M / F…..

Occupation: ……………

Religion/ Confession ……………….

Specification: multiple responses are allowed!

1. Do you pray (almost) every day? …………

4. In your opinion, God is: a) A male authority omnipotent, omniscient, governing everything b) A part of creation (which He/She created) c) another situation: ……………………

5. Have you had any remarkable experience that you can share, related to the practice of prayer? …… …………………….

2. What kind of prayer do you say (known / traditional, made by your own etc.)? a) known / traditional/ (already formulated / from religious books (e.g..: Our Father) b) Modern like “mantras” c) formulated personally (application, thanksgiving, of praise, ...) d) combined: ……………………… e) another situation: ……………

3. When you pray, whose aspect focus on?... a) divinity b) myself / my inside (self) c) universe d) feeling e) language f) another situation:……………………

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Thank you very much for the answer!

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This paper was presented in the

Bridging Science and Religion together: SELF - SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS. (DIALOGO-CONF 2017 SSC)

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held online, on the Journal’s website, from May 19 - 26, 2017

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The Self-Knowledge and the Phenomenon of Estrangement/Alienation of the Human in Gnosticism Lecturer Stelian MANOLACHE, PhD Department of Theology Ovidius University of Constanta, Constanta, Romania

ARTICLE INFO

ABSTRACT

Article history: Received 20 April 2017 Received in revised form 05 May Accepted 15 May 2017 Available online 30 May 2017 doi: 10.18638/dialogo.2017.3.2.2

In the dawns of the new millennium, in a world of ideas continuously moving, dominated by the super-eminence of producing material goods, in a context of a new postmodern globalising society, which presents a hedonist mercantile pseudospirituality and is based on the dimensions of Profit, Eros and Consume, the humanity is confronted with a challenge without precedent, due to the nihilist vision on the world, but also due to the reduction of the human being to the perspective of the economical quality, object or simple merchandise. In the context of these existentialist aspects of the postmodern neo-gnostic man, starting from the phenomenon of self-alienation/ estrangement, the world has come to the point where the human is seen reduced only from the civilizational-materialist perspective of the poverty or of the well-being. In this context, from the generous thematic offered by the title of this year symposium in Constanţa – The Ego – Self and Constientia – The Dialogue between neurosurgery/ neurotheology[1], psychology/psychotherapy[2]and theology, we chose as for our research the theme of estrangement/ alienation of the Self in the perspective of the gnostic literature. This old literature contains the theme of the metaphysical alienation of the soul, a theme that will paradoxically culminate, theoretically and practically, in a system that is entirely hostile to the metaphysics.

Keywords: self-knowledge; alienation; Gnosticism; soul; cultural philosophical-religious values;

© 2014 RCDST. All rights reserved.

I. INTRODUCTION

As a first manifestation of subjectivity in literature, the gnostic creation aims to be self-intuitive, as reflexive centre of the discourse, through a complete mode of

relating to the world/society and culture, where the subjective Ego gains, for the first time in literature, the privilege of citadel in the world of the letters. In other words, the Soul/Pneuma and the Self-knowledge/ Rationality become organisational centres

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for a new representative vision, proposed by the gnosis as answer to the spiritual and the material alienation of the world reality and the people of those times. This vision starts from a symbolic language[3]through the means/call of vocabulary words, words which are converted, where the gnostic Ego is discovered and built starting from certain images and symbols. Through a vocabulary unexplored at those times, which took the form of the words-metaphor – body/ prison, spark/soul, celestial marriage/nuptial room – filled with a rich symbolic cultural signification, like gems and seal-words - the equivalent of a free pass through the world of the Archons to the world of Pleroma –, the gnostic man enters in relation not only with what was around, but with the Self, through his soul considered to be of divine origins, but fallen into the tenebrous of the materiality: “The soul wanders in a labyrinth, distressed, without the possibility to come out…trying to avoid the bitter chaos and not knowing where to go. For him [sparksoul], send me, Father! Possessing the seals, I will descent. I will pass above all Eons, [these are the Archons, creation of the Kenoma of the bad demiurge], I will reveal all the mysteries, and I will point to the faces of the Gods. I will reveal the mysteries of the holy path, calling it knowledge’’ (Hippolytus, Refutation V, 10, 2)[4].In fact, the gnostic man will interiorise and take from an entire culture and society of that time a certain psycho-social- religious anxietal experience, embodied in the wandering/the alienation of the soul for the return to origins, the Pleroma. This alienating behaviour will fold (de)constructive on the facet of the gnostic Self, as a dominant psychic feature, highlighting a certain attitude manifested in a psychological-religious process, starting from the anxiety the soul and the body are subject to, in a society that he doesn’t understand, reaching to detest it.

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II. Reasons and favourable conditions forming the alienating Gnostic thinking

Through the symbolism of the theologicalphilosophical language, through the new myths that are proposes, through the connected powerful symbols and metaphors that are promoted, through themes as Stanger into the world, Sleep, Awakening, Travel to Pleroma and the Celestial marriage, the gnosis became a point of interest for psychologists, such as the psychology of Carl Gustav Jung, of the philosophy through Hans Jonas, of the History of Religions, through Mircea Eliade and I.P.Culianu and theology through Henry Charles Puech, Georges MacRae and Hierotheos Vlachos.

All these researchers identified the major problems of the alienation of the man, as a result of a meeting between the Eastern and Western culture and civilisation during the first Christian century, where the East preferred the myth, as a natural continuation of the Revelation, and the West tended to rationalize it. Due to this collision, all the spiritual, cultural and civilizational values belonging to the Iranians, Greeks, Jews and Christians, intertwined in the cultural philosophical-religious cupel of the Late Antiquity, values that will remain under the pacifying umbrella of the Imperial Rome. The mythological vocation was highlighted in the East and the rational vocation in the West; the first opposed the dynamism to the humanism, to the Being/Divinity through a phenomenon of abstractization and rational conceptualisation of the myth, while the other opposes the Revelation of the Being/ Divinity to the humanism through a passive phenomenon of mythologizing and metaphorizing the rational truths. Each from this cultures expressed above, beyond their own philosophical, cosmological and anthropological conceptions, the profound experiences of their religious identity beliefs.

Thus, the first Christian century - and the late Antiquity, in general - stay under the sign of

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the great spiritual metamorphoses of the Hellenised Orient and under the sign of an orientalised Hellenism, which will become philosophical vocation of the dynamic Logos/Reason of Ancient Hellas and the second one through the pathos of his oriental religiosity, cultural ingredients of a new socio-political-religious society, considered to be syncretic[5].Through the multiplication of the reciprocal exchange – in the context created by e real collision of civilisation[6], anticipating the globalising contemporary collision - a generalised syncretism will appear in a short time. Its influence was felt strongly from Rome to Jerusalem, from Athens to Alexandria in Egypt, on a base created by the Iranian metaphysical dualism, Platonism, Stoicism and the rabbinic speculation. The generalisation of the syncretism will underline, beyond the perturbation of the anthropological relations as individual/ citizen, psychological gnosis/pistis, pneuma/ psyche, two signs as symptoms for a future psycho – somatic – anthropological crisis by highlighting that: 1. The philosophies and the religions of those times looked tired and disappointed in their ideal and achievements, generating an existential despair; 2. This aspect was correlated with the desire for a spiritual renewal, even a tragic one, but with the capacity to give meaning to life/telos, and less giving pleasure/eros and will of political power[7]. In these circumstances, the gnostic man will accuse a crisis of disorientation and uprooting, by living in an atmosphere of generalised existential tensions[8], received mostly in the fields of gnoseology, ontology, anthropology and axiology. The reaction of the gnostic man will be proportional with the cultural disruption that will be dramatically lived.

Thus, the gnosis will be, in its essence, an attempt to deny[9],to (de)construct the Christianity and the Hellenism, to subordinate their founding pillars to the primacy of the gnostic Revelation of the Eon, leading to a

delivering knowledge, globalising the accumulations of the Greek philosophy and also the Christian Idea of Logos[10]. In this situation, the gnosis, seen as a major experience of the Self, is an attempt to answer to the serious existential interrogations of the time, where “the word philosophy affirms and adopts revelations of faith, and the religious truth is enriched with rational philosophical concepts’’[11]. The equation knowledge-deliverance defines the best, in the above presented context, the gnostic myth, the knowledge becoming a pretext for salvation, the equivalent of deliverance, and ensuring the connection between theology, cosmogony and eschatology. The main revelation of this gnostic knowledge is the existence of an original and absolute duality, governing the world through an eonic bridge – being born through emanation – the relation between God and humans. Extramundane, absolutely transcend, the gnostic God is accessible only in terms of negative – apophatic knowledge, a world understood differently from the Christian thinking, world left at the hand of the malefic inferior divinities, sometimes limited and ignorant. The gnostic anti-cosmism is reflected in a negative valorisation of the entire world, of the entire cosmos, whose architecture, even to an astral level, has a negative significance for the human. The celestial stars are homes for the demonic planetary gods, the archons, who are responsible of the world destiny, governing through the natural law and the Mosaic Law. Both laws are destined, eventually, to keep the humans as slaves of the archons and the astral determinism plays an important role in the destiny of each human being. The gnostic anthropology reflects, as the entire creation does, the same fundamental dualism. The human is in the same time a mundane and an extramundane reality, a mixture of light and darkness, good and bed, belonging to this world through his body and soul, the last

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carrying inside pneuma or nous, the metaphorical form of the spark fallen into materiality. The man is destined for the gnostic knowledge, which is, in fact, a doctrine of deliverance, where the dualist essence of his own condition is revealed, showing him, in the same time, the modality to regain his lost state. This gnostic knowledge may be revealed by one or more transcendent saviours, whose mission starts to the creation of the world and continues during history, until the eschatological perfection.

This gnostic knowledge requires a specific morality, reflecting the anti-cosmism specific to the system, meaning the negation by all means – Ascetism or libertinage – of the natural and social laws – anti-Nomism – to obtain the liberation from flesh and materiality of the pneumatic man and, in the end, of the divine spark, prisoner inside him.

The new gnostic vision will benefit of a certain mark to make objective the realisation, a mark that is nothing else than the Selfknowledge, worshiped beyond any limit/ sacralised. It starts from an interior choice, which is the equivalent of Self-knowledge, which will reveal to the gnostic man, through the de-construction/ dissolution of the concept of Cosmos – a reality previously under the signs of order and beauty – a new path of deliverance and immortality[12], through the inner Self with the divine of the Pleroma, which epiphanizes/ manifests/ discover in Salvator Salvatus[13]or saved Saviour. It is necessary to observe in this context that, the term of knowledge will have a totally different meaning that those of cognitive process, accredited by the Greek philosophy. It is not a simple intellectual knowledge, it is rather a pseudo-saving teaching situated to the limit between philosophy and religion[14], which operates with myths and maintains several cultic forms, a fact that include it in the religious category, but which, in time, gives a special importance to the intellectual speculation, even if this is not resolved in the mythological

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register. It is a parasitical and mutant religious knowledge[15]of the ultimate and unrecognisable realities inside, as the concepts of soul/Self and God. It is a paradox which shows the essence of the Revelation, its characteristics of sacred doctrine communicated to the chosen/predestined man, called to be delivered through a special charismatic channel. In its essence, the gnostic thinking starts from a reverse exegesis of the Gospel, where the Creator and the Providential God leave space to an ontological duality irreconcilable with God Transcendent – Demiurge, the original sin leave space for the antecedent, and the harmonic world to the bad one. In these conditions, the gnostic thinking, as self-knowledge will not be only extra-mundane and transcendent, but will be, in the same time, anti-mundane, accessible only in the terms of a negative apophatic knowledge. For the Christian religion, the Fall and the Suffering are the result of the Sin and of the rupture in the Dialogue of the human with the Divinity, the equivalent of a disorientation and of the weakening of the listening attention of the man (John 5:27).

For the gnostic thinking, the fall into the world and the suffering are the results of a crisis inside the divine. This will be concretised in a material plan due to the actions of the bad Demiurge, which brings to life the Aeons of Ignorance, Lack of knowledge or Oblivion, making the man to forget who is he and where he comes from. A similar rupture is produced to the human level between body and soul, a rupture later extended to the level human-cosmos; the gnostic anthropology reflects the same fundamental dualism and the same interior conflictual state. The man does not feel, in these conditions, at home in the world whose rationality is perceived as hostile and fearful.

This fundamental experience, passionately lived by the human, takes him out of the happy cohabitation with the nature and the cosmos, by proclaiming the end of Pantheism and of the rebound to an archaic mythological

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mentality with anti-divine characters, oppressive to the humans. Still, in its assemble, the gnostic vision is not pessimist, nor optimist, but eschatological: if the world is bad due to the Demiurge – the creator of Kenoma’s world, there is beyond a good world created by the Good God of Pleroma; if the human is prisoner in materiality, there is salvation and a saviour. In this eschatological tension, in the polarity between the world and the human, the gnostic cosmos will gain its religious character of knowledge[16]. The effect of this action is the deliverance, taking, through the expression of the forms of gnosis, a double theoretical and practical aspect[17].

If, through the content of the theoretical forms mirrored in the soteriological gnostic myth, the gnosis/ knowledge is the one giving the bond of the system through the new vocabulary of the language, connecting the theology, the cosmology and the eschatology, through the practical aspect, the gnosis/Self-knowledge is in contact with the symbolic world of the sacraments[18]. To these ads up the techniques for the decryption and the understanding of several names and passwords[19] used in the ascension of the Soul/Pneuma to the Divine Pleroma, after meeting several Bas Powers of the Archons, trying to stop the soul in the bad world of Kenoma.

III. The Gnostic ego and the Self-

knowledge

In the last period of the Antiquity, the human, seen as individual – based on the philosophical and religious development of Athens, and citizen – based on the Roman vision on the world – feels not only (de) sacralised, but also disrupted from his naturalpersonal and cultural-religious identity.

In a context marked by the attempts more and more radical of rationalising the biblical Revelations, through the reduction of the paradoxical logics of personalist and

antinomical type of the Christian theology, to the formal mechanisms of logics of the human intellect, the gnostic rationalism ends in a archaic-oriental mythology attitude, which has a nihilist and destructive attitude toward existence. Forced to live in this world, the gnostic man, suffocated as in prison and far from feeling the manifestation of the Real God, will carry the stigmata of the antecedent sin, of a crisis to the level of divinity appeared in illo tempore and for which is not responsible the man. Unless the Greeks and the Christians, when speaking about God and the world, connect the two realities through the conjunction and, the gnostic opposes the world of God and the world, making dissociation through the conjunction or, seeing them as two autonomous and irreconcilable ontological realities. Thus, the gnostic thinking will give to the human an alienated identity equivalent to a pseudoidentity, leading him to negate life and its meaning, generating despair and existential fear[20]. This vision will manifest gradually by passing from the pseudo-morphs of the political-philosophical-religious utopic ideas to the spiritual alienated pato-morphs of the gnostic world, equivalent with a loss of the ultimate meaning of life. Seen and described with a gnostic language as emptiness, Theodot (2nd century) uses the concept of seed of light of Jesus the Logos, our Light (Frag. Theodot, 35:1) and writes that the gnostic alienation is generated by the religious intervention “of God (Demiurge) descending and establishing new paths [of knowledge] and deliverance, beyond the primordial Revelation existing before” (Frag. Theodot 74:12)[21]. The state of the gnostic man is seen as a nightmare, a heavy sleep, disturbed by contradictory dreams presented in the gnostic literature with a rare psychological finesse: “They never knew the Father, because they never saw it […] as if, when asleep, we are in the middle of a nightmare, we run in a direction, incapable of escaping the one following us or we are hit

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by another in a fight or fall from somewhere high, swept by the air, without having wings.

Sometimes we have the impression that we are killed, without being followed, or the neighbour is killing us and the blood covers us until we wake up. We see nothing in the middle of this turbulence, because these things mean nothing. Those rejecting the knowledge are like that, appreciating that the knowledge does not mean anything. Anyway, they do not consider anything else as real.

They behave like in dreams […]; this is the behaviour of a person without knowledge; as asleep. In exchange, the one with knowledge is like an awaken person. Blessed the one who opened the eyes of the blind man” (NHI 28, 32 – 30, 15). In these circumstances, the gnostic work The Gospel of Truth describes Jesus as a Saviour Aeon, among others Aeons, The One that opened the eyes of the blind man: “Jesus Christ projected the light upon those in darkness, due to the Oblivion. He illuminated them, showed them the Path: this Path is the Truth […]; through Him, the people discovered the Father inside them”(NH I, 3, 18, 15 – 22). Due to the divine spark of the soul, even if buried in materiality, the gnostic becomes conscious of him, discovering that he is predestined for deliverance, as a divine gift reserved for the Chosen Ones, granting the access to God and the reintegration in God: “The living Word of the life, written in the thought and in the mind of the Father appeared in their heart […]; the living ones mentioned in the Book are destined for knowledge, they know each other, recognising themselves from the Father and going back to Him” (NH I, 3, 9, 34, 21, 1 – 3).To the coming of the Aeon Jesus Christ, the materiality will disappear and the existential emptiness will be filled with pleroma: “Where there is envy, there is emptiness, but, where unity is, there is perfection. When the Father will be known, the emptiness will disappear [...]; as the Darkness disappeared when the Light came, so the emptiness will become plenitude. From that moment, the Kingdom

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of appearances will no longer exist, because it will be erased by the harmony of the unity” (NH I, 24, 25, 6)[22].In the same time, through Self-knowledge, discovered by the Aeon Jesus Christ, the gates of the Kingdom of Truth/Pleroma are opened: “The kingdom is inside you and not outside you. If you know yourselves, you will be known and you will know that you are the sons of the living Father. But, if you don’t know yourselves, you are poor and the poorness is you” (Gospel of Thomas, 3, NH II, 2). From a soteriological perspective, the gnostic knowledge will be different from the knowledge proposed by Christianity. Unlike faith – pistis, the gnosis aims the salvation through a pure rational knowledge, characterised by a certain way of being, and by a particular perspective of becoming, resulting an original vision on the destiny of the humanity and of the world.

Long before Martin Heidegger or Jean-Paul Sartre raising the problem of the existential crisis in writings as Sein und Zeit and Letter el le Neant, the gnostic man discovered and experienced the drama of estrangement, transforming him into a prisoner of the existential despair. He lost the consciousness of carrying the image of his Creator with all that means for the human condition, limited to his own image, ascending only to the level of an estranged person. The revelation communicated by the angel Youel, described in Allogenes, reflects this state: “Youel says: We cannot hear all these words, oh, Allogenes.

You were given a bigger power from the Father of All [...] so you may discover what is hard to understand and understand what is hard to know for the majority, to ascend again to the One that is yours”. The content of the revelations and the participation to knowledge transform the initiated one in a chosen one, because “…I was returning to myself, contemplating the light around me and the good inside me. I become God, says Allogenes” (NH XI, 3). The gnostic ego tries to (re)integrate in Pleroma, identifying himself with certain Self-consciousness, containing

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not only knowledge, but conscious and unconscious aptitudes toward the material and spiritual values. In the same time, seen as an organiser of knowledge and regulator of behaviour, the gnostic will start the search for Self from a powerful emotional base[23], reflected completely by the writing The Gospel of Truth (NH I, 3), dated around 350: “The unity searched the Totality it came from, but the Totality was inside it.

The ignorance of the Father provoked fear and the fear grew as the fog, so no one was able to see. The error became stronger, it formed its own materiality in emptiness, not knowing the Truth; it forms a beautiful creature, but an unreal one […] Uprooted, the Error remained in fog […].Meanwhile, its author produced fear and oblivion for seducing the ones in the middle and make them prisoners.

The oblivion appeared because the Father was not known, but, when he will be known, Oblivion will no longer exist” (NH I, 3, 17, 30, 1 – 7).

IV. Conclusions

The gnostic man was, first of all, an inquisitor; he was not a searcher limited to observe that the philosophies and the religions of its era lost, partially, their attractiveness and prestige; he searched for solutions for the major interrogations of the human nature.

Denying the sustainability and the value of the theological-philosophical systems around him, he confronted the immediate specter of alienation. Lacking the support of the divinity, accusing the incapacity if the proposed soteriological solutions and convinced of the incompleteness or even of the lack of authenticity of the ontologies in use, the gnostic man is a stranger in relation to the human world – the society and the materiality – the Cosmos. He is a stranger because he feels dominated by a world he cannot explain and, lacking any “solution,” he may not leave it. The gnostic man is

constrained to live the acute drama of estrangement, to experience the tragically loss of the normal state of communion – koinonia with the fellow beings and with God. All the theological, ontological, cosmological and soteriological interrogations have no answer and the insolvable problems of the evil, death of the meaning of life will profoundly affect the existence of the gnostic man, preoccupied to understand: “what we were, what we became, the place we’ve been, the place we are in, the path to follow, the one that once liberated us, the real birth and the real rebirth”[24]. In these circumstances, the gnostic man will accuse first of all a cognitive deficit, which, besides preventing him to understand his place in the human world and in the universe, will prevent him to understand his own Self.

From this presumed understanding of the authentic identity of the Self, the gnostic systems will start building solutions for overcoming the alienation; placing the Self in direct connection with the divinity, the Gnosticism will find an answer characterised by an amazing simplicity to any general human fear; learning that the salvation follows to the process of rediscovering the authentic condition of the soul through the reintegration in Pleroma, the gnostic systems will appease the consciousness marked by the existential fears, explaining the world, localising the origins and the modalities of manifestations of the evil and, especially, giving meaning to life, even if it is negative in it’s essence.

References [1]

[2]

[3]

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Acad.

Constantin Bălăceanu-Stolnici, Magdalena Berescu, Gândirea magică, geneză şi evoluţie, Bucureşti: ed. Nemira, 2009, p. 15 Hierotheos Vlachos, Mitropolit de Nafpatkos, Psihologia existenţialistă şi psihoterapia ortodoxă, Iaşi: Ed. Doxologia, 2011 Alexandru Muşină, Eseu asupra poeziei

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moderne, Iasi: ed.Cartier, 1997, p. 123-190 Madeleine Scopello, Gnostici, Paris: ed Cerf, 1991, p. 54 [5] Hans Jonas, Religia gnostică. Mesajul unui Dumnezeu înstrăinat şi începuturile creştinismului, Boston: ed. Beacon Press, 2003, pp. 4-19 [6] Samuel Huntington, Ciocnirea Civilizaţiilor, trad. Radu Carp, Bucureşti: Ed. Antet, 2007 [7] Hierotheos Vlachos, Mitropolit de Nafpaktos, Psihologia existenţialistă şi psihoterapia ortodoxă, p. 32-35 [8] Claudio MORESCHINI, Istoria filosofiei patristice, Iaşi: ed. Polirom, 2009, p. 37.

[9] Henry Charles PUECH, Enquêtede la gnose, Paris: ed. Gallimard, 1978, p.186.

[10] Lucian GROZEA, Gnoza şi jocurile fiinţei în gnoza valentiniană orientală, Bucureşti: ed.

Paideia, 2001 p. 153.

[11] Stylianos Papadopulous, Patrologie, Vol. II, Bucureşti: ed. Bizantină, 2006, [12] Stelian MANOLACHE, Dualismul gnostic şi maniheic din perspectivă teologică, Braşov: ed. Paralela 45, 2000, p.41.

[13] Lucian GROZEA, op.cit., p. 141.

[14] Stelian MANOLACHE, op.cit., p. 12.

[15] Hans JONAS, Gnosis, 1978, p. 33. Apud., Stelian Manolache, p. 12.

[16] Hans JONAS, La religion gnostique. Le message du dieu étranger et les débuts du christianisme, trad. de l’anglais par Louis Evrard, Paris: Flammarion, p. 342.

[17] I. P. CULIANU, Gnosticism şi gândire modernă: Hans Jonas, Iaşi: ed. Polirom, 2006, p. 40.

[18] J.M. SEVRIN, “Les rites et la gnose, d’après quelques textes gnostiques coptes”, in Gnosticisme et monde hellénistique, Louvainla-Neuve, p. 440.

[19] Madeleine SCOPELLO, Les Gnostiques, Paris: CERF, 1991, p.91.

[20] The Manichean Psalms, especially the Psalm CCXLVI, highlight this state: From my entrance in the dark, I had to drink water, What I was bitter, bearing a burden that was not mine / beasts that surrounded me, full of anger rose against me, I was like a sheep without [4]

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shepherd to catch me. / I was in the midst of enemies, and beasts of burden surrounded me.

My burden that was wearing, was the Lord and power! / Can you liberate me form this deep abyss, from dark abyss that is kneading, where nothing is but torture / death and wound up, where even a friend, or savior is not? / Matter and her sons, among whom I was torn, burned me and a likeness apparent, to us, they gave me.(translation by Stelian Manolache).

[21] Lucian Grozea, op. cit., p. 151 [22] Madeleine Scopello, op. cit., p. 30.

[23] Madeleine Scopello, Gnostici, Paris: ed.

CERF, 1991, p. 29 [24] Stephan A. Hoeller, Gnosticismul. O nouă concepţie asupra străvechii tradiţii a cunoaşterii eului interior, Bucureşti: Editura Saeculum I.O., 2003, p. 19.

Bibliography [1]

[2]

[3] [4]

[5]

[6] [7]

[8]

[9]

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Bible, Editura Institutului Biblic şi de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe Române, Bucureşti, 2006, Bălăceanu-Stolnici, Acad.

Constantin, Magdalena Berescu, Gândirea magică, geneză şi evoluţie, ed. Nemira, Bucureşti, 2009, Culianu, Ioan Petru, Gnosticism şi gândire modernă: Hans Jonas, ed. Polirom, Iaşi, 2006, Grozea, Lucian, Gnoza şi jocurile fiinţei în gnoza valentiniană orientală, ed. Paideia, Bucureşti, 2001 Hoeller, Stephan, A., Gnosticismul. O nouă concepţie asupra străvechii tradiţii a cunoaşterii eului interior, Bucureşti, Editura Saeculum I.O., Bucureşti, 2003, Huntington, Samuel, Ciocnirea Civilizaţiilor, trad. Radu Carp, Ed. Antet, Bucureşti, 2007 Jonas, Hans, La religion gnostique. Le message du dieu étranger et les débuts du christianisme, trad. de l’anglais par Louis Evrard, Flammarion, Paris, Jonas, Hans, Religia gnostică. Mesajul unui Dumnezeu înstrăinat şi începuturile creştinismului, ed. Beacon Press, Boston, 2003, Manolache, Stelian, Dualismul gnostic şi maniheic din perspectivă teologică, ed.

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Paralela 45, Braşov, 2000, Moreschini, Claudio, Istoria filosofiei patristice, ed. Polirom, Iaşi, 2009, [11] Muşină, Alexandru, Eseu asupra poeziei moderne, ed.Cartier, Iasi, 1997, [12] Papadopulous, Stylianos, Patrologie, Vol. II ed. Bizantină, Bucureşti, 2006, [13] Puech, Henry Charles, En quête de la gnose, ed. Gallimard, Paris, 1978, [14] Scopello, Madeleine, Les Gnostiques, ed Cerf, Paris, 1991, [15] Sevrin, J. M. Les rites et la gnose, d’après quelques textes gnostiques coptes, în ,,Gnosticisme et monde hellénistique”, Louvain-la-Neuve, [16] Vlachos, Hierotheos Mitropolit de Nafpatkos, Psihologia existenţialistă şi psihoterapia ortodoxă, Ed. Doxologia, Iaşi, 2011 [10]

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This paper was presented in the

Bridging Science and Religion together: SELF - SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS. (DIALOGO-CONF 2017 SSC)

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Self-image and place of control 1. Mircea Adrian Marica – PhD Assoc. Professor

2. Mariana Floricica Călin – PhD Lecturer

Department of Psychology and Social Work Ovidius University of Constanta Constanta, Romania

Department of Psychology and Social Work Ovidius University of Constanta Constanta, Romania

ARTICLE INFO Article history: Received 25 April 2017 Received in revised form 10 May Accepted 15 May 2017 Available online 30 May 2017 doi: 10.18638/dialogo.2017.3.2.3

Keywords: self; self-image; self-esteem; place of control;

ABSTRACT

The problematic of the self has a long history, being analyzed in the space of philosophical rationality since the Greek antiquity, being directed by the Socratic imperative of self-knowledge. Together with the establishment and development of social psychology, the last century, the researches on self-meet a special amplification.

In the last decades, the thematic of self and its dimensions met a remarkable effervescent theoretics. The psychological researches extended on self-consciousness, self-esteem, self-handicapping, self-efficacy, self-improvement, self-enhancement, self-monitoring, self-focusing, self-disclosure, self-verification, etc. Our research aims to investigate the correlations that exist between the self-esteem and place of control, having in view certain variables such as age, sex, the level of studies graduated. The results obtained confirm in a great extent other researches mentioned in the paper. © 2014 RCDST. All rights reserved.

I. INTRODUCTION

The problematics of the self, born in the ancient philosophy, knew a special development together with the establishment of scientific psychology.

In the specialized Romanian literature the equivalent of self from the American literature was the ego for a while. The psychologist, Mielu Zlate [1] distinguishes four stages of the evolution of the concept of ego: the psycho - philosophical stage, which lasts until 1900, being represented by philosophers H. Bergson in Europe and W. James in America, the psychoanalytical

and interactional stage, between 1900 and 1940, represented by S. Freud, respectively G.H. Mead, the autonomous and humanist stage, between 1940-1980, represented by what was called ”ego psychology” (H. Hartman, R.M. Loewenstein and E. Kris) and ”the humanist psychology” (A.H. Maslow, C. Rogers) and, in the end, the psychosocial stage, after the years 80. In the last stage, the social psychology generates an extraordinary expansion of the researches regarding the self.

Among the constructs that relate to the self, the self-image, self-esteem,

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and self-perception occupy a prominent place entering the collective imaginary as collocations that relate to the common language.

The scientific approach to the selfimage knows the same analytical diversity, sometimes being treated as a psychodynamic process, another time from cognitive-behavioral perspective in terms of coping strategies, either from the standpoint of the humanist psychology, being investigated its experimental sizes, or from the perspective of social psychology, in terms of attitudes [2].

Although it is one the fundamental dimension of personality, self-image is a discreet, impalpable phenomenon, we are not always aware of. The self, as self-image, is gradually clarified, in the matrix of the relation with the other significances [3], which represent ”the mirror of self” [4], a crucial role being played by parental love [5], by social comparison [6] and the statusroles held [7], by the internalization and modeling of the social plan and based on the psychological experiences lived, remaining a personal construct based on a certain culture [8], being in permanent movement, which equally involves cognitive, affective and axiological aspects [9].

The self-image can be seen as a central chart of the self, relatively constant, which defines its identity, including not only a vision about ”who I am,” but also one about ”whom I want to be” and ”who I should be” [10].

Self-esteem, as a result of self-image, designates an evaluative component of the self, representing the general feeling of self-value. The first theory on self-esteem comes from William James [11], who defined it as aspirations of the person reporting to his accomplishments, making us careful about the relation that exists between the self-image and ideal of the ego. Coming from contemporary authors (e.g. Moretti

and Higgins [12]) it is considered that the discrepancies of the self, namely the distance between the self-image (”actual self”) and ”wanted self” is the one that gives the measure of self-appreciation/esteem.

Among the dimensions of self-esteem, some authors [13] include self-love, selfconception and self-trust. Self-love, not in the regard of narcissism, but in the regard of unconditioned acceptance and self-respect, beyond the excellences and limits, failures and personal successes is the key element.

The self-conception aims the personal opinion regarding the own qualities and defects, and self-trust refers the efficiency of the own person, ability to act efficiently in different situations of life. The balance of these elements generates an increased selfesteem.

The importance of self-esteem for a person results from the behavioral consequences of his/her levels. People with increased self-esteem have the tendency to be happier, healthier and more productive, have ”an efficiency of the self” [14], have accomplishments in their life, are perseverant in solving the difficult problems, are less conformist and have attitudes of winners. An average to increased self-esteem contributes to psychical welfare, offering a feeling of control on life situations, trust and optimism, which allow the person to handle more easily the inevitable disappointments and difficulties of life. Contrary, those with reduced self-esteem are more anxious, afraid, depressive, pessimistic, eager to avoid more difficult challenges, less efficient; they blame themselves, are unhappier, with a weaker immune system.

The mechanisms of causal self-circularity make these situations be reproduced and be focused: those with increased selfesteem have trust in themselves, mobilize and succeed, thus consolidating their selfesteem. On the contrary, those with a decreased self-esteem, having no trust that

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they can accomplish the task, they hesitate, avoid difficulties, are discouraged and prone to failure, which diminishes more their selfesteem. Though the assertions must be highlighted, as it is about a curved relation.

A decreased self-esteem has its advantages, and an increased self-esteem has its disadvantages. The persons with decreased self-esteem are more modest, more willing to listen to the opinions of the others, to appreciate them, which favors their acceptance and support from the others, and the lack of trust in their own strength may lead to a sustained work that could assure their success. On the other hand, the persons with increased self-esteem are less receptive to the opinions of the others, more arrogant and less accepted in groups, they believe that they are infallible, being prone to risky behaviors [15].

The level of self-esteem has implications on the processes of self-assignment [16], respectively on the place of control [17].

The place of control designates the source assigned by a person for the results of his situation/actions. Based on the place of control, people may distinguish among internalists, those who consider that the results of their actions are due to their own capacities, skills and efforts, and externalists, who consider the results as action of some external forces, situations, other people, fate or chance. The person with the internal place of control feel that they control their own life, have more faith in themselves, are independent, mobile more efficiently for solving the problems, achieve higher performances, while the persons with external place of control assign a higher importance to life situations, happenings, fate, have a decreased trust in their own strength, are more passive, more pessimistic and less efficient [18].

From those briefly presented above, results that fact that the level of self-esteem is to be correlated with internality of control.

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On the other hand, self-esteem should slightly increase based on the successes achieved by the respective person during the academic route, being known that self-esteem has to be always confirmed, reinvested, the initial capital being eroded due to the lack of successes (according to the financial model of self-esteem suggested

by Tice [19]). It should be investigated if age influences the two variables discussed, selfesteem and place of control.

II. OBJECTIVES

The purpose of this paper is to study the way in which the persons modify the place of control and self-esteem based on the level of studies and accumulation of life experience.

III. HYPOTHESES

1. It is presumed that there is a correlation between the level of self-esteem and place of control.

2. It is presumed that there are significant differences regarding the level of self-esteem and age variable, as well as regarding the place of control and age variable.

3. It is presumed that there are significant differences regarding the level of self-esteem and the place of control based on studies variable.

IV. METHODS/INSTRUMENTS

In order to measure self-esteem I used Rosenberg’s scale of “Self-esteem” [20], and for the identification of place of control I used the scale of Place of Control (IE-CT) drawn up by J.B. Rotter, variant adjusted by the Romanian population by S. Chelcea [21].

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V. LOT OF PARTICIPANTS

FIGURE 1. DISTRIBUTION OF THE LOT OF PARTICIPANTS BASED ON SEX, AGE AND STUDIES

For validating the hypotheses, we made the research on a lot of 81 persons. Regarding the sex variable, we notice that we have 25,93% men and 74,07% women. Under the aspect of age, we have four categories, under 20 years old we have 39,51%, with age between 20 and 29 years old there are 32,1%, in the age interval between 30-39 years old there are 17,28% of the participants and in the last category of age beyond 40 years old there were 11,11%.

Analyzing the lot of participants according to level of studies variable, we notice that we have four groups. The first group is represented by persons who are enrolled at secondary school in percentage of 39,51%. The second group is made of students in percentage of 29,63%, the third group is less represented in the lot of participants with persons who attend a master’s degree program in percentage of 6,17%, and the last group is made of persons who attend the doctoral studies or hold the title of doctor in percentage of 24,69%.

The graphical representation of data distribution may be followed in figure 1.

VI. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

For testing the hypotheses I used SPSS 20.0 variant, applying ANOVA technique for seeing if there are significant differences between the variables studied and the coefficient of Pearson correlation, in order to see if there is a correlation between the selfesteem and place of control at the persons submitted to investigation. The research was made in the period 1-20th March 2017.

Hypothesis 1. It is presumed that there is a correlation between the level of self-esteem and place of control TABLE 1. ANALYSIS OF PEARSON CORRELATION COEFFICIENT

Correlations

**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

As it is noticed, the hypothesis is confirmed as we have a slightly negative correlation, r=-0,302, significant at p=0,006 between the level of self-esteem and place of control in the regard that the persons with increased self-esteem are more internalise than those with low self-esteem.

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FIGURE 2. THE CLOUD OF DOTS BETWEEN THE PLACE OF CONTROL AND LEVEL OF SELF-ESTEEM VARIABLES

The more self-esteem has a higher level the more the place of control indicates that those persons are more internalise, more powerful regarding the life situations, have more confidence in their own strength and can handle in any situation. The individuals with high self-esteem and an internal place of control succeed more easily in life, have a better vision on the activities they develop and are more confident that they can obtain more from life.

Hypothesis 2. It is presumed that there are significant differences regarding the level of self-esteem and age variable, as well as regarding the place of control and the age variable In order to test this hypothesis I divided the lot of participants in four groups, as it follows: the first group made of pupils from secondary school with age until 20 years old, a category between 20 and 29 years old, the third group between 30 and 39 years old and the last group with persons older than 40 years old. Having in view this distribution on four groups I applied ANOVA procedure.

TABLE 2. ANALYSIS OF F OMNIBUS DATA BASED ON THE AGE VARIABLE

ANOVA

From the analysis of the data from table 2 it results that there is at least a significant

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difference between the groups represented below and the level of self esteem, as the limit of significance is p=0,043. The same thing happens for the place of control at a limit of significance of p=0,008.

FIGURE 3. GRAPHIC REPRESENTATION OF THE AVERAGES FOR SELF-ESTEEM AND PLACE OF CONTROL VARIABLES

From the analysis of Tukey multiple comparisons, we notice among what age categories these significant differences are, thus, for the level of self-esteem we have significant differences between the age category 20-29 and category 30-39 in the regard that together with aging the self-esteem of the persons investigated increases, reaching a difference of the averages of 4,643, a limit of significance p=0,036. As for the place of the control variable, we notice that the significant differences appear in the age category <20 years old and 30-39 years old at a limit of significance p=0,025.

This is due to the fact that as the

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subjects become older, they accumulate enough experiences and accomplishments that contribute to the valorization of the person, creating a better self-image and an internalization in the regard that they are more independent, they handle better the life situations, which leads to creating some differences regarding the level of self-esteem and age. The place of control is more internalized at the age category 30-39 as around this age the persons gain the maximum professional, relational and familial success. Thus they are more confident in their strength comparing to those from the category of until 20 years old.

Hypothesis 3. It is presumed that there are significant differences regarding the level of self-esteem and place of control based on the studies variable The lot of participants was divided into four groups based on the level of studies held at the moment of research. The first group made of 32 persons belonging to the secondary school level of studies, at the second group having the bachelor’s degree level of studies there were 24 persons.

The group with master’s degree studies is formed of 5 individuals, and in the fourth group made of persons with doctoral studies, there were 20 persons.

difference between the groups presented above and the level of self-esteem, as the limit of significance is p=0,009. As for the place of control, we do not have significant differences between the groups.

The significant differences between the averages of self-esteem are manifested among the persons with secondary school studies and those with doctoral studies at a limit of significance p=0,042 and among the persons with bachelor’s degree studies and those with doctoral studies at a limit of significance p=0,013 in the regard that the self-esteem increases together with the accumulation of knowledge and status obtained. The persons with doctoral studies have an average of self-esteem of 35,45 (Table no. 4). The high self-esteem gives self-confidence, they are always ready to find solutions for the problems they face with, thus succeed to better adjust to life situations. These persons can evaluate themselves more fairly and realist, to accept themselves as they are and to know their possibilities and limits.

Even if not significant from the statistic point of view, we can notice (Table 4) that together with the completion of studies, the persons investigated become more internalist (mean=10,8), more confident in their success, more powerful than those who are still in secondary school who are more externalist, less confident in their strength, hesitant, without knowing exactly what they want from life.

TABLE 3. ANALYSIS OF F OMNIBUS DATA BASED ON THE STUDIES VARIABLE

From the analysis of the data from Table 3, we notice that there is at least a significant

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TABLE 4. ANALYSIS OF START INDEXES BASED ON THE STUDIES CATEGORY

CONCLUSIONS: As anticipated, the results obtained in our research show the existence of a significant correlation between the level of self-esteem and internality variable of the place of control. Therefore, the persons with a high self-esteem tend to be more internalise in the same time, believing that they are the main source of the happenings from their life. On the other hand, it resulted in the fact that the higher academic results and the age of the subject correlate with a higher self-esteem and a place of internal control, not linear and lacking equivoque but tendential. Though we cannot definitively state the terms of causality, respectively the extent in which the high self-esteem, respectively a place of internal control favor the academic performance, respectively the extent in which the confirmed academic performance generate the increase of selfconfidence and of the feeling of self control on life, due to the mechanisms of circularity.

REFERENCES [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

[7]

[8]

Zlate, M., Ego and personality, Bucharest: Trei Press, 2004, pp. 84-120 Sîntion, F., Introduction in social psychology, Constanța: Ovidius University Press, 2007.

Mead, G.H., Mind, Self and Society, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1967.

Cooley, C.H., Human Nature and Social Order. New York: Scribner’s Press, 1964.

Hornei, K., The Neurotic Personality of Our Time, Bucharest: Iri Press, 1996.

Festinger, L, ”A theory of social comparison processes”, Human Relations, 7/ 1954, pp.

117-140 Goffman, E., Social life as a show, [The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life], Bucharest: Comunicare.ro Press, 2003.

Celcea, S., Self. Regarding the Romanian self

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in transition, in Chelcea, S. (coordinator), Psycho sociology. Theories, researches, applications, Iaşi: Polirom, 2008, pp. 377401.

[9] Iluț, P., Self and its knowledge, Iași: Polirom, 2001, p. 41 [10] Allport, G.W, Structure and development of personality [Pattern and growth in personality], Bucharest: Didactic and Pedagogical Press, 1981.

[11] James, W., The Principles of Psychology, New York: Henry Holt & Co, 1890.

[12] Moretti, M. M., & Higgins, E. T., ”Relating Self-discrepancy to self-esteem: The contribution of discrepancy beyond actualself ratings”. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 26/ 1990, 108-123.

[13] Lelord, F., Andre, C., How to love yourself in order to get along better with the others, Bucharest: Trei Press, 2003.

[14] Bandura, A., ”Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavior change”, Psychological Review, 84/ 1977, 191-215.

[15] Baumeister, R.F., ”Identity, self-concept and self-esteem: The self lost and found”, in R. Hogan, J. Johnson, S. Briggs (eds) Handbook of personality psychology, San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 1997.

[16] Corsini, R.J., Encyclopedia of Psychology, New York: A Wiley Inter-science Publication, 1994.

[17] Rotter, J.B., ”Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement”, Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, vol. 80/ 1966, no.1, whole no. 609.

[18] Organ, D & T. Bateman. Organizational Behavior – An Applied Psychological Approach. Homewood, Ill.: BPI Irwin, 1986.

[19] Tice, D. M., ”The social motivations of people with low self-esteem”. In R. Baumeister (Ed.), Self-esteem: The puzzle of low selfregard (pp. 37-53). New York: Plenum, 1993.

[20] Rosenberg, M., Society and the adolescent self-image. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965.

[21] Chelcea, S., Moțescu, M., Tighel, V, ”Place of control and emergence of rumors”, Magazine

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of Psychology, Romanian Academy Press, t.

39, nr.3/ 1993, pp. 201-215.

Biography Mircea Adrian MARICA

I have a Ph.D. degree in Philosophy, and I am mostly preoccupied with the problems met due to the interaction of philosophy with psychology, respectively psychotherapy and applied philosophy, philosophical counseling and psychological counseling, applied ethics and the psychologist’s ethics, logical thinking and psychology off thinking, philosophy of mind and cognitive psychology etc.

Mariana Floricica CALIN

I have a Ph.D. degree in Psychology and my domains of interest are neuropsychology, cognitive psychology, diagnosis and settlement of social problems and statistics.

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Research on the effectiveness of therapy used for children with grapho-motor problems applying the authorial grapho-motor questionnaire Jacek Szmalec

Kazimierz Wielki University cooperation with Special Education Unit Bydgoszcz, POLAND ARTICLE INFO

ABSTRACT

Article history: Received 25 April 2017 Received in revised form 10 May Accepted 15 May 2017 Available online 30 May 2017 doi: 10.18638/dialogo.2017.3.2.4

Proper physical development of the upper limb proceeds according to repetitive for every human sequence. Despite this fact, due to various reasons hand does not function properly. It is especially visible when it comes graphomotor problems of children aged six and seven. Causes of their problems may be identified by using one of two independent questionnaires. Conclusions based on answers delivered as a part of these questionnaires allow planning therapy. Its efficiency was examined and subjected to statistical analysis.

Keywords: upper limb development; school readiness; grapho-motor problems; identification of causes; questionnaires; therapy; therapy efficiency in statistical approach;

© 2014 RCDST. All rights reserved.

I. INTRODUCTION

‘The hand manifests a high movability and susceptibility. These features enable it to adjust to various kinds of objects shapes, which it has to grab. Hand is a unique tool used to complete tasks not only during our every-day home, professional, recreational activities, but also in music and arts, it is also used to communicate’ [4] ‘Hand enables close connection with other people through the sense of touch.

Abundance of receptors in skin of a hand surface differentiates a hand from other areas of a body. It is different due to the fact that hand may touch and may be touched at the same time’ [4] II. Upper limb development.

Hand, similar as in case of foot, grows earlier than remaining parts of an upper limb (an arm and a forearm. Development of a limb begins in 4th week of fetal life. In about

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36th day of pregnancy fingers are formed and between 25th and 28th week, hands of fetus perform instinctive grab reaction.

The most intensive growth of a hand is observed between 4th and 5th and 8th and 9th month of pregnancy, and between 9th month of intrauterine life and 1st month of postnatal life, the development of the hand slows down (Marecki 1979) The dynamics of growth and proper development of hand parameters are considerably influenced by external factors, such as: hygienic lifestyle, appropriate eating or proper social and living conditions. As a perfect biomachine the hand constitutes an irreplaceable element of our body. Complex and at the same time subtle anatomy provides huge kinematic and dynamic possibilities. Combination of wide range of moves with sensitivity makes it a perfect grabbing tool created by a nature. [7] ‘Hand and wrist contain 27 bones (19 miniature long bones and bones of the wrist).This area comprises 17 joints, including finger joints. Hand has 19 internal muscles and similar number of sinews beginning in a forearm’ [4] Fine motor skills development is contained in complete psychomotor development of a child. Because the baby is born with lowered central tension (area of torso) and proximal body parts (shoulder girdle and pelvic girdle), clearly elevated tension in distal parts. Only when the tension between distal and proximal body parts is rebalanced in the process of development, it is possible to perform free moves in a space [5] Irregularities in distribution of muscle tension may cause many development problems (e.g. smaller muscle strength, inadequate nervous and muscular answer to a strength of stimulus, muscular imbalance of specific segments of a body), and as a consequence, long lasting development disorders may contribute to occurrence of

many school difficulties e.g. irregularities of graphomotor level of child’s handwriting [3] In early stage of learning how to write motor functions may be assigned with fundamental meaning. Ability to maintain balance, coordination and fluency of moves allows a child to acquire writing, painting, drawing and cutting skills.

These abilities influence adjustment to school requirements. That is why evaluation of school readiness (despite evaluation of social, cognitive and emotional development) includes also physical development of children, translated into global mobility and manual ability [1] Motor aspect of ability to write means coordinating moves of the hand – arm, forearm, wrist and fingers.

Bone and muscle system of a child aged 6-7 is not fully developed, that is why in the beginning of learning how to write, the child may encounter difficulties with harmonizing large movements (arm, forearm) and small movements of a hand (palm, wrist, fingers) with a parallel ability to activate appropriate tensions of specific muscle groups – necessity to use a number of small, only insignificantly different movements with constant change of their directions (up, down – elevation and depression) with retaining direction of written text (from left side to the right one – progressive movement) – spatial organization and rhythmicity of handwriting (place of beginning a word, distribution in ruling, maintaining appropriate spaces and letter sizes) [6] Fine motor skills is mainly related to activities connected with usage of limbs, work of palm fingers, evaluation of their functionality, and their relation to the sense of sight. Any kind of nervous and muscular dysfunctions as a part of fine motor skills system cause irregularities in hold of writing tool, disorder of fingers coordination, palms and forearm, visual-motor coordination, speed of hand movement, aversion to

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perform manual tasks, low graphic level of handwriting, lack of precision (in relation to unadjusted muscle tension) and also high fatigability in table works and problems in performing self-service tasks [2] Many researchers have studied graphomotor problem, and basing on observations, there were prepared questionnaires to evaluate graphomotor skills of a child. One of them is graphomotor skill profile, prepared by Domagała, Mirecka. Graphomotor skill profile was designed as a tool to recognize possibilities and limitations in area of graphomotor skills among examined persons, basing on analysis of gathered samples of handwriting and character-like patterns and on observation of progress of graphomotor activities together with the measurement of its pace. The evaluation of handwriting level embraces two aspects: creations of graphomotor activities, technique of graphomotor activities. Another diagnostic tool is SOS (Systematische Opsporing Schrijfproblem – methodical recognition of handwriting problems). The tool was developed in 1999, as an answer for a demand of teachers, who had not had a sufficient, easy tool, to assess handwriting and recognize children with handwriting problems. The author of the tool is Bouwien Smits-Engelsman in cooperation with Ingrid Vernken, Marjo Stevens and Algerem van Hagen.[8] III. Identification of causes for graphomotor problems and suggested therapy.

X mark in the corresponding field.

If the answers to at least 5 questions were ‘no’, in order to identify causes of graphomotor problems, author recommends using prepared graphomotor questionnaire in expanded version ‘Hand therapy – questionnaire for a parent or a teacher.’

HAND THERAPY – QUESTIONNAIRE FOR A PARENT OR A TEACHER Questionnaire author:

Basing on mentioned literature and own experience, in order to easily capture occurrence of child’s graphomotor problems the author designed ‘Graphomotor questionnaire – short version’. The task of the respondent is to answer 10 questions listed below by marking ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ with an

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Questionnaire is designed to be completed by a parent (parents) or by a teacher of the child and consists 42 questions related directly or indirectly (relates to several aspects at the same time) to muscle tension, appropriate posture, proprioception (deep sensation) and work of shoulder girdle. These questions are supposed to be answered by providing the most fitting to reality answer through marking an appropriate field with X. Each of the questions may be answered by choosing one of four possibilities, which were assigned with point values: Always – 3 pts.

Frequently – 2 pts.

Sometimes – 1 pt.

Never – 0 pts.

Questionnaire also contains independent questions which are not taken into account while calculating the score, independent questions are: 5,10, 11, 18, 19, 29, 35.

Questionnaire presented above may become a basis to plan and perform intervention for an examined child. In dependence of acquired score, being a result of answers to questions related to specific sphere, author recommends performing activities related to specific sphere in a more or less intensive manner, depending on the fact, whether the problem is important, in accordance with table presented below.

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IV. Examination of efficiency of applied

therapy

Making a hypothesis.

1. I assume, that performing activities will be influencing improvement of postural tension.

2. I assume, that performing activities will be influencing proprioception.

3. I assume, that performed activities will influence the work of shoulder girdle.

4. I assume, that performed activities will influence the improvement of posture.

Group of children participating in the research The examined group was constituted by children aged 7, which were in first class of elementary school, the group consisted of 23 boys and 7 girls. All of the children are from complete families, and live in a place which population does not exceed 15 thousand people. All of the children meet intellectual standards (all of the children completed recent psychological examination, and provided information regarding psychological and pedagogical opinion). Children which took part in the research have no neurological problems, have no epilepsy, have no cerebral palsy and have no demyelinating diseases.

Visible problem symptoms In opinion of psychological and pedagogical counseling centers following problems were spotted (table) In accordance with above, all of the children were subjected to evaluation with usage of the questionnaire ‘Hand therapy – questionnaire for a parent or a teacher’.

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Identification of causes and applied therapy.

On percentage basis the results of examination (answers) are presented in the table ‘Answers to questionnaire questions before and after the therapy’ in lines ‘measurement – before.’ In order to improve the situation the author during six following months, applied for every child, a therapy of sensory integration using following exercises and games: “Games for a functional motor and sensory system - rolling on the ground with stopping the body every 90*, - building bridges, - zumba in lying position, - skateboarding, - push-ups, - squats, - sitting on sensory cushion, - reverse plank with bent legs, Games developing appropriate muscle tension: - being a model game, - Nordic walking, - walking up the stairs,

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- ‘ready, steady, go!’ position exercise, - polishing floor, - running sideways, - lifting knees high while running.

- stretching rubber band, pike sit, hands positioned as wings, rubber band or skipping rope in hands, hooked below toes, movement – maximal dorsiflexion of feet complemented by drawing jumping rope to oneself, Games developing appropriate range of moves, muscle strength and constitution of individual hand muscles are: - jumping jacks - snow angels on the ground or on the snow,

- stretching band, - skipping - recoiling a ball with a hand, - swinging hands sideways, Listed above games and exercises were performed by children also in their home, every day for 10 minutes”. [9]

Comparison of answers to questionnaire questions ‘Hand therapy – questionnaire for a parent or a teacher’ after therapy with answers before therapy.

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Verification of statistical hypotheses.

Measurement comparison.

For every child participating in the examination, initial and final value was calculated for four questionnaire result scales. It was performed by summing up points acquired basing on diagnostic answers. Following distribution of points was used: never = 0, sometimes = 1, frequently = 2, always = 3. In case of some questions the scale was reversed – never = 3, sometimes = 2, frequently = 1, always = 0.

Variables calculated this way were subjected to normality of distribution tests.

Shapiro-Wilk test was used. Results are presented in the table below.

For scale of postural tension the Shapiro-Wilk test results indicate that distribution of both variables (before and after therapy) do not differ significantly from normal distribution. Due to this fact comparative analysis will be performed by usage of parametric t-test (Student’s) for dependent variables. In case of remaining subscales non-parametric signed-rank test of Wilcoxon will be used.

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A. Postural tension Point range: 0 – 63

Analysis performed with usage of t-test (Student’s) for dependent variables has shown statistically significant difference in number of points acquired by examining children before and after the therapy (t=44.9; p=0.0000). Comparison of arithmetic averages clearly shows scale of progress which took place in case of postural tension: arithmetic average of the

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number of points acquired in questionnaire before the therapy was equal to M=49.5 (SD=4.6), after the therapy value of average was reduced by 45.8 points and was equal only M=3.7 (for SD=2.4).

B. Proprioception

Chart

The result of analysis conducted with usage of Wilcoxon test is statistically significant (Z=4.8; p=0.0000) Comparison of arithmetic averages and medians, clearly shows, that condition of children improved significantly. Average of number of points acquired on proprioception scale before the therapy was equal to 12.3 points (SD=1.7), and after the therapy the value was equal to only 0.4 points (SD=0.9)

The results are also possible to be presented by implementing scale of problems intensity evaluation. In that case we assume following range of assessments: • 0-20 pts. minor problems • 21-42 pts. mediocre problems • 43-63 pts. major problems

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Assessment range: • 0-5 pts. minor problems or no problems • 6-10 pts. mediocre problems • 11-15 pkt. major problems

C. Shoulder girdle

Range of assessments: • 0-10 pkt. minor or no problems • 11-20 pkt. mediocre problems • 21-30 pkt. major problems

Analogous situation as in case of proprioception scale. The result of analysis with usage of Wilcoxon’s test is significant statistically (Z=4.8; p=0.0000), and comparison of arithmetic averages and medians clearly shows that the condition of children after the therapy improved significantly. The average of numbers of points before the therapy was equal to 24.8 points (SD =2.3) and after the therapy it was equal to only 0.7 points (SD=1.9)

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D. Posture

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In this case the analysis also showed significant statistical difference between measurements (Z=4.8; p=0.0000). Condition of children after the therapy has improved significantly. Before the start of the therapy the average of number of acquired points was equal to 19.3 (SD=1.1) and after the therapy it was reduced to the following value: 1.1. points (SD=1.2).

Assessments range: • 0-8 pts. minor or no problems • 9-16 pts. mediocre problems • 17-24 pts. major problems

Conclusions Applied exercises were designed to address specific areas of children problems.

They constituted a set of tasks supporting child’s development. Child’s systematic work in its home and during the therapy enabled to improve grapho-motor abilities in a quick way, what was confirmed by statistical results presented above. While addressing functioning of the child there had been several improvements in areas such as auto orientation and spatial orientation, manual and motor abilities, improved visual-motor coordination.

Important element of child’s development is acquiring new experiences and abilities, it is essential that we discover hidden potential of children and show them the way, which will enable to use and undertake activities supporting their education and development. The fundamental condition to fulfill that aim is openness and creative perception of a teacher, a parent or a therapist towards the child, who as a guide, should lead the child through intricate ways of obtaining knowledge and skills is a way enabling the child to succeed in various aspects of life.

All research mentioned above shows that thanks to hard work of children, therapists, parents and the others the child’s conscious of its body increases and its self-esteem increases, too. It helps to keep it’s soul healthy.

References: 1. Bart O., Hajami D., Bar-Haim Y., “Predicting School Adjustment from Motor Abilities in Kindergarten” in Infant and Child Development, 2007, vol. 16, pp. 597–615, 2.

Błaszkiewicz I., “Metody usprawniania podstawowych kompetencji grafomotorycznych” (“Improvement methods of the base grapho-motor

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competency”), Szkoła Specjalna, s.237, 4/2002.

3.

Bogdanowicz M., “Model rozpoznawania specyficznych trudności w nauce czytania i pisania.” (Model of recognising specific difficulties in learninng of reading and writing”), Zeszyty Naukowe Nr 11, Fundacja Promyk Słońca, Wrocław 2011, pp. .21-27.

4. Boscheinen – Morrin J., Conolly B., Ręka podstawy terapii (“The Hand”), Kraków: Elipsa-Jaim, 2003 , p. 9, 5. Matyja M., Domagalska M., “Podstawy usprawniania neurorozwojowego wg Berty i Karela Bobathów” (The basis of neurodevelopmental improvement acording to Bert and Karel Bobath”), Katowice: AWF Katowice, 2011.

6. Grzesiak J, Naskręt M., Bronikowski M., “Znaczenie koordynacji ruchów ręki 6- i 7-latków” (Importance of hand movement coordination at six and seven-years-old children”) in Rozprawy naukowe, AWF we Wrocławiu, vol. 47, Wrocław 2014, 7. Sitek A., Malinowski A., “Dynamika rozwoju reki u dzieci i młodzieży poznańskiej w wieku od 1,5 do 18 lat” (“The dynamics of hand development for children and juveniles from Poznań, aged from 1.5 to 18”), Słupskie prace biologiczne in Biological works of Słupsk, 2005, p. 149, 8. Smits-Engelsman BCM, Stevens M, Vrenken I, Hagen van A “Systematic detection of writing problems (SOS): a teachers’ tool for signaling motor based writing problems in elementary education children and children in special need education” “Ned Tijdschr Kinderfysiotherapie” (“Dutch Magazine for Pediatric Physiotherapy”) 2005; vol. 17(47), p. 16-21 9. Szmalec J., “Support of manual dexterity of preschool and elementary school children.”, The 4th Global Virtual Conference - GV 2016, ISBN: 978-80-554-11972 ISSN: 1339-9373.

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The conscious life - the dream we live in Fr. Lect. Cosmin Tudor Ciocan, PhD Faculty of Orthodox Theology, Ovidius University of Constanta Romania

ARTICLE INFO

ABSTRACT

Article history: Received 12 February 2017 Received in revised form 18 April Accepted 10 May 2017 Available online 30 May 2017 doi: 10.18638/dialogo.2017.3.2.5

It is most likely for anyone to ask himself at least once if it would be possible to live in a dream? Questioning the fabric of “reality” we live in consciously was one of the main doubts man ever had. It is so likely for us to answer positive to it due to so many factors; starting from the many and various facets of reality each individual envision the world, from the enormous differences we all have while perceiving and defining the reality, etc. That is why, at the conscious level, life seems almost like a dream in a dream, always hoping to wake up from the negative, unwanted version of it. That is why my assertion here, based on latest theories on consciousness and AI (artificial intelligence), aim to say that we live in between reality and dream, being “conscious” of ourselves, but not really wanting to be “aware” of what is really going on with us.

Keywords: consciousness; awareness; phenomenology; artificial intelligence; Self-conscious; awakening; circumstantial;

© 2014 RCDST. All rights reserved.

I. INTRODUCTION

We have heard many times that the information is everything, and numbers (like 1, for example) stands for the fundamental base of everything. A binary chart has been created to describe any object, thing or existence we have information about. A choice of only two possible values for each digit: 0 and 1, a digital encoding/decoding system in which there are exclusively precisely these two possible states for anything. I would like to take this idea of a

simple system and process it for the dialogue of the actual terms Self-Soul-Consciousness.

It has been asked in this conference whether we can level up these three terms using one of them as a criterion. I would propose to take awareness as the primary criterion and level everything else after this one, since I consider that the binary system works not only for the exact sciences but for everything else, religion and psychology as well.

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II. THE CONSCIOUSNESS ISSUE Assuming that the assertion that the existence of any kind of consciousness at the ‘things’ created by humans (i.e. clones and AI, artificial intelligence) is invalid and that the possibility that AI would benefit from the advantages of a Self, aware of itself, is but a speculation, until present time (at least) we cannot sustain with technological support. That leads us saying for now that consciousness is entirely a humanly possession.

A. What is the establishment of the

B. The backstory: Predestination and

Consciousness?

In the serial movie ‘WestWorld’[1] the complicated discussion between the creator of AI individuals, Bernard Lowe (himself an AI, an anagram of “Arnold Weber”, the inventor of this amusement park) and his main and top AI creation, Dolores Abernathy, about consciousness, illustrates two possible constructions of it: the pyramidal[2] and the maze one. Each of them is based on the elements-leveling consciousness, i.e. memory, improvisation, self-interest, and suffering. The combination of these elements, unique and almost aleatory, gives birth to Consciousness.

Seen as a pyramidal construct, the Consciousness is fundamentally based on memories stored after a preliminary management, a subjective stacking value, and a personal interpretation of the saved events. Then, since humans tend to deviate from their routine it looks like the mind rearranges these fundamental pieces in different, new order each time and within each person improvising to new outputs. Most of the times the decisions are taken to prevent humans from hurting themselves, in a preservation instinct or self-interest.

Another construction of consciousness is that of a maze, in which all psychological elements constitute the passages of the maze, and the individual, with each decision and option he makes, positions – same as the ball in a toy maze –closer either to the center (the key of

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consciousness) or the edges. In this perspective – more verisimilar in several points – we find consciousness efficient in any direction the ball heads: either towards edges, in a potential exit out, or to the center, towards the finding of the maze-key. In any scenario consciousness helps individual to cross the path he chooses, reconciled with choice made. This way it is not surprising that, even if the individuals are endowed with consciousness, the situations in which awareness became self-awareness are very rare, in a conjunction between consciousness and Self-conscious.

conscious choices

Looking from above the social scene it was always asked if some people worth more than others, and if YES, if the “others” can be sacrificed for one to survive? From the ancient politics to present time’s ethics this remains the question with circumstantial answers. Still, considering the actual theme, we can conclude that each individual lives his life within a back-story, considered for him alone, with a role to play, so that everything is perfectly set and followed.

Now, considering this scenario, we are coming back in the theological loop of questioning: if so, there is any chance for each individual to make his own choices or everything is only put into act like a paper role that unfolds discovering new, but already predestined things? The answer we would prefer is that we make our own choices, which we are in control of our lives. Therefore, even if we play a role predetermined for us, it would be “easier to digest” the assertion that it is our consciousness that makes the choices how to do things, if not possible to determine if we are doing it or not. This is the last possibility/barrier of becoming Self-aware. First to understand that I am; then to position myself in a social frame – and the trick is now not to assume too much of this position, since it can change with so many others without sticking to one in particular. Any philosophical meditation on the subject aims to say that, if I assume too much of a social frame

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position/role, then it traps me with its duties …, leaving me no chance of getting more of myself.

Moreover, that leads us to question what consciousness is (like)?

The idea with this back-story is that it is employed to lend depth or believability to the main story or to create a distraction from the real thing we live in. It is presented so detailed and thorough that we always became captivated by its rigorously and captured by the story. It has been nominated for the best trap ever for so many times and by various civilizations and thinkers that it is almost impossible not to grant it this title. The main part in the backstory is played by the memory or the recollection, for it allows “the writer” to bring forth information from earlier in the story or from before the beginning of the story. Sometimes taken as the real story we all have our reveries in which we duplicate and transpose ourselves for another, more convenient side of life. It is not unusual for psychopathology to deal with people escaped from physical reality into a backstory artificially created by their minds and nonetheless ‘real’ for the characters/people with psychotic disorders.

Without any known or treating cranial trauma, these psychotic or delusional people act entirely healthy and normal, but outside of the social, common physical reality, as if they would play in a theatrical roleplay, conscientious built an entirely different reality with all dissimilar set of rules and characters. These medical diagnoses of specific psychiatric diseases provide a large spectrum of what reality means for the mind and how can it replenishes entirely and authentically.

However, there is no need to go so far with a strong-case exemplification since we have an example at our fingertips. Everybody arranges his life around criteria, a key-concept and objective; everybody leads his or her life towards a purpose, well-determined or on the road, but none the less a meaningful life. The few persons whose lives lack purpose make a final statement out of this and commit suicide. All others live in a way to fulfill the aim we settle, regardless its quality and effectiveness. Even if we strive

to get the ‘bare necessities’, to place a simple thing in life’s carousel, or to discover the stars we abut, the life of each of us targets a precise and pursued acquisitively. In this key-concept the exterior, sensitive reality became organized around it, and things without any significance to it almost inexistent, fading under the brilliance of the determined aim. In this scenario can we say that, regardless the actual proposal, we all live in a personal backstory built by our minds and entirely different from others’? I think we do, that is why I have submitted this suggested theory of multi-layered reality in which each of us handles a different position. Is this backstory acknowledged or not? Are we aware of this trapping scenario and do it forward ‘on purpose’, or we are living ‘unconscious’ about its existence as a backstory? Moreover, if so, could we wake up from this slumber? Moreover, what possible catalysts could stop the process of trance? – these are the main questions my proposal have to answer to.

III. THE AWAKENING Starting with Platon’s Myth of the cage[3] to Matrix series along with many other pro-science movies the humans were always imagined as if they are not part of a single, explicit reality, but of a scenario carefully optimized for us. This backstory we are not being aware of and we live it like we are in a dream, is either created for us or projected by us in a way the reality is personalized and made easier to live in, easier to digest it. The Allegory of the cage scenario is well-known by all for its proposal of a certain alpha memory one character became aware of and thus he awakes from the backstory he and his companions were plugged in. Plato imagines a cave where people have been imprisoned from birth and by this imprisonment these prisoners are chained so that their legs and necks are fixed, forcing them to gaze at the wall in front of them and not look around at the cave, each other, or themselves (514a–b). Socrates suggests that the shadows are the reality for the prisoners because they have never seen anything else; they do

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not realize that what they see are shadows of objects in front of a fire, much less that these objects are inspired by real things outside the cave (514b-515a). The fixation towards the cave’s screen is nothing else but the trap I have linked the backstory with one’s mind; it simply cannot escape it since he never acquaints anything but shadows and puppets (514b).

First of all, what is the motif of being ‘trapped’ into such a backstory, what would be the meaning of that oneirism? In all these allegories the motif appears always the same: to give life a personal meaning, to stop us from getting out in a reality that cannot be understood. Why is that?

Because everything man cannot encompass with knowledge frightens him, makes him anxious. Facing a void man can jump only if he is tackled to, convinced that ‘everything is OK out there’. “One of the most prevalent fears people have is that of losing control, the fear that if you don’t manage to control the outcome of future events, something terrible will happen. The crux of the problem is the demand for certainty in a world that is always tentative and uncertain.

You think that you must accurately predict and manage the future, not just have some probabilistic and uncertain handle on it.”[4] In this category of giving meaning for escaping anxiety of losing control [over life] we can list: knowing the precise time [first thing most people do after waking up – from a sleep, coma, or long absence – is inquiring about the time]; entering an unclear water; entering a dark room/ building/cave/tunnel; death. For each of these losing-control anxiety cases and so many others the will of having a spoken whatever meaning is enough for moving on. Facing such situations we need/demand a valuable explanation – and it doesn’t have to be the real, ultimate one, just the perfect one – so that we can overcome the stalemate. It is mind calming to hear a certain ‘it will be alright’, even if we know it isn’t, but somehow our mind calms down. Psychology have discovered that our minds are built in that way that even if it search for knowledge, it calms down with anything and it doesn’t have to be true. It simply creates this backstory by itself, as

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if it would be its purpose. The ultimate evidence for that is the routine. Our mind is built to stand on a habitual way of living. We never stay on ‘new’ too long; we live the ‘first’ moment with uncertainty and anxiety and we quickly transform it in a routine. Human mind is made to think in patterns so it always builds it from anything, transforming all into skills. Every new encounter becomes soon a habit, an inurement. It needs to, it must to. Otherwise we cannot move on to the next step, to the next level of living. Always new, routineless is not our thing, we cannot step on quicksand. But if we do, if we have to at certain points in life, we definitely ask for a story that makes us step on it with the ambition that we master it. It is almost like the riders do with their horses when entering a burning field: they place a wrap around their eyes so that the horses place trust entirely on their riders’ eyes and will. Same way our minds demands: a story for everything, and it doesn’t have to be the real one, anything can do the trick as long as it is believed as real.

We can enter a dark room if we are told no harm will be there, we can swim in water with sharks if we are told that there is nothing else but algae there; we do not fear death, if we are told Elysium awaits for us to live a blessed and happy life, and indulging in whatever employment they had enjoyed in life[5]. That is the main reason religion is defined as ontological to humans, for it is not entirely about theology, but about things we need to believe in in order to move on in life, to get a significance on things science and discoveries cannot encompass [yet]. In dark we cannot know, but we can get to experience it only if we believe so first. That is why science came after religion, and knowing after believing.

Again, either way, knowing and believing, science and religion, does not need to be the real thing; it is enough to give us a significance over things we encounter so that we move on making that story a trustful routine and a flying carpet.

This need of having a whatever backstory is the key-element for our minds to continue living and experiencing things. It is thou the self-sustaining power for the consciousness Self: not to be aware of the backstory, but

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to be Self-aware in the position he plays in it.

Consciousness is not about why I am doing that, but that I am doing it. If for whatever reason a character awakes from a backstory his mind instantly creates another one based on the first thing he encounter outside the cave, as it would prevent him to discover more and quicker, or to ever know the truth. The human mind is so powerful in creating self-sustaining-backstories so that it builds an entire universe story based only on a couple of bright spots he sees in the dark[6].

It doesn’t matter if there are sharks in the water as long as your story calms my anxiety and makes me swim. It doesn’t matter if there are beasts in the cave as long as the story tells me things my mind requires to step in fearless.

It certainly doesn’t matter if beyond death there is or there is not another life as long as the story tells me I am welcomed there and my mind allows me then to let go my beloved ones which dye or gives me strength to do heroic, lethal acts. As far as I (my conscious Self) know all these backstories are the only one that exist and there is no thing that (can) contradict it for my mind will instantly deny any counterproof that tries to awake me from my backstory I lean on trustfully. And, in the pattern designated by this theory, even if proofs succeed in waking me up, my mind instantly find a first thing to build up a new, stronger and more balanced backstory and continue to sleepwalking day and night.

What difference does it make if the universe I find shapes as a wrap around the Earth, as an infinite void, as a finite tire, or as a file in a multipage book? For my mind (conscious Self) takes this whatever initial premise and build a whole stable story fitting the premise we were primarily fed with. Same way goes with religious explanations: in every religious culture different backstories are built based on whatever tales are told so that minds get their ‘brainstorming keyelement’ to start with and get rid of the anxious “I don’t know that”.

I cannot be sure about the veracity of nothing [i.e. any theory], but I can definitely trust on

anything that makes me move on any obstacle. I cannot ‘scientifically’ appoint a consciousness in itself, but I can say for sure I am a conscious Self in whatever backstory I live in. maybe a story that encompasses all the backstories does not exist, as well as a multiverse encompassing all our verses and layered realities can definitely be possible. Bua a fact is most certain here: “there is no crack in the forest if there is no conscious self to hear it”[7]. Therefore, if would be a story (reality) encompassing all our subjective backstories, this would be only possible if there is a consciousness that can be(come) aware of its existence, and so that conscious Self would fill the alpha story with his consciousness. That is probably the Buddhist perception of the universal Spirit/Consciousness. But then again, if the ultimate story encompassing all is filled with a highest self-consciousness, it would not make that a backstory for that ultimate consciousness, aka trapping it with a narcotic dream? Maybe for this particular reason and thought the Christian story of a Creator place Him entirely outside the creation, transcending it while He fills it in every atom.

IV. Habituation and Consciousness or

the unconscious mind

I have said earlier that our mind is designed ‘to stand on a habitual way of living’. Let’s talk some about this idea in the end of this paper.

We all have agreed that consciousness forms memories and, vice-versa, memories are a proof of being conscious. On the other hand, there is no need for a Self to PROVE itself for other Selfs to be conscious for it to BE conscious, right? This except in the assertions of solipsism that was already spoked about previously with the perception and the awareness about a crack-noise. Out of this theory the existence of something doesn’t have to be proven in order for it to exist[8], but it is not the place for us to re-discuss thoughts already been in debates and targeted by the philosophical talk.

The definition psychology has for habituation

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and its origination is the tendency to have decreased responsiveness to something.

For that matter “Something that is new and incredibly exciting can become annoying.”[9] For example, there may be a painting you really like so you place it near you, on your desk. You take time to watch it for a while every day, 10 times a day. Over time and repeated exposures to this painting you might start get the feeling that you have “seen it a million times” and it just doesn’t have the same effect on you that it used to or that it had first time(s). This is habituation.

Certain noises in a house cause a newborn baby to cry, until he or she becomes desensitized to the noises and they no longer frighten the child.

This is also habituation.

First of all we know that, even under the patronage of consciousness, a memory cannot be recorder outside of a stimulus. This must be external and it gets an internal response to it, one that makes us conscious about it and allows us create a memory out of it. In other words, we mostly get ‘pictures’, “portions of life” if conscious; I said ‘mostly’ since we consciously want/need to select these portions we want to inhabit our mind as memories. However there is prove that we unconscious record memories and these are exponentially more the former.

From S. Freud until neuroscience the theory of ‘the unconscious mind’ has been developed with lots of objective evidence. It represents “the reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that outside of our conscious awareness. Most of the contents of the unconscious are unacceptable or unpleasant, such as feelings of pain, anxiety, or conflict.

According to Freud, the unconscious continues to influence our behavior and experience, even though we are unaware of these underlying influences.”[10] The motivation of these unconscious memories is not yet settled. Freud, for example, “believed that many of our feelings, desires, and emotions are repressed or held out of awareness. Why? Because, he suggested, they were simply too threatening. Freud believed that sometimes these hidden desires and wishes make themselves known through

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dreams and slips of the tongue (aka “Freudian slips”).”[11] Computational neuroscience however asserts that brain functions and the information processing properties of the structures that make up the nervous system is mostly unconscious and we continually record everything that surround us without paying any attention. There are thus non-understandable items that can recollect, reactivate and reveal those memories. These items seem to be aleatory and meaningless, but they can relate to the unconscious memories as a missing piece of a puzzle: once you have it into your sight you instantly recollect the landscape it was taken from. There are theories that emphasis this idea, starting from the psychoanalytic hypnotic regression, or the Rorschach test, saying that memories of habitual deeds live long after the conscious control ends.

References [1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

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An American science fiction thriller television series created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy for HBO, based on the 1973 film of the same name, which was written and directed

by American novelist Michael Crichton. The first episode premiered on October 2, 2016.

A reference to Maslow’s Pyramidal Hierarchy of Needs (1943, 1954), a motivational theory in psychology comprising a five tier model of human needs, often depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid. These first five levels were upgraded with additional three, looking in the end to: 1. Biological and Physiological needs; 2. Safety needs; 3.

Love and belongingness need; 4. Esteem needs; 5. Cognitive needs; 6. Aesthetic needs; 7. Self-Actualization needs; and 8.

Transcendence needs. Internet link: http:// www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html (accessed 6.2.2017).

Plato, The Republic (514a–520a), online source: http://www.gutenberg.org/ ebooks/1497.

Elliot D. Cohen, “The Fear of Losing Control”, in Psychology Today, posted May 22, 2011. Retrieved from https://www. psychologytoday.com/blog/what-would-

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aristotle-do/201105/the-fear-losing-control.

Daniel Ogden, A Companion to Greek Religion. Singapore: Blackwell Publishing, 2007, pp. 92, 93. ISBN 1-4051-2054-1.

[6] A by the way on scientifically assertions man has built in history from insignificantly ‘discoveries’.

[7] Philosopher George Berkeley, in his work, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), proposes, “But, say you, surely there is nothing easier than for me to imagine trees, for instance, in a park [...] and nobody by to perceive them. [section 23] [...]. He developed the subjective idealism, a metaphysical theory to respond to these questions, coined famously as “to be is to be perceived”. Scientific American, April 5, 1884, pg 218: “Sound is vibration, transmitted to our senses through the mechanism of the ear, and recognized as sound only at our nerve centers. The falling of the tree or any other disturbance will produce vibration of the air.

If there be no ears to hear, there will be no sound”. Burt Harding, “There is no sound if a tree falls in a forest and nobody is in range to hear it. Our senses tell us the world is real. I truth, it’s a play of mind.” And so on.

[8] This the notorious debate between realism and idealism, whether or not things are in our minds or in themselves, out of senses, per se or arcai. See Pierre Aubenque, Le problème de I ‘être che Aristote, PUF. Paris, 1966.

[9] Habituation. (n.d.). In Alleydog.com’s online glossary. Retrieved from: http:// www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition-cit. php?term=habituation [10] Kendra Cherry, What Is the Unconscious?

Freud’s conceptualization of the unconscious, in “verywell.com”. references from Freud, S. (1915). The unconscious. Standard Edition, Volume 14. Retrieved from https://www.verywell.com/what-is-theunconscious-2796004.

[11] Ibidem.

[5]

theological and psychological schools (BA, MB, PhD), obtained my PhD in Missiology and Doctrinal Theology in 2010. I was ordained as orthodox priest in 2002. High-school teacher from 1998, then Professor assistant and Lecturer from 2012, I have written more than 30 papers on theology and psychology, along with 4 single author books in the past two decades.

In 2013 started a multidisciplinary program aiming to engage scholars from different files into friendly and academic debates with theology and in the same year a Research Center was founded in Ovidius University with researchers from 11 fields. in lest then 1 year I manage to gather people from around the globe around this idea and so we have started Dialogo Conferences project. In 2014 I received a Fulbright scholarship and I spent the summer California and 4 other States in USA, gathering data and understanding how religious pluralism is possible at a high level of involvement; in the same time I made friends from many different countries and religions that are now involved in this project or another, helping in his endeavor.

Biography Ciocan Tudor Cosmin, born in Constanta/ Romania in 1977, I have attended several

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The psychosocial integration of seropositive persons Raluca Matei– PhD Associate Professor Department of Psychology and Social Work Ovidius University of Constanta Constanta, Romania ARTICLE INFO Article history: Received 18 April 2017 Received in revised form 13 May Accepted 15 May 2017 Available online 30 May 2017 doi: 10.18638/dialogo.2017.3.2.6

Keywords: seropositive person; HIV / AIDS infected; anticipating anxiety; social isolation;

ABSTRACT

We can assume without fail that the psychosocial implications in case of HIV/AIDS are as overwhelming as the medical aspects. For the positive person as well as for those who assist the seropositive people, the uncertainty frames the medical prognosis. All the effects that occur are entirely funded: the loss of self-trust as well as mistrusting others, stigmatization, isolation, getting abandoned by the family, friends, neighbors and school mates or coworkers. The current study aims to evaluate this aspect, the fact that the living environment of the seropositive person does not lead to significant differences as far as adjusting to HIV/AIDS diagnosis is concerned, but the adjusting differences are more related to the personality structure of the infected person, to the way this person identifies strategies of coping with the new situations he / she has to deal with (cognitive, emotional and behavioral strategies). In the applicative part of the study, we analyze the adjustment to the diagnosis, as well as the adherence to the treatment, by applying certain specific work instruments. © 2014 RCDST. All rights reserved.

I. INTRODUCTION

AIDS or HIV infection does not present only medical problems, as it is still perceived.

The HIV infection meets the criteria of being one of the chronical diseases. As in any chronical disease, the sufferance of the infected person interferes with his / her own family life, with important extra-familial consequences. Insidiously, the perfidious syndrome progressively destroys both the immune system, as well as the psychological immunity of both the infected person and his/her family. The HIV/AIDS infected and affected persons go through extremely

hard to cope with situations, heavily affective overloaded, which determine the occurrence and the amplification of devastating experiences that have a destructive effect on the psychological health.

The HIV-infected child does not realize the dimension of the drama, but as he/she goes through the cognitive development stages, out of the numerous direct or indirect messages, the child will sense the fact that he/she is infected with a disease that will limit his/her possibilities of succeeding at school or social, in a more or less near future.

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The child nay become aware of his/her own psychosocial relationships limitations, even though for a good period of time, he/she is not any different than his/her friends and colleagues. This “chronic frustration determines the occurrence of certain negative feelings: self-blaming, uncertainty, despair, anger, shame, leading to functional, emotional and behavior disorders, inferiority complexes, social maladjustment, anxiety, low self-confidence, even suicidal behavior, and suicide attempts.” [3]. The impact with the disease and the reactions on learning the diagnosis are similar to those expressed in any other terminal stage, but there are also certain unique characteristics which make learning the diagnosis a particular difficulty. Due to the way this disease is seen by the society, confidentiality is considered to be a necessary condition in dealing with HIS/AIDS cases. If for the qualified personnel dealing with seropositive individuals, confidentiality is a must, for the infected persons as well as for their families, there are both advantages and disadvantages when it comes to breaking confidentiality.

There are questions about communicating this diagnosis to the close persons. This generates a state of tension which has different reactions. It is difficult to declare to the others that you are infected, or that you have a seropositive child or that someone close to you is AIDS positive.

Social isolation of the HIV positive people along with their families, is a very common practice, being a specific characteristic of this disease. The seropositive person is often treated by the ones around as being “different” (both in a positive way, through the care of the person who is infected, but especially in a negative way, by those who label him / her as “the AIDS positive person”). The most common questions among the seropositive persons are: “Am I, or am I not ill?”, “Why me?”, “Why do children run away from me?”, “Am I going to die? Why am I going to die? When am I

going to die?”, “Why does God make me go through this?”, etc.

Unfortunately, the limit situations that seropositive individuals go through have often negative and traumatizing effects on the psychic, the alteration of self-image being one of them. It is well known the fact that in personality development process, as well as in social integration and adjusting process, self-image is an essential element.

This begins to form during the first year of a child’s life, along with the first perceptive interests on their own body. By self-image we understand a “self-portrait”, both physical and psycho-social, materialized in the whole of self-opinions, more precisely a complex and intimate assessment.

During lifetime, the self-image is changing, “adjusting” and this is normal, considering that the individual changes as well. It corresponds more or less to the reality. The modifications of self-image are generated by positive or negative events that occur at any age, in anyone’s life. For the seropositive person, the self-image develops a series of characteristics which are stressed by his/ her special relationships with the others, generated by the status of seropositive person. The widespread “common image” on HIV-positive individuals, as well as on their closest persons essentially contributes to the above stated.

Another psychological consequence of the fact that seropositive individuals suffer from an incurable disease is frustration. This can manifest in the form of psychical stress and intense aspects of the crisis.

The impossibility of being cured, the stress, the anxiety, the low self-esteem, the social marginalization, the helplessness feeling against the disease may generate depression. According to Mitrofan and Buzducea [7], refusing food and medicines, low general tonus, inferiority feeling, behavior disorders, low frustration resistance are also signs of depression.

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They associate with somatic and behavioral symptoms, inexplicable abdominal pain, migraines, loss of interest and focus.

Regardless of the living environment of the seropositive person – family, Foster Care Center, foster family – and despite his/ her age, all these psycho-social implications of HIV/AIDS infection can be identified, more or less.

The influence of social factors on the seropositive individual. History reminds us that every century has had communicable diseases accompanied by moral accusations.

The infected people were sometimes considered barriers against diseases eradication and community survival.

Discrimination may be found in many levels: legislative, society level, community, interpersonal and even intrapersonal (selfdiscrimination). All these levels are well connected and influence each other.

Stigmatization, discrimination, and social exclusion accompanied HIV infection starting from the beginning of the epidemic.

The origin of discriminating or stigmatizing behaviors and attitudes against HIV/AIDS positive persons can be found in those times when the virus was discovered. The stigmatization against HIV/AIDS refers to all the adverse attitudes, beliefs and politics addressed to seropositive persons, and also to their friends and family or to the community they might belong to.

Social isolation of the HIV-positive people as well as of their friends and family is a common fact, being a specific characteristic of the disease. The seropositive individual is often treated as being “different” (both in a positive way, through the care of the person who is infected, but especially in a negative way, by those who label him / her as “the AIDS positive person”) [2]. There are cases when family abandons the HIVinfected child either in hospitals or in Foster Care Centers, in order to protect the other family members from a future infection with Session 1. SELF

this virus.

The most favorable environment for the intellectual, emotional and physical environment for every child (healthy or with disabilities) to evolve is the family he/she was born in. Many times, keeping the child in his/her natural family is not possible because of different reasons, the family abandons the child temporary or for good, either in hospitals, Foster Care Centers or agreeing on maternal care. Separating the child from his/her family has serious repercussions on the child’s physical and socio-emotional evolution, such as: self-trust or mistrusting others, introspection, personal value minimization, aggressiveness, problematic behavior, indiscriminate affection, lack of self-knowing, intellectual and physical development delay, inferiority complexes, low adjusting ability, difficulties in establishing relationships with the others, negative feelings initiation. In regards to seropositive children, apart from all the above experiences, we could add the implications that the disease has on them: the hard treatment with multiple side effects, often and long hospitalization, the marginalization of these children and their family in the community they belong to.

Even though the parent that has abandoned his/her child retakes responsibilities for the child, it does not mean that all the other psycho-traumatizing effects are completely eliminated. Once abandoned, the child might still experience “fear of abandon”.

[4].

The influence of psychosocial factors on the seropositive individual. The adjustment to the disease is a continuous process that everyone who experiences such situations experiences, as they learn about the requirements and evolution of the disease.

The process of adjustment is strongly influenced by the already existent mental representations concerning this disease, as well as by other factors such as: the

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received information, the relationship with the medical personnel, social and familial support, and the possible diagnose preexistent emotional disorders.

The HIV/AIDS positive individuals live intensively, with a big emotional intake, day by day, the feeling of uncertainty in regards to the future – they lose hope. They live desperately and are they very stressed, becoming distrustful in receiving the treatment that could solve their problem.

Any attempt to talk to these people about hope is seen with doubt and cynically. These lose and experiences that seropositive persons go through accumulate, in time, and they create a web out of which the person cannot go out anymore. However, from an emotional point of view, as per S.C. Kalichman et al. [5] “the major problem is death“. In our society, death is seen as an estranged moment, concerning only the elderly. For a seropositive person, the death perspective suddenly becomes imminent.

Even though, intellectually, the individual understands that HIV infection is a chronic disease, with which they can live long enough, emotionally, the anxiety caused by death imminence becomes the most painful aspect of the daily life.

This fundamental anxiety remains with the individual for the entire life, raising or decreasing in intensity, degrading or motivating him/her, as the disease evolves.

Many individuals experience the pain of their own death, while there is still no sign of the disease. This is the “anticipating anxiety” says E. Mardare [6], which frequently appears to those diagnosed with a terminal illness, as well as to their family members.

The anticipating anxiety is one pf the biggest emotional resources and psychical energy consuming, and the specialist must recognize it and help the individual cope with it.

For the HIV or AIDS positive person, disregarding whether he / she is a child or an

adult, along with the diagnosis, there come the changes as well. It is wide accepted the fact that HIV infection has both a medical component, as well as a social one. From the seropositive person’s point of view, the social consequences become very important. In many cases, the seropositive individuals mention that after learning the diagnosis, the hardest part is to cope with the other people reactions, either family members, friends, neighbors or, widely, members of the community that they belong to. The rejection coming from the community that seropositive individuals often experience may lead to deepening the negative feelings, and as a result, these may generate the increase of vulnerability level of the seropositive persons, and on the long run, they might aggravate their health. The need of membership is one of the fundamental needs of any individual, and the integration in the community is considered to be a characteristic of social inclusion and citizenship.

The presence of psychopathological manifestations among seropositive persons, more than among general population, is understandable for any specialist. The stress that is generated by the particularities of HIV/AIDS as incurable illness, the change of the lifestyle, the numerous losses, the burden of keeping the secret, the permanently perceived discrimination are issues that frequently cause the loss of psychological balance, generating major psychological disorders, with direct impact on the interpersonal relationships of the seropositive person, relationships that can be affected gradually, until dissolution. In this context, we talk about anxious disorders, affective disorders, sleep disturbances, and addictions. There can be persons that develop delirious disorders, schizophrenia, somatoform disorders or behavioral and personality disorders.

The answer of the young, and not only,

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to a chronic or terminal illness means: anger, hostility, confusion, anguish. These feelings might be accompanied by disappointment and submission, related to the speed towards AIDS and the imminent death.

The pronunciation of HIV/AIDS diagnosis generates different reactions, from shock to refusing to believe or accept. After a while, when the opportunist infections appear, when acquaintances or friends die from the same disease, the seropositive individuals start feeling more and more vulnerable, more fragile in front of this fear

to Diagnosis – CAD and the Questionnaire of Adherence CEAT, both validated by the Baylor Black Sea Foundation.

V. LOT OF PARTICIPANTS

The subjects’ sample – was comprised of 30 young seropositive individuals between 14 and 18 years old, from their origin family and 30 young individuals from the Foster Care Center; all the 60 subjects come from the urban.

TABLE 1. CORRELATION CALCULATION

II. OBJECTIVES

To identify the main causes on which teenagers’ lives depend on; to identify the perceiving way of the seropositive persons and of the way of inserting them in the social group that they belong to; to establish the elements that confer safety in the young people’s life; the way teenagers identify and understand the attained social status.

III. HYPOTHESES

** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

1. A positive correlation is assumed between the adjustment to diagnosis and the adherence to the treatment; 2. Differences are assumed in relation to the adjustment to diagnosis and the participants’ environment.

IV. METHODS/ INSTRUMENTS

The analysis of the Table 1 determines a positive correlation between the adjustment to diagnosis and the adherence to treatment at a significance threshold of p=0.000 statistically significant. Therefore, the easier the HIV diagnosis acceptance, the more present the motivation to undergo the treatment, so that the diseases is held under control and its level becomes undetectable.

Purpose – the identification of the adjusting way to the HIV/AIDS diagnosis of the teenagers from the origin family, as well as of those from the Foster Care Center.

- the identification of the degree of adjustment to the HIV/AIDS diagnosis of Roma and institutionalized teenagers, as well as their adherence to the treatment.

Instruments: in the current study I used the Questionnaire related to Adjustment

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Figure 1. Graphic representation of the point cloud for the variables ‘adjustment to diagnosis’ and ‘adherence to treatment’

According to Schweitzer et al., [8] for the HIV patients, the factors related to them include motivation and attitude towards the treatment, as well as the abilities they have formed to cope with specific situations when undergoing the treatment. Even though it facilitates adherence (defined as a process during which the patients take their medication according to the prescription), the quality of the patient’s life does not have a specific causal relation with it and it is not associated with stable and long-term adherence changes. Consequently, the main rising adherence tendency is represented by its determinants as follows: adherence behaviors, health condition, life quality.

The analysis of the Table 3 shows an important difference related to the adjustment to diagnosis and the participants’ environment at a significance threshold of p =0.019 statistically significant, determining that the non-institutionalized young individuals are more adaptable than the institutionalized ones when finding out an adverse diagnosis.

TABLE 2. STARTING INDEXES FOR THE VARIABLE ‘ADJUSTMENT TO DIAGNOSIS’

The analysis of the starting indexes shows that the institutionalized individuals reached an average of 71.73 for the adjustment to diagnosis as compared to 78.67 reached by the non-institutionalized individuals taking part in the research.

Considering that the normality and the homogeneity conditions are met, we test the difference between the two groups by means of the t-test for the two independent samples.

TABLE 3. CALCULATING THE T-TEST FOR THE TWO INDEPENDENT SAMPLES

Figure 2. Graphic representation of the adjustment to diagnosis according to their everyday environment

The non-institutionalized young individuals benefit from the family’s affective and emotional support and comfort, while the institutionalized ones are deprived of this important aspect. Most of the times, when finding out a serious diagnosis, the family is a real help during the process related to the adjustment after learning the diagnosis and later on to the adherence to the treatment, to the patient’s health condition and his life quality.

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CONCLUSIONS/DISCUSSION: The HIV/AIDS infection has been and still is a challenge for humanity, firstly through the psychological implications of this diagnosis, and secondly due to the fact that currently there is still no treatment that could prevent the infection or that could slow down or stop the evolution of the disease.

As we previously described the psychological implications of this diagnosis, they are a real touchstone, both for the infected individuals, and also for the affected persons, with long-term effects, perhaps for the rest of their lives, in all the aspects of the directly affected persons. There are no differences as far as adjustment to the diagnosis is concerned, at list not in general – the labor of adjusting and waiting is the same for everyone, but it is also true that every individual has his/her own rhythm of adjustment, his/her own adjustment strategies, according to their own individual structure, but also according to the particularities of the social environment that they come from and that they live in.

Stanton et al. [9], consider that “adjusting to the disease is often defined as the presence/absence of psychological disturbances and symptoms, as well as the negative mood.” HIV/AIDS is one of the most dramatic diagnosis and it is typical for chronic diseases, by increasing its survival rate in the last decades due to highly efficient therapies, due to aggressive treatments and its fluctuating evolution. Therefore, during its development, the diagnosis involves a series of changes in the patient’s life, both psychoemotionally, socio-economically, and spiritually, so that the individual inner balance is under constant changes, and, in order to provide a quality life for the patient, an intervention is required in the dynamics of many adjusting mechanisms from various fields and their interconnection.

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Although the integration in the society of the seropositive persons is difficult, in Romania significant progress have been noticed, through the use of the information campaigns about HIV/AIDS infection, the psychological counselling, as well as the teamwork between doctor, psychologist, social assistant and priest (many times, the seropositive persons and their close people need the spiritual support of a priest), as per Baban, [1].

REFERENCES [1] [2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

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Baban, A., Educational Counselling, ClujNapoca: Ardealul Press, 2001, pp. 58-60.

Brian, B., Social Exclusion, Social Isolation, and the Distribution of Income in Understanding the Social Exclusion, coord.

Hills John, Le Grand Julian, Piachaud David, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, p.132.

Buzducea, D., Lazăr, F., A Monography of HIV/AIDS Phenomenon in Romania”, Bucharest: University Press, 2008.

Buzducea, D., (coord.), Risks of the Young People. Case Study: HIV/AIDS Positive Teenagers”, Bucharest: University Press, 2007.

Kalichman S. C., DiMarco, M., Austin, J. et al., “Stress, Social support and HIV-Status Disclosure to Family and Friends Among HIV-Positive Med and Women in Journal of Behavioral Medicine, (2003), 26:315, doi:10.1023/ A:1024252926930,pp.315–332, https://link. springer.com/journal/10865 Mardare E., Psychosocial Interventions Addressed to the Teenagers and their Families in the Context of HIV/AIDS in Risks of the Young People: HIV/AIDS Positive Teenagers , Buzducea D., (coord.), Bucharest: University Press, 2007, pp.137-179.

Mitrofan,I., Buzducea, D., The Psychology of Loss and the Therapy of Pain, Bucharest: Sper Press, 2002, pp.79-84.

Schweitzer, A-M., Dima A.L, Vlaholpol, L.S., Stanciu, S.I., The Theory and Practice of

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[9]

Adherence to Treatment – Manual for Clinic Personnel”, Constanta: a Baylor Romania project, 2015, pp. 15-17.

Stanton A.L, Revenson T.A, Tennen H. Health Psychology: Psychological Adjustment to Chronic Disease in Journal Annual Review of Psychology, (2007), vol.58, pp.565-592, doi: 10.1146/annurev.psych.58.110405.085615, ISSN 0066-4308.

Biography I have a Ph.D. degree in Psychology Degree and my domains of interest are psychopathology, psycho-sexology, couple and family psychotherapy, respectively occupational psychotherapy, family psychology and special education.

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This paper was presented in the

Bridging Science and Religion together: SELF - SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS. (DIALOGO-CONF 2017 SSC)

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held online, on the Journal’s website, from May 19 - 26, 2017

journal homepage: http://dialogo-conf.com

Self and its anxieties in existential psychotherapy Marica Mircea Adrian – PhD Associate Professor Department of Psychology and Social Work Ovidius University of Constanta Constanta, Romania ARTICLE INFO Article history: Received 25 April 2017 Received in revised form 10 May Accepted 15 May 2017 Available online 30 May 2017 doi: 10.18638/dialogo.2017.3.2.7

Keywords: existentialism; existential psychotherapy; anxiety; authenticity; temporality; meaning of life;

ABSTRACT

The existence of a self and the imperative of knowing it have gone through philosophy from its beginning until today. Existentialism, starting with Kierkegaard and continuing with Heidegger, relate the scope of the authentic self to that of anxiety. Once the scope of the anxiety of self has been formulated, it entered the sphere of psychological theories. The prolific encounter between existentialism and psychology materializes into the influent contemporary psychological school, named existential psychotherapy.

Our analysis wishes to describe the nodal points of this encounter, having as reference points the scope of self and its anxieties. In the first part of the analysis we look into the philosophical premises, referring to the two above mentioned names, while in the second part we present the taking-ups and the applicative adjustments brought up by existential psychotherapy. © 2014 RCDST. All rights reserved.

I. INTRODUCTION

Self has been the object of philosophical reflection for millenniums. The first man who has met his self and who has known that ”someone” is waiting for him when coming back ”home” and was afraid of the way it would call him to account was Socrates [1]. Since then we have been looking for” something inside deeper than us” [2], the inner man [3], ”the moving horizon in which you acknowledge yourself” [2], ”the unknown within us” or ”the intimate we are denied” [4]. Although it can be true that” any attempt to meet

yourself is meant to fail” [1], sometimes we cannot refuse the search. The condition that challenges us to look deeper for the self is what existentialists called anxiety. Though it might seem paradoxical, anxiety is the very way to open up the horizon of an authentic existence.

A legitimate question that arises in this situation is the following: How could be explained the relation between self and anxiety? This question is supported by Herman Kohut, who states that the Self, just like any other psychological matter, is essentially subconscious. We become aware

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of inner processes when there are tensions.

When inner processes are silent, we are not aware of them. Self begins to be noticed and observable only when it is dysfunctional when it is somehow ill, supra-stimulated, fragmented, under-stimulated, torn – when it is troubled in any way [5]. Moreover, in anxiety self is profoundly troubled.

Existential psychotherapy will speak about trouble and the authenticity of self and about the dynamics of anxiety, extending philosophical initiations.

II. PHILOSOPHICAL PREMISES

The term anxiety comes from the Latin word ”angustus,” tight, from ”angere,” to press upon, to strangle [6], with the general meaning of undetermined fear, profound unrest. In philosophy the term is introduced

by Sören Kierkegaard, the Danish word angst meaning a state of conscience characterized by fear, unrest, and inner torment when facing freedom, the possible existential, nothingness.

For Kierkegaard, anxiety is a spiritually purifying experience, which allows man to refer to himself and to his condition and opens the way to an authentic experience, to a life that has a superior meaning. What leads him to this search is freedom, ”the anxious possibility to be able to” [7]. The choice both attracts and rejects, lures us and frightens us, us being caught in the trap generated by the fear of not being ourselves and the refusal to remain ourselves. The fear and the temptation in a situation that we cannot understand are there at the same time. And this has been so since the beginnings of mankind, Kierkegaard says, ever since Adam. We each repeat history, and just like Adam, we are faced with making an uncertain choice and we lose our innocence. Anxiety and desperation are aspects of an authentic search. Anxiety is always hidden behind the spirit. For a while we try to conceal it through entertainment,

fun and pleasure, living in un-authenticity and forgetting about ourselves, abandoned to the whims of random choosing, but then comes a time when ”the vertigo of freedom” challenges us to acknowledge ”the misery of finitudes”, when we are face to face with ourselves and with our condition. Then you must have the courage to face yourself and your condition and also the infinite, for each choice contains a possible undetermined, and this one, a seed of infinity. Moreover, ”the inner certainty that anticipates the infinite” [8] is faith. It does not annul existential uncertainty, but suspend it by faith. Man’s greatness effectively depends only on the energy he spends going towards God. Anxiety in front of the nothingness of freedom, un-authenticity and impersonality of the self, receptivity to authenticity will be the topics developed and imposed on philosophical circulation by Martin Heidegger, who ”in a world of knowledge knew how to bring back the meanings” [9].

Heidegger adds other personal topics to Kierkegaard’s, in a esoteric language, as” absolute champion of obscurity” [10]. We will try to simplify, to enable the comprehension of Heidegger’s approach which has unbelievable depths and ambiguities of style that make way for interpretation.

For Heidegger, the analytics of the human being aims at revealing the existentials, for man, the Dasein in the German philosopher’s coding, is a being whose essential feature is the fact that he exists. That is all. For other entities we can indicate an essence, for example, the essence of the ship is to float, the essence of the knife, to cut. What is the essence of man? Well, man has got no given essence. In his case, existence precedes essence, for he is only a receptive entity, a possibility to be in one way or another, the demon or the saint, he is just a project, a freedom that builds its essence through its every decision. This means existentiality,

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that is ”entity that, in its being, has this being at stake.” We know neither our where-from, nor our where-to, being simply thrown into the world on our own to build our own destiny. This is the limit, but also the greatness of our condition. Therefore, being naked / empty, as mere open possibilities, our purpose is to conscientiously assume this condition and do something of us, to design a project of our life. However, to do so, we must first understand our existential determinations. Which are they?

Heidegger says that in the first instance Dasein understands himself starting with the world he lives in. This world is made up of three intertwined regions: the region that is different from Dasein, that is the world of natural things, ”nature-simply-present”, and the world of artifacts, of ”the-handytool”, then the region represented by the others’ Dasein, ”the shared world” or ”being-together” and, finally, the region of the Dasein I myself am, that is the world of the” self” [11]. Phenomenologically, these are not three different worlds, but one, man’s world. He lives simultaneously in these regions, in a certain natural space, handles an object, deals with someone and relates with himself. In other words, man is a relational being, he cannot escape this condition. Even ”being-alone” is nothing but a deficient way of ”beingtogether.” Being for or against someone, being together or being apart, passing one another indifferently and not caring about the other one are possible ways of the ”care-for-the-other-one.” Therefore, the German philosopher concludes that the care for the other one is a existential constitution for Dasein. But this existential way is unauthentic. The singular being is confiscated by the others; everyone is ‚the other one’ and no one is themselves. Dasein falls out of itself, with an authentic ability to be himself, falling under the domination of the world, fusing with the others, ”living” in the impersonal ”himself” (das Man), Session 1. SELF

that becomes his home, his place, because this kind of existence gives him a feeling of peace and safety, of familiarity and shelter, in exchange for abandoning himself. In reality he is running from himself and the authentic possibility of being. But all these concealing feelings disappear when anxiety sets in, a fundamental emotional state, as a state of privileged receptivity, through which Dasein is brought before himself [12].

Heidegger explains that you undergo such an emotional state when you are afraid. ”We cannot say what exactly makes you afraid. You are totally afraid. All things sink into a kind of indifference, and so do we (...). There is no reference point left (...). We float in fear (...) Nothingness surrounds the fearful Dasein” [13].

Anxiety recovers Dasein and prevents his fusion with the world under whose domination he has fallen, making a manifest out of being-free for the freedom to choose himself. Going from the impersonal self to the authentic self is made possible by the anxiety of temporality, by the perception of being on the road and by the inevitable end. When I acknowledge the fact that I am being-into-death, I must take myself seriously. If I die, what will I do with my life? The possibility of no longer being gives me the possibility of being authentic. It challenges me to choose how I am going to live from now on. Dasein is authentic only as long as he lives his life under the anticipative horizon of death [14]. Being yourself doesn’t mean isolating yourself from the others, but being authentic in a world together-withthe others, who in their turn have the ability to be authentic.

This receptivity fuels the entire existentialism and, implicitly, existentialist psychotherapies.

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III. MAJOR THEMES OF THE EXISTENTIAL

PSYCHOTHERAPY

For millennia, psychological reflection has occurred within the field of philosophy.

Once psychology came into being, at least apparently, there was a separation, the field of psychology becoming one of empirical, experimentally controllable practices. The behaviorism of the experimental beginning gave the impression of a final separation, just like in the case of other sciences.

Nevertheless, the future evolutions within psychology prove the contrary. Victor Frankl frankly admits that ”every psychotherapy has got a self-evident horizon” for” there is no psychotherapy without an image of man and a conception of the world” [15]. The most visible connection is, of course, the one between existential psychotherapy and philosophical existentialism.

A. Transition. Psycho-analytic interlude

After Kierkegaard, the second author who makes an analysis of anxiety is S. Freud.

For the father of psycho-analysis, anxiety ”is an emotional state that is a combination between some feelings in the pleasureunpleasure series and the corresponding discharges” [16]. Freud speaks about three main ways of anxiety, relating them to the three dependencies of Ego, outer world, Self and Superego. Thus we shall have” real anxiety,” which is a reaction to perceiving an exterior danger,” neurotic anxiety” and ”anxiety of conscience.” ”Neurotic anxiety,” which is the object of psychological analysis, is determined by processes of discharge, as ego defense mechanisms.

After Freud, in psychology, the philosophical concept of angst / anguish, with its manifestations in fear and worry, is gradually replaced by its synonym, anxiety, understood as a symptom, but which retains much of its initial meaning. Here is what Brown says, quoted by Solomon

[17]: ”if depression is the reaction to a loss in the past, anxiety is a reaction to a loss in the future, it precedes depression,” acute conscience of transiency and existential limits being considered the very core of depression.

Existentialist therapists, at least some of them, partially accept the Freudian premises on anxiety, but modify their meaning and the psychotherapeutic procedure. Irvin Yalom, for example, claims that anxiety plays the central role in psychotherapy, the major symptoms being nothing else but psychotic, neurotic, psycho-physiological reactions to anxiety. ”Psychopathology, the therapist writes, is a vector, the result of the composition of anxiety and the defense mechanisms, neurotic and characterrelated. Therapists begin their work with the patients focusing on the manifested anxiety, its equivalences and the defense mechanisms created by individuals to protect themselves from anxiety” [18].

Others, significantly move away from the way Freud understood anxiety, going back to the origins, to Kierkegaard and Heidegger, considering that anxiety ”is the experiencing the threat that comes from the inevitable part of nothingness”, that ”hits us at the core of the feeling of our own value” [19].

B. Nodal points. Therapeutic method and

context

The movement of existential analysis is a protest against the tendencies to see a patient in situations meant to match our preconceptions, or to perceive him according to our own predilections. L. Binswanger says that ”the new understanding of man, that we owe to the existential analysis carried out by Heidegger, is based upon this idea that man is no longer understood starting from a certain theory [20].

In the spirit of the humanist psychology,

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existential therapists refuse to see the client as an object that has to be measured, calculated, weighed, operated and analyzed, considering him a person, a human being that has to be understood. The therapeutic relation is thus non-methodologically oriented, as a ”lived through relation” [21], as genuine communication from one form of existence to another.

The approach is phenomenological, and aims at understanding the person in and from the inside of his experience, without standardized tools and presuppositions that distort the insight.

Besides its falsifying pattern, existentialist psychologists object to the ”archaeological” approach of psychoanalysis, which claims that you must dig into the patient’s past to solve his present-day problems. Existential therapy gives proper importance to the past, but considers it as a backup resource, from which certain events that have an impact on the current situation are selected. However, the past gets its meaning only from the perspective of the present and the future, for man is first and foremost a project. Memory is a selective process, which does not work solely on what was imprinted in it, but depends to a significant extent on our decisions regarding the present and the future. What the patient chooses to remember depends on his way of looking to the future. That is why the therapist concentrates more on the future, that is on the meaning the patient wishes to give to his future. ”The future, turning into present, is the principal time of the existential psychotherapy [22], C. The quality of the inter-human relation

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character were the phenomenologists Martin Buber and Emmanuel Lévinas. For Buber [23], the relation, man-among-men, is the fundamental category of human reality, the true ”spiritual matrix” of man.

Sin and our suffering are apparently caused by the disruption of relational contacts, thus resulting that our ”redemption” or salvation would consist in re-establishing these fractured contacts, in learning again how to build authentic relations, lived face-to-face, Me-You relations. E. Lévinas [24] goes further, emphasizing the ethical dimension, through which the isometric Buberian Me-You relation gets unbalanced, turning into a Me – polite You relation, in a beyond-oneself-for-another relation.

Exploiting these considerations, Yalom considers that at the origin of all existential difficulties, for which someone asks for the help of the psychotherapist (depression, phobia, anxiety, shyness, impotency) there lies the”inability to establish satisfactory long term relations with other people.

Other relational difficulties originate somewhere, much deeper, in the past, in the first interpersonal relations with the parents. Dysfunctional methods of relating with others, once set in, go further in time and influence relations with brothers and sisters, cu playmates, teachers, friends, love partners, with the wife or husband, and with the children” [25]. Thus psychotherapy becomes the study of interpersonal relations aiming at correcting distorted relations, targeting the ability to have a proper relation with others.

Moreover, the key to therapeutic success is the quality of the relation between the therapist and the client. ”The inter-human relation is the one that cures, the relation is the one that cures, the relation is the one that cures– this is my professional catechism!”, Yalom confessed [26], because ”almost everything that the patient does in relation with the therapist during their

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meeting has a transferential side [27].

D. Ultimate concerns

For existentialists, fundamental conflicts that generate anxiety are those that arise from the individual confrontation with the existential given. In Yalom’s opinion [28], these ”ultimate concerns” are four: the implacability of death, freedom and its consequent responsibility, existential isolation and meaninglessness.

Temporality, finitude, nothingness are less anguishing names that philosophers use to designate the same implacable end.

It is the essential reason of anxiety and the main source of psychopathology. ”The basic structure of the finite life, P. Tillich states, is the universal condition that makes anxiety occur” [29].

We worry about freedom, especially after we give in to the conscience of the prior worry, the one regarding finitude. In other words, if we weren’t threatened by an implacable end, we would not be pressured by choice, for we would have time for all possible choices. However, finitude compels us to understand there is no more time for various alternative games. Time passes, the hour glass implacably gets empty. And then every choice acquires the infinite weight of a finite life.

Existential isolation, fundamental loneliness is partially concealed by the feeling of affiliation, that of to-be-togetherwith-the others, to be together, in fusion with the others. But the other above mentioned worries bring us back to reality: time is finite, your choices are the choices of your own life; you are who you are through your choices, and you are absolutely responsible for them. You cannot share the burden of your choices with anyone else.

You are condemned to be free and to carry the burden of your own life.

Meaninglessness is the last ultimate

concern in Yalom’s enumeration. But it completes the cycle and connects itself with the first worry, opening the possibility of an authentic existence, getting the self out of anxiety. ”No one can build you the bridge over which you must cross the river of life, save yourself alone –Nietzsche said. There is in the world one road whereon none may go, except you” [30]. When the will to meaning is blocked, it is compensated for and replaced by the will to power, and in other situations by the will to pleasure. In all cases of neurosis the symptoms invade the existential void. What matters is not the meaning of life in general, abstract, but each and everyone’s vocation, their mission, their purpose, their responsibility [31]. Ultimately ”I only know two things – first, that I will someday die, second, right now I am not dead. The only question is what I will do between these moments” [32]. Between these two moments I must take myself seriously, to find my purpose and fully live my own life as I choose to.

Therefore, in Yalom’s synthetic wording, ”each of us longs for immortality, for reason, community and order; and yet, we must inevitably face death, gratuitousness, isolation and meaninglessness.

Existential therapy is based upon the psychopathological pattern in which anxiety and its negative consequences on adapting represent answers to the four ultimate concerns” [33]. But beyond the answers provided by existential therapy, we are the ones who have to answer after all.

CONCLUSIONS The scope of self, sprung from ancient philosophy has been related to existential anxiety since Kierkegaard. From that moment on it has become a psychological issue. Existential psychotherapy, derived from philosophical existentialism, tries to identify solutions to overcome the ultimate concerns, by freely and responsibly

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acknowledging an authentic existence, that can offer the individual a certain meaning of life.

In the first instance, we would say that religion and authentic faith answer all the individual’s ultimate concerns: they offer him immortality, community, love and a superior meaning of being. For those who do not embrace faith, philosophy is available, as pure exercise of reason, and for those who have neither, there is existential psychotherapy as a last resort.

In the second instance, we could say that existential psychotherapy leads us toward philosophy, and philosophy honestly admits that is has its limits encompassed in the exercise of reason, and beyond them there is faith, hope, love. But the last one is above everything else!

REFERENCES [1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

Liiceanu, G., Nebunia de a gândi cu mintea ta, [The Madness of Thinking with Your Own Mind], Bucureşti: Editura Humanitas, 2016, p.14.

Noica, C., Cuvânt împreună despre rostirea românească, [Discourse on Romanian Speech], București: Editura Eminescu, 1987, p.13.

Fericitul Augustin, Confessiones, [Confessions], București: Editura Institutului Biblic și de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe Române, 1994, p. 285.

Liiceanu, G., Întâlnire cu un necunoscut, [Encounter with a Stranger], București: Editura Humanitas, 2010.

Kohut, H., Psihologia sinelui. Prelegerile de la Institutul de Psihanaliză din Chicago, [The Psychology of Self. Lectures at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis], (ed. Tolpin, P., Tolpin, M.), [The Chicago Institute Lectures], București: Editura Trei, 2016, pp. 357-359.

Clément, É, Demonque, C., HansenLove, Kahn, P., Filosofia de la A la Z, [La Philosophie de A à Z], [Philosophy from A to Z], București: All, 2000, pp. 24-25.

Kierkegaard, S., Le concept de l`angoisse,

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[The concept of Anxiety], Paris: Gallimard, 1935, p. 46.

[8] Kierkegaard, S., Le concept de l`angoisse, [The concept of Anxiety], Paris: Gallimard, 1935, p. 161.

[9] Noica, C., 1995,”Meditații introductive asupra lui Heidegger”, [Introductive Meditations on Heidegger], introductive study to Martin Heidegger, Originea operei de artă, [The Origin of the Work of Art], București: Editura Humanitas, p. 8.

[10] Yalom, I. D., Psihoterapia existențială, [Existential Psychotherapy], București: Editura Trei, 2012, p. 25.

[11] Heidegger, M., Ființă și timp, [Sein und Zeit], [Being and Time], București: Humanitas, 2003, pp. 163-167.

[12] Heidegger, M., Ființă și timp, [Sein und Zeit], [Being and Time], București: Humanitas, 2003, p. 284.

[13] Heidegger, M., Ce este metafizica? [Was ist Metaphysik], [What is Metaphysics?] in Repere pe drumul gândirii, [Landmarks on the Road of Reason], Bucureşti: Editura Politică, 1988, pp.41-44.

[14] Liiceanu, G.,”Excurs aupra câtorva termeni heideggerieni din Ființă și timp”, [Dissertation on several Terms from Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’], in Heidegger, M., Ființă și timp, [Sein und Zeit], [Being and Time], București: Humanitas, 2003, p. 620.

[15] Frankl, E. V., Teoria şi terapia nevrozelor [Theorie und therapie der neurosen], [The Theory and Therapy of Neuroses], Bucureşti: Editura Trei, 2008, p. 287.

[16] Freud, S., 1991, Angoasa și viața instinctuală, [Anxiety and Instinctual Life], București: Editura Universitaria, pp. 11-23.

[17] Solomon, A., Demonul amiezii. O anatomie a depresiei, [The Noonday Demon: An Anatomy of Depression], Bucureşti: Humanitas, 2014, p. 82.

[18] Yalom, I.D., Selecții din opera unui maestru al terapiei și al povestirii , [Selection from the Work of a Master of Therapy and Storytelling], [The Yalom Reader], București: Editura Trei, 2012, p. 157.

[19] May, R., Descoperirea ființei. Fundamentele analizei existențiale [The Discovery of Being.

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The Fundaments of Existential Analysis], Bucureşti: Editura Trei, 2013, p. 140.

[20] Binswanger, L.,”Existential Analysis and Psychotherapy”, quoted by Rollo May, 2013, p.47.

[21] Rogers, C., A deveni persoană, [Becoming a Person], București:Trei, 2008, p. 285 [22] Yalom, I. D., Psihoterapia existențială, [Existential Psychotherapy], Bucrești: Editura Trei, 2012, p. 19.

[23] Buber, M., Eu şi Tu, [Ich und Du], [Me and You], Bucureşti: Editura Humanitas, 1992.

[24] Lévinas, E., Între noi. Încercare de a-l gândi pe celălalt [Entre nous. Essais sur le pensera-l`autre], [Between Us. Attempt to Think the Other One], Bucureşti: Editura All, 2000.

[25] Yalom, I.D., Ginny Elkin, G., Cu fiecare zi mai aproape, [Every Day Gets a Little Closer], București: Editura Trei, 2012, p. 330 [26] Yalom, I.D., Călăul dragostei și alte povești de psihoterapie [Love`s Executioner And Other Tales Of Psychotherapy], București: Ed. Trei, 2012, p. 126.

[27] May, R., Descoperirea ființei. Fundamentele analizei existențiale [The Discovery of Being], Bucureşti: Editura Trei, 2013, p. 285.

[28] Yalom, I. D., Psihoterapia existențială, [Existential Psychotherapy], București: Editura Trei ,2012.

[29] Tillich, P., Dinamica credinței, [Dynamics of Faith], București: Editura Herald, 2007, p. 109 [30] Netzsche, Fr. Nașterea tragediei. Considerații inactuale III Schopenhauer educator, [The Birth of Tragedy. Inactual Considerations III Schopenhauer as an Educator] quoted by May, R., Descoperirea ființei. Fundamentele analizei existențiale [The Discovery of Being.

The Fundaments of Existential Analysis], Bucureşti: Editura Trei, 2013, p. 102.

[31] Frankl, V., Omul în căutarea sensului vieții [Man’s Search for the Meaning of Life], București: Meteor Press, 2012.

[32] May, R., Descoperirea ființei. Fundamentele analizei existențiale [The Discovery of Being.

The Fundaments of Existential Analysis], Bucureşti: Editura Trei, 2013, p. 221.

[33] Yalom, I. D., Psihoterapia existențială, [Existential Psychotherapy], București:

Editura Trei, 2012, p. 557.

Biography Mircea Adrian MARICA I have a Ph.D. degree in Philosophy, and I am mostly preoccupied with the problems met due to the interaction of philosophy with psychology, respectively psychotherapy and applied philosophy, philosophical counseling and psychological counseling, applied ethics and the psychologist’s ethics, logical thinking and psychology off thinking, philosophy of mind and cognitive psychology etc.

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DIALOGO JOURNAL 3 : 2 (2017) 91 - 102

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This paper was presented in the

Bridging Science and Religion together: SELF - SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS. (DIALOGO-CONF 2017 SSC)

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held online, on the Journal’s website, from May 19 - 26, 2017

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Aspects of Immortality in Terms of Conditionalism Ioan-Gheorghe Rotaru

PhD Associate Professor ‘Timotheus’ Brethren Theological Institute of Bucharest Romania ARTICLE INFO

ABSTRACT

Article history: Received 13 April 2017 Received in revised form 5 May Accepted 10 May 2017 Available online 30 May 2017 doi: 10.18638/dialogo.2017.3.2.8

Conditionalism is a religious concept met in the ancient Judaism dogma, but also in some old Christian religious groups, and in some radical Protestant Christian denominations together with theologians past and present, who do not accept the doctrine of the soul’s natural immortality, but only that immortality that those saved by the sacrifice of our Saviour Jesus Christ on the Cross will receive as a gift from God, immortality which will be given at the end of our world’s dramatic history. They believe that man was created from the ashes of the ground and after contact with the breath of divine life given by the Creator, breath which includes in it the principle of life, man became a rational soul, a living person with self awareness and indivisible being.

Conditionalism believes that man is mortal and that only Deity possesses immortality which means not only the quality of not dying, but also the property to be the cause and the source of one’s own life. They believe that immortality is not a natural quality of man or his soul, but is exclusively considered as being God’s gift, subject to saving (salvation).[1]

Keywords: man; human nature; body; soul; spirit; immortality;

© 2014 RCDST. All rights reserved.

I. INTRODUCTION Conditionalism[2] is a religious concept met in the ancient Judaism dogma, but also in some old Christian religious groups, and in some radical Protestant Christian denominations together with theologians past and present. The name of this religious concept of conditionalism comes from the meaning of the conditionalist, hypnopsihitist[3], psychopannychitist[4] or tnitopsihist[5] doctrines, according to the concept that man is considered as naturally and holistically mortal and immortality will mean the gift exclusively only God the Creator’s gift,

offered by resurrection and / or abduction to heaven.[6] This point of view is at acute odds with spiritualism[7], which is defined by the concept of the natural immortality[8] of the soul / spirit, or in other words the doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul, a concept that finds its distant origins in Greek philosophy[ 9], and which today represents a major dogmatic position in the spectrum of Christian doctrine.

The concept of the natural immortality of the soul considers the human being consists of two parts[10], namely body and soul, the corpse or body being mortal and the soul is naturally

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eISSN: 2393-1744, cdISSN: 2392-9928 printISSN: 2457-9297, ISSN-L 2392-9928 ISBN 978-80-554-1338-9

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considered conscious and immortal. The Conditionalists reject spiritualism namely the doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul considering it as being the dogmatic essence of all pagan religions, and in relation to Scripture, a doctrine diametrically opposed to its teachings.

[11] The relationship between body and soul was one of the most important debates in religion or philosophy over the passage of time. The relationship between body and soul, with the debate of each item in question either the body or the soul, along with its nature or fate after the death of the body. Responses to this report divide the thinkers into two categories: namely a category that adopts a monistic pattern of thought, that man is viewed as a whole, as an entity, where body and soul are together inseparably, as a relationship of dependency to one another, while another group sees the man from a dualist perspective, that body and soul are two different, separate entities in a state of conflict.[12] We note that among evangelical Christians there is a significant minority of supporters of the doctrine of conditional immortality also named conditionalists, as declared by The British Evangelical Alliance,[13] and a compact group of this evangelical minority are the Seventh-day Adventists, but in the last decades the doctrine of conditional immortality was reviewed and accepted by a wide range of scholars, even some within the Orthodox Church.[14] II. Biblical-Hebrew conception about man, life and soul from a Conditionalist perspective From a conditionalist perspective, man is believed to be the result of a divine creative act.

While all living things in the animal world have been created after their own kind[15], each species having its own typical form, together with the reproductive capacity of that species.

In contrast to all these creatures created, man was created in a very special way, namely in the

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divine image and not a pattern or image from the animal world. Scriptural text states that: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”[16] Thus leading to a clear distinction between the animal world and human beings.

[17] God’s image, which was taken as a model for man is the way in which He created man. This image does not refer to the bodily form of man, but to the capabilities of freedom, reason and appreciation of good and evil, capabilities that make him particular to the creatures created and who help him, the created being, to get in the position of the know, love and obey the Creator. Man’s relationship with God the Creator is also shown by the terms used in the text of Genesis 1.26. The Hebrew terms dömut which means image and țelem meaning resemblance highlight man’s rapport to God the Creator and creation. That man was created in the divine image highlights the fact that man has a superior origin and not an inferior one, and that man is not essentially equal with God the Creator, it just resembles Him.[18]

Conditionalists believe that God created every creature in the animal world - birds, fish, reptiles, mammals, insects, all “after their kind,”[19] considering so that each species has a typical form, specific to it, also having the reproduction ability of that species.

Compared with these, man was created in the divine image of the Creator[20], and not as some ordinary type taken from the animal world. This fact emerges from the preamble of the Gospel of Luke, where the genealogy of the human race presents Adam, the first man created, as Adam “Son of God.”[21] Thus conditionalists believe that the creation of man, in the divine image, formed the climax of the whole creative act, and God the Creator gave man the high responsibility over all the earth, but also

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over all its creatures.[22] The ancient text of the Old Testament says the following about the origin of human beings: “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”[23], “Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled: thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust. Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth.”[24] While these descriptions about the origin of human beings seem, at first glance, very simple, yet they are particularly significant because they reveal the basic attitude about the origin and essence of the human being, even in the early monotheism of the world. From a conditionalist perspective, according to Dan Dachin’s concept, Scriptural texts reveal the following: 1. Man is created by God and as such is divine; 2. Man is a product, a summation of the body together with the breath of the divine; 3. The human body is manufactured from material created from the ground and 4. Divine breath is essential for human life and without it man could not exist.[25] Conditionalists claim, based on the wording of Genesis 2:7, that the creative act of Adam had two stages, namely: creating the material body (frame) and instilling the life principle (the breath of life, Heb. nișmat chayym) in the limp body created of matter (dust).[26] All creatures created have received the breath of life (Heb. nișmat chayym), according to the book of Genesis 1, 30: “And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.”[27] Given the content of the text in Genesis 2:7, conditionalists say that when God the Creator changed the elements of the earth into a living being, He breathed the breath

of life into Adam’s nostrils, and the breath of life was “the breath of the Almighty who gives life”[28] or the spark of life, just like electricity moving through various components, it can turn a gray screen into a screen that pulsates a lot of action and color. Before God the Creator blew the breath of life into Adam’s nostrils, he was made up from the ground dust, with all body organs in place, placed in perfect form only the man thus created was inert (lifeless).

Conditionalists claim that Holy Scripture’s equation about the creation of man is thus: earth elements (dust of the earth) + breath of life = living being or living soul.[29] In the Hebrew language the occuring terms are bashar + neshamah = nephesh haya.[30] Thus based on the wording of the Scriptural text from Genesis 2:7, conditionalists say that man became a living soul and not to have received from the Creator a living soul, considering so that the living soul is not some constituent part of the human body, it only represents the man as a whole, as a result of combining the two parts, ie body (frame) from the ground (earth) and breath or principle of life given by God the Creator.[31] In general, in the conditionalists’ conception, the soul “expresses the man who was born when the divine spark of life was injected into a physical body, formed from the ground. Similarly, whenever a new baby is born, comes into existence a new soul, every soul - an existence, a new unit of life different and uniquely separated from other similar units. This quality of individuality in every living being, which characterizes it as a single entity, seems to be the idea expressed by the Hebrew word nefeș. When used thus its sense does not expresses of a part of a person, but expresses the person, and in many circumstances is translated as “person.”[32] Dan Dachin specialist in theology and philosophy says that the soul is “an entity that subsumes body (matter) and divine breath.

The soul is therefore seen as a result of all its components (body and breath) and in the

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eventual disappearance of one of them, the soul disappears too.”[33] He also said that in the Hebrew language, the term soul or spirit can be expressed in one of the following terms: ruach, nephesh. In the conditionalists conception, none of these words has the significance of rational soul or pure mind in a philosophical sense, because the Old Testament states that “Nephesh is blood; as was said, ‘for the blood is the life (nephesh)” (Deut. 12,23). Ruach is what goes up and down; as was said: “Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?”[34] According to the same collection of texts from the Old Testament, the word ruach is a homonym, which can mean either “air”, ie one of the four elements or “wind”. In some cases the term may even have a metaphorical meaning, and then it may refer to the vanity of some actions during human life, namely “chasing after the wind”. Most times, the term has the meaning of respiration (breath): “And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life.”[35] Thus Dan Dachin concludes talking about the human soul, saying it is not a substance in itself or an independent and separate enitity from the human body and that the soul is not something (a particular entity) added to the body because it is not a constituent part of man, but only represents the man as a whole. The union of the two elements, the breath of life and body is that which gives or constitutes the soul, and the combination of these two elements, namely the breath of life or spirit with the body is a perfect union. He bases his claims on the Biblical verse “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”[36] The term nephesh is used to translate the phrase “living soul”. Thus the soul is the human being as a whole and as a union of the body with the spirit. Dan Dachin says that the divine action to ‘blow down’ to become a ‘living being’ eliminates the idea of any dualism. Dan Dachin’s conclusion as well as the conditionalists’, according to the interpretation of this text from Genesis 2.7, is

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twofold: The first conclusion is that the soul is not an eternal entity, and the second is that the soul or the human being, is in -a report of double dependency to the body-breathed unit, and then to the relationship between creature and Creator. According to Dan Dachin’s concept the best term to define the human soul would be psychosomatic entity.[37] The Hebrew word nephesh chayyah[38] comes from naphesh and means to breathe, is translated as living being or soul, does not refer exclusively to man, because it also refers to the creatures created: “And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.”[39] “And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.”[40] The term nephesh, when referring to animals designates them as some living creatures that God created, and when the term refers to man it designates him as a living being, a living soul and not as a separate entity that during Creation was united with the dust of the earth. Thus, in the conditionalis view term nephesh is not a part of a person, but the person itself, as stated in several places in the Holy Scripture, such as: “The king of Sodom said to Abram, “Give me the people and keep the goods for yourself.”[41] “Your ancestors who went down into Egypt were seventy in all, and now the LORD your God has made you as numerous as the stars in the sky”,[42] “while he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die.

“I have had enough, LORD,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.”[43] The term nephesh can also be found in Holy Scripture phrases like “my soul”, “your soul,” “his soul” etc, which are commonly used expressions for the personal pronoun “I”, “me” “you”, “he”.

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Here are some examples: “Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.”[44]; Do not defile yourselves by any of these creatures. Do not make yourselves unclean by means of them or be made unclean by them.[45] “So be very careful to love the LORD your God. “But if you turn away and ally yourselves with the survivors of these nations that remain among you and if you intermarry with them and associate with them…”[46] “As she breathed her last—for she was dying—she named her son Ben-Oni. But his father named him Benjamin.”[47] There are situations where nephesh refers to desires, passion, appetite (Dt 23.24; Prov 23.2; Eccles.

6.7.), to the place of feelings (Gen 34.3; Song C 1.7), to the desire of man to eat and drink (Deut.

12: 1 Sam. 2, 16) as well as the inner reproducing impulses (Je 2, 24). Using the term psyche in the New Testament is similar to nephesh in the Old Testament. The term psyche, which is used for both humans and animals does not have the quality to be immortal but is subject to death and can be destroyed. (Rev. 16.3; Matt. 10:28).

[48]

In order to have an overview of the different meanings attributed to the term nephesh in the Old Testament, we will summarize the informations about it. Thus the term nephesh has various uses: only animals (22), creatures and man (7), man as an individual being (53) for man, exercising a certain authority, or doing certain things (96) to man, possessing an animal instinct (22) to man, in the exercise of mental faculties and feelings (231) soul destroyed

by God or by man (54) to man as being subject to death (243) for man - already dead (13) in connection with the reaching of the soul into a place expressed by four different terms (13).[49] Daniel Zota wrote that the word soul in its theological sense, can not cover all the meanings of the Hebrew word nephesh and that the word soul carries with it today meanings originated from Greek Platonism,

Orphism or Gnosticism, and that in the Old Testament the term nephesh never ment immortal soul but only principle of life, living being, man as such as a person. Although for most people, the word soul means an immortal component of human personality that survives death, textual use and Hebrew culture do not allow such an interpretation.

[50] Dan Dachin says that “nowhere in the Bible the concept of soul is put alongside that of immortality. But it clearly states that the soul can live forever, that after the socalled resurrection. If in Platonism the body is a prison which “imposes on the soul a law that it is not right”, and thus life here is an ordeal and that only death can set it free, in Christianity death does not bring liberation but suffering, because life is a gift, not a curse. If for Plato death means salvation for Christians, the resurrection is the biggest gain, because it is evidence that death was defeated. Christian eternity does not manifest itself in a world that comes through death but is the deepest expression a Creator can give to life. Platonism expresses eternity by denying life, while Christianity affirms eterinity by eradicating death.”[51] Nicuşor Ghiţescu said that although the corresponding Greek and Hebrew words for “soul” and “spirit” are found in Scripture 1,700 times, it does not say even once that man is immortal. The Holy Scripture does not leave, even once, to be understood that the “soul” or “spirit” of man would exist somewhere in a conscious state, independent of the body. In the Holy Scripture the word “immortal” occurs only once and then it refers to God.[52] III. Reasons for which conditionalists

do not accept the theory of the soul’s natural immortality

Conditionalists do not accept nor believe in the theory of the soul’s immortality for several

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reasons, among which we mention, according to the synthesizing made in a magistral, clear and precise manner by Lori Balogh:[53] 1. Conditionalists do not accept or believe in the theory of immortality because the Holy Scripture teaches that “the only one who hath immortality” is God: “Which in his times he shall shew, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords; Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and power everlasting. Amen.”[54] Our first parents, Adam and Eve were created by God the Creator with an immortality conditioned by obeying. Thus, the immortality the two received at Creation was a great gift from God for them. Unfortunately disobedience made Adam and Eve to lose the gift of immortality and the Creator’s warning: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”[55] became a sad reality for the entire human race.

[56] 2. Conditionalists do not accept nor believe in the theory of immortality because they say they only accept the word of God and not the devil’s “old serpent” (Apocalipse 12, 9). Lori Balogh says that when read or reread the history of Creation and the Fall of Man, you can not overlook, if you mean well, the contradiction between two categorical statements. The first statement is a crystal clear warning but also equally grave, the Creator gave our first parents, Adam and Eve: “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. ”[57] The second statement, as categorical is an assurance given to the same people, Adam and Eve, by the serpent which led him into temptation: “And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die.”[58] The Creator told both Adam and Eve that the day they eat they will die, and the serpent told that they

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will not die. Conditionalists say they believe the assertion of God the Creator and not the snake’s, a creature, because only the Creator is worthy of all credence and therefore they think that from this point emerge the two big conceptions about man’s state in death and whether the soul is mortal or immortal.[59] 3. Another reason conditionalists do not believe in the immortality of the soul is that the thesis of the soul’s unconditional immortality promotes independence from God. The thesis of the immortality of the soul directly denies the idea that human beings life is dependent on the Creator. If the soul is immortal unconditionally, then the conditionalists ask why would he need God? 4. Conditionalists believe that the Holy Scripture teaches that “for the wages of sin is death”[60] and not eternal life lived in another sphere of existence. They think that death is the end of life and not its continuation. They ask the question if death would be another existence what exactly the wages of sin be?

Therefore conditionalists reject the theory of the immortality of the soul.

5. Another reason for not accepting the unconditional immortality of the soul is that God declares that “the soul that sins, it shall die.”

The Holy Scripture presents the following divine statements: “For everyone belongs to me, the parent as well as the child—both alike belong to me. The one who sins is the one who will die…

The one who sins is the one who will die. The child will not share the guilt of the parent, nor will the parent share the guilt of the child. The righteousness of the righteous will be credited to them, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against them.”[61] For this reason, no matter what is meant by soul (either a constituent part of the human being or human being in its entirety), the Holy Scripture is clear in this regard: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”[62] and therefore everyone’s soul is mortal and not immortal.

6. Another reason for which the immortality of the soul is not accepted is that the theory

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would deem absurd and unnecessary Creation itself. Conditionalists say that if the soul could feel, think and could communicate in the absence of the body, what need was there for God to create the body? Why it took the creative act for God to grab the dust of the earth and with His own hands to shape the image of man from the lifeless clay? In this situation, the body would appear as a cage, like a prison of the soul from which man should take care to escape as quickly as possible in order to liberate his soul kept shackled. Rather the Holy Scripture, conditionalists say, teaches that human bodies are “temples of the Holy Spirit”, which should be preserved in the best condition possible (1 Corinthians 3: 16-17; 6: 19-20).

7. Arithmetic of creation and death. The conditionalists say that for the creation of man God used a very simple arithmetic: “Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”[63] This arithmetic of the creation of man can be expressed as: Body (dust) + breath of life (life) = living soul (man as a whole). Death, however, is considered by the conditionalists, as a reverse operation “and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who Gave it.”[64] Thus, the arithmetic of man’s death can be expressed as: Living being (human), - the breath of life (life) = body (dust). Conditionalists say that what God withdraws upon death is not a part of man, ie an entity conscious of itself, but is just the “breath of life” or “spirit of life” that God has given birth to (the spark of life, life itself).[65] 8. Conditionalists do not believe in the immortality of the soul because this theory implies that something of man remains conscious after death. Conditionalists say the Bible teaches something else that nothing from man remains conscious in death: “For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even their name is forgotten. Their love, their hate and their jealousy have long since vanished; never again

will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun…Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.”[66] 9. The Holy Scripture calls the dwelling of the dead as “the silent place”: “It is not the dead who praise the LORD, those who go down to the place of silence.“[67] Conditionalists wonder how could a soul who has gone to hell shut up amid great and unimaginable torment.

Wouldn’t he shout from there for mercy and help? The same question arises in connection with a soul arrived in heaven. Could he really be silent without being grateful, not give thanks and not praise his Lord and his Savior? Because the Holy Scripture called the dwelling of the dead as “a place of silence” means that there is no life, there is no self-consciousness, because: “Among the dead no one proclaims your name.

Who praises you from the grave?“[68]; “What is gained if I am silenced, if I go down to the pit?

Will the dust praise you? Will it proclaim your faithfulness?” [69]; “Do you show your wonders to the dead? Do their spirits rise up and praise you? Is your love declared in the grave, your faithfulness in Destruction ? Are your wonders known in the place of darkness, or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?”[70] 10. Conditionalists do not believe in the immortality of the soul because this doctrine strikes at the foundation of the sacrifice at the Cross of the Savior. If there is no real death, conditionalists say, but a transition into another sphere of existence, then they wonder why Jesus Christ died? And the conditionalists also ask what kind of death will be destroyed at the end of the history of sin if death is, in fact, a different life, because the Holy Scripture says: “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”[71] 11. Conditionalists do not believe in the immortality of the soul because this theory makes useless and absurd the final judgment of God. The conditionalists say that if people were judged immediately after death, receiving their

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reward in the moments immediately following the judgment, what purpose would the final judgment have?

12. The Savior’s promise: “Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done.”[72] Conditionalists say if the righteous go to heaven and the wicked go to hell each immediately after death, then what’s the point of the Savior’s promise that He will bring rewards to all people, since they have already received their reward at death? Conditionalists bring as argument the scriptural text which refers to those who suffered for their faith and who did not receive the desired reward upon death, but will receive it in the future from God: “And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.”[73] 13. Immortality of the soul makes absurd the doctrine of the resurrection presented in the Holy Scripture. The conditionalists wonder why there would be a need for resurrection if the soul unleashed from the body could feel, communicate, and reason without the flesh? In this situation, the resurrection seems pointless, even absurd ... If the dead is “alive”, why should he be ressurected? And if he is awake, why should he be awakened? To return the soul, which is in a state of freedom and happiness, back to the “cage” of the body would seem absurd and even an inhuman act by the Creator.

14. The promised return of the Savior.

Conditionalists say if the righteous would already be in heaven with their Lord, then what use would a second coming have for them? What would then make the “blessed hope”[74] the Christians expect?

15. Conditionalists consider the teachings of the immortality of the soul as not of Biblical origin, but a pagan philosophical origin. Conditionalists say that the Scriptures of the Old Testament contain no reference to such a teaching, it entered into Judaism after the liberation from the Babylonian

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slavery through Hellenistic culture. Even the teaching about the immortality of the soul, which is represented as Christian, is in fact derived from the Greek philosophers and especially from Aristotle and Plato.[75] The conditionalists warn about this direction by appealing to spiritual vigil: “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.”[76] 16. The concept of the immortality of the soul leaves the door wide open for spiritualism activity. Conditionalists say that if the soul continues to exist somewhere after death, why would the people not try to communicate with it? And if there were such a premise, why would the Devil would lose the opportunity to possess the spirits of the dead and influencing the lives of the living after his own goals and interests? Scripture shows the disguises of Satan and his servants: “And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness…”[77] Conditionalists say that the so-called spirits of the dead are really nothing but disguised demons on a mission to deceive people ignorant of God’s Word.[78] 17. Another reason conditionalists do not believe in the natural immortality of the soul is that the Holy Scripture presents God as merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness: “The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.”[79] Conditionalists argue

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that teaching about the immortality of the soul entails other false teachings, such as those related to the existence of heaven and hell, and the latter being considered as particularly incompatible with the character of God. Speaking about the beauty of the divine character, Lori Balogh, synthesized, and wrote that “a God who is revealed as Father, with full authority to punish the sinner, and as the Creator, with full right of life and death over His creatures, will not be unfair in His judgments. Would He who “so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3, 16), punish for eternally in indescribable torments the sinful man? No matter how many sins a man can do in his short life, they can not justify an eternal punishment. No human court, no matter how strict, does not punish wickedness so disproportionately.

Much less a God of love who on Calvary gave us the greatest proof of the love that He carries for us. “[80]

by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality,” will receive “eternal life.” Romans 2:7.”[81] Lori Balogh summarizes that conditionalists, even if they do not believe in the natural and unconditional immortality of the soul, they believe however that immortality which the ones redeemed by the sacrifice on the Cross of our Saviour Jesus Christ will receive as a gift from God, immortality that will be given at the end of our world’s dramatic history. The Holy Scripture promises that He “To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life.”[82] This is the kind of immortality that conditionalists believe in, expect and prepare for it, linking all their hopes of the One who, by His great and infinite sacrifice on the Cross, became[83]: “the Way, the Truth , and the Life “[84] V. References [1]

IV. Conclusions

From a conditionalist perspective author Ellen G. White made a masterful presentation of immortality: “immortality, promised to man on condition of obedience, had been forfeited by transgression. Adam could not transmit to his posterity that which he did not possess; and there could have been no hope for the fallen race had not God, by the sacrifice of His Son, brought immortality within their reach. While “death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned,” Christ “hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” Romans 5:12; 2 Timothy 1:10. And only through Christ can immortality be obtained. Said Jesus: “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life.” John 3:36. Every man may come into possession of this priceless blessing if he will comply with the conditions. All “who

[2]

[3] [4]

[5] [6] [7] [8]

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https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemurirea_ condiționată#cite_note-5; acc.04.04.2017; Wilhelm Moldovan, Manualul Doctrinelor Biblice AZS, Editura Curtierul Adventist, București, 1982, p. 142.

Condiționalism = This is a doctrine that immortality of the soul would be subject to a life lived in obedience to God. on earth.[The term comes from fr. conditionnalisme]. (gr. hypnos = sleep) (gr. psyché = soul) ;(gr. pannychios = sitting all night). Euseviu Popovici, Istoria Bisericească universală, cartea a II-a, ediția a doua, Editura Tipografiei cărților bisericești din București, 1928, pp. 540-542. (gr. thnetos = mortal) https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemurirea_ condiționată, acc.13.03.2017.

Spiritualism = concept inherent immortality of the soul / spirit.

“Nemurirea este acea calitate de a exista veşnic, la infinit, în stare vie şi conştientă [Immortality is that quality of being eternally,

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infinitely, in a living and conscious state]”, cf. Olga Bucaciuc, Despre nemurirea sufletului, http://www.resursecrestine.ro/ predici/109839/despre-nemurirea-sufletului, acc.03.04.2017.

[9] Joseph Ratzinger (Papa Benedict al XVI-lea), Introduccion al cristianismo, Salamanca: Sigueme, 2005, pp. 288-289; Wilhelm Moldovan, Manualul Doctrinelor Biblice AZS, București, p. 146.

[10] Conception called dihotomism.

[11] https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemurirea_ condiționată, acc.13.03.2017.

[12] Dan Dachin, Nemurirea sufletului, de la Platon la Christos, http://dandachin.blogspot. ro/2010/08/nemurirea-sufletului-de-la-platonla.html, acc.13.03.2017.

[13] The Nature of Hell. Conclusions and Recommendations, Evangelical Alliance, 2000, http://www.eauk.org/theology/ acute/loader.cfm?csModule=security/ getfile&pageid=9164 ; http://pdf. a m a z i n g d i s c o v e r i e s . o rg / R e f e r e n c e s / RB/279%20PDFs/Christian-conditionalismslide-24.pdf ; Evangelical Alliance; Alliance Commission on Unity and Truth among Evangelicals (2000).

«Conclusions and Recommendations»(http:// w w w. e a u k . o rg / t h e o l o g y / a c u t e / l o a d e r. c f m ? c s M o d u l e = s e c u r i t y / getfile&pageid=9164). In Hilborn, David.

The Nature of Hell. London: Paternoster Publishing. pp. 130–135; Florovsky, Georges (February 13, 2004). “The ‘Immortality’ of the Soul” (http://www.fatheralexander.org/ booklets/english/immortality_soul.htm).

Holy Trinity Orthodox Mission; Evangelical Alliance; Alliance Commission on Unity and Truth among Evangelicals (2000). In Hilborn, David. The Nature of Hell. London: Paternoster Publishing. p. 74.

[14] https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemurirea_ condiționată, acc.04.04.2017 [15] Genesis 1, 21.24.25.

[16] Genesis 1, 26.

[17] Adventiștii de Ziua a Șaptea cred..., Casa de editură Cuvântul Evangheliei, București, 1993, p. 127.

[18] Wilhelm Moldovan, Manualul Doctrinelor

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Biblice AZS, București, p. 139.

Genesis 1, 21,24,25.

[20] Genesis 1, 26.

[21] Luke 3, 38.

[22] Adventiștii de Ziua a Șaptea cred..., Casa de editură Cuvântul Evangheliei, București, 1993, p. 127.

[23] Genesis 2, 7.

[24] Psalms 104, 29-30.

[25] Dan Dachin, Nemurirea sufletului, de la Platon la Christos, http://dandachin.blogspot. ro/2010/08/nemurirea-sufletului-de-la-platonla.html, acc.13.03.2017.

[26] Lori Balogh, Natura omului, http://www. loribalogh.ro/2013/09/natura-omului-2/, acc.03.04.2017.

[27] Genesis 1,30.

[28] Job, 33,4.

[29] Adventiștii de Ziua a Șaptea cred..., Casa de editură Cuvântul Evangheliei, București, 1993, p. 128.

[30] Daniel Zota, Sensul biblic al termenului ebraic “nephesh” și nemurirea sufletului, în http://curieruladventist.ro/articole/sensulbiblic-al-termenului-ebraic-qnepheshq-inemurirea-sufletului. acc.02.04.2017. Lucian Cristescu, Galileanul, Casa de Editură Viață și Sănătate, București, 2012, p. 371; http:// curieruladventist.ro/articole/sensul-biblic-altermenului-ebraic-qnepheshq-i-nemurireasufletului. acc.02.04.2017. Lucian Cristescu, Galileanul, Casa de Editură Viață și Sănătate, București, 2012, p. 371.

[31] Wilhelm Moldovan, Manualul Doctrinelor Biblice AZS, București, p. 139; Lucian Cristescu, Galileanul, Casa de Editură Viață și Sănătate, București, 2012, p. 371.

[32] Siegfried H. Horn, “S.D.A. Bible Dictionary”, 1960, pp.1036-1037, în Wilhelm Moldovan, Manualul Doctrinelor Biblice AZS, București, pp. 139-140.

[33] Dan Dachin, Nemurirea sufletului, de la Platon la Christos, http://dandachin.blogspot. ro/2010/08/nemurirea-sufletului-de-la-platonla.html, acc.31.03.2017.

[34] Ecclesiastes 3, 21.

[35] Genesis 7,15.

[19]

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Genesis 2, 7.

Dan Dachin, Nemurirea sufletului, de la Platon la Christos, http://dandachin.blogspot. ro/2010/08/nemurirea-sufletului-de-laplaton-la.html, acc.02.04.2017.

[38] Greek correspondent of the term, is the psyche, within which we find in the New Testament content.

[39] Genesis 1,20,24.

[40] Genesis 2, 19.

[41] Genesis 14, 21.

[42] Deuteronomy 10, 22.

[43] 1 Kings 19,4.

[44] Genesis 12,13.

[45] Leviticus 11, 43.

[46] Joshua 23, 11-12.

[47] Genesis 35,18.

[48] Adventiștii de Ziua a Șaptea cred..., Casa de editură Cuvântul Evangheliei, București, 1993, pp. 129-130.

[49] Daniel Zota, Sensul biblic al termenului ebraic “nephesh” și nemurirea sufletului, în http://curieruladventist.ro/articole/sensulbiblic-al-termenului-ebraic-qnepheshq-inemurirea-sufletului. acc.02.04.2017.

[50] Ibidem.

[51] Dan Dachin, Nemurirea sufletului, de la Platon la Christos, http://dandachin.blogspot. ro/2010/08/nemurirea-sufletului-de-laplaton-la.html, acc.02.04.2017.

[52] Nicusor Ghitescu, Nemurirea sufletului, https://cercetatiscripturile.intercer.net/ resurse-biblice/articole/articole-despredoctrina-biblica/nemurirea-sufletului-autornicusor-ghitescu.html, acc.02.04.2017.

[53] The list of reasons and explanations related was taken entirely from Lori Balogh, De ce nu cred in nemurirea sufletului,2010, http:// articolecrestine.com/dincolo-de-pragulmormantului/09-de-ce-nu-cred-in-nemurireasufletului.html, acc.02.04.2017.

[54] See and : Lori Balogh, Teoria nemuririi sufletului, http://www.loribalogh.ro/2013/11/ teoria-nemuririi-sufletului/; Lori Balogh, Starea omului in moarte, http://www. loribalogh.ro/2013/12/starea-omului-inmoarte/; Lori Balogh, Geneza 35,18: “Își [36] [37]

dădea sufletul”, http://www.loribalogh. ro/2013/11/geneza-3518-isi-dadea-sufletul/, acc.03.04.2017.

[55] 1Timothy 6,15-16.

[56] Genesis 2, 17.

[57] Lori Balogh, De ce nu cred in nemurirea sufletului,2010, http://articolecrestine.com/ dincolo-de-pragul-mormantului/09-dece-nu-cred-in-nemurirea-sufletului.html, acc.02.04.2017.

[58] Genesis 2, 16-17.

[59] Genesis 3, 4.

[60] Lori Balogh, De ce nu cred in nemurirea sufletului,2010, http://articolecrestine.com/ dincolo-de-pragul-mormantului/09-dece-nu-cred-in-nemurirea-sufletului.html, acc.02.04.2017.

[61] Romans 6, 23.

[62] Ezekiel 18, 4.20.

[63] Romans 3, 23.

[64] Genesis 2,7.

[65] Ecclesiastes 12, 7.

[66] See and Lucian Cristescu, Galileanul, Casa de Editură Viață și Sănătate, București, 2012, p. 371.

[67] Ecclesiastes 9, 5-6.10.

[68] Psalms 115,17.

[69] Psalms 6,5.

[70] Psalms 30,9.

[71] Psalms 88,10-12.

[72] 1 Corinthians 15, 26.

[73] Revelation 22,12.

[74] Hebrews 11,39-40.

[75] Titus 2, 13.

[76] Ioan-Gheorghe Rotaru, Aspecte antropologice în gândirea patristică şi a primelor secole creştine, Presa Universitară Clujeană, ClujNapoca, 2005, pp. 187-211.

[77] [76]. Colossians 2,8.

[78] 2 Corinthians 11,14-15.

[79] Lori Balogh, De ce nu cred in nemurirea sufletului,2010, http://articolecrestine.com/ dincolo-de-pragul-mormantului/09-dece-nu-cred-in-nemurirea-sufletului.html, acc.02.04.2017. See and: Olga Bucaciuc,

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Despre nemurirea sufletului,http://www. resursecrestine.ro/predici/109839/desprenemurirea-sufletului, acc.03.04.2017. Lucian Cristescu, Galileanul, Casa de Editură Viață și Sănătate, București, 2012, pp. 374-376; Ellen G.White, Tragedia veacurilor, București: Editură Viață și Sănătate, 2011, pp. 496-506.

[80] Exodus 34, 6-7.

[81] Lori Balogh, De ce nu cred in nemurirea sufletului, 2010, http://articolecrestine.com/ dincolo-de-pragul-mormantului/09-dece-nu-cred-in-nemurirea-sufletului.html, acc.02.04.2017.

[82] Ellen G.White, Tragedia veacurilor, București: Editură Viață și Sănătate, 2011, p.480.

[83] Romans 2, 7.

[84] Lori Balogh, De ce nu cred in nemurirea sufletului,2010, http://articolecrestine.com/ dincolo-de-pragul-mormantului/09-dece-nu-cred-in-nemurirea-sufletului.html, acc.02.04.2017 [85] John 14,6.

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This paper was presented in the

Bridging Science and Religion together: SELF - SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS. (DIALOGO-CONF 2017 SSC)

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held online, on the Journal’s website, from May 19 - 26, 2017

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The Holly Confession and the Holly Sacrament – fundamental secrets of the spiritual life in Orthodoxy Archimandrite Assoc. Prof. Vasile MIRON, PhD Department of Orthodox Theology Ovidius University of Constanta, Constanta, Romania

ARTICLE INFO

ABSTRACT

Article history: Received 26 February 2017 Received in revised form 13 May Accepted 15 May 2017 Available online 30 May 2017 doi: 10.18638/dialogo.2017.3.2.9

The Secret of the Holy Confession and of the holy Sacrament represent the nucleus of the spiritual life in our Orthodox Church. Through these two Secrets the plenary integration of the believers in the Church’s body is achieved and, the main purpose of our Christian life is fulfilled: the holiness and the salvation of the believers in Christ, through the Holy Ghost.

Keywords: confession; sacrament; communion; holiness; salvation;

© 2014 RCDST. All rights reserved.

I. INTRODUCTION

The Holy Confession and the Holy Sacrament represents the nucleus that polarizes and stimulates the entire spiritual life of the Orthodox Church. Without these two secrets we can’t have life in Christ and we cannot acquire the crown of salvation, as Jesus Christ Himself said: ”Unless you repent yourselves, you shall perish” (Marcus IX, 12) and „ unless you eat the Man’s Son’s Body and drink His Blood, you will not have life within you” (John, 51-52).

This study sets to highlight the special importance that these two Holy Secrets present in the life and spirituality of the orthodox Christians, because they put into condition the achievement of the believers’ salvation itself.

Being fundamental Secrets of the development of the spiritual life in Orthodoxy, they are administered to all the believers. An exception to this rule is made only by The Holy Secret of Confession, which is administered starting with the age of 7, when the child begins to be conscious,

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can tell between good and evil, and is able to acknowledge his mistakes and confess them.

The Secret of the Holy Eucharist is administered regardless the age categories of the believers, including babies who haven’t turned 7 yet, because it is considered that, by this time, they are innocent and are not able of great sins which would restrain them from receiving the Holy Eucharist.

During the life, there are special situations in which certain believers are forced to receive the Holy Eucharist. In these situations are included the following categories of believers: women before giving birth, young men before going to war, grooms before marriage, candidates for priesthood, before receiving this Secret and the seriously ill people, before surgery.

The Confession and the Holy Eucharist are the fundamental secrets of the moulding and completing the moral-religious life in Orthodoxy. If the Baptism is called „ the door of secrets”, and the Confession „the second Baptism”, the Holy Eucharist is the crowning of all Secrets, as we receive not only the gift of forgiving the sins, like in the Confessional Secret, but we also fully unite with Christ through Eucharist with His Holy Body and Blood. Through these two Holy Secrets „we reflect the godly face within us, which resembles God’s face” [1], as a holy priest says. The Secret of Confession frees us from the burden of the sins, and the Holy Eucharist provides us the food of he eternal life. It is „ the cure of immortality and medicine for staying alive, and forever living in Jesus Christ” [2], because, „ mainly, Eucharist is given for the eternal life, thus for the elevation above earthly life; the yeast or the dough that gradually transforms our earthly life in the afterlife [3], as a great theology of our Church states.

Through the Secret of the Holy Baptism we cleanse ourselves from the ancestral sin, but the consequences affect, further

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on, our human nature. Knowing the imperfection and the weakness of the human nature, our Savior Jesus Christ has established a therapeutic way for spiritual health, such as , the Secret of the Holy, also named „The Second Baptism”, because He „doesn’t want the death of the sinner, but for him to turn around from his way and be alive” (Ezekiel, XXXIII, 11). The Confession is the most efficient process of individual pastoring, the key to the entire pastoralmissionary activity, as it was rightfully called by the specialists, because, within it, “the spiritual guiding activity takes place in the most obvious samaritan spirit. It is, in different words, a full moral assistence.” [4].

In the confessional seat, the main role of the priest is to diagnose and heal the spiritual passions and sins that affect each penint.

At his turn,”the man kneeling down under the epitrachelion in front of Jesus’s Icon, is like a sealed citadel, wanting to reveal itself.

It depends now on the confessor to have the ability to lift the locks, to find his own key with which he would open the gate of the human soul and, upon opening it, to chase away from this inner citadel everything that’s unworthy, everything that prevents the happiness of our lives here and beyond death. If the priest knows how to proceed with wisdom and artsy in the Secret of the Confession, he can turn a lost man into a righteous one, a sinner into a saved man, from a devil’s friend into a future citizen of God’s kingdom. So, the result depends, mainly, on the manner in which the priest knows how to conduct the confession [5].

With this trait, the Secret of the Confession is constituted as a true virtues school, offering the confessor a wonderful opportunity to educate his believers on different aspects. „He is called upon to enlighten the mind through explanations and preventions, to guide the will through advice, through urges, encouragements and to awaken in the heart the taste of virtue

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and good. Here, the priest is seen as a guide for each person,no matter if he has to help one to raise from the sin and dodge it in the future, or he has to strengthen him, so he can maintain his position, or stimulate other people toc limb new stairs on their way to virtue or perfection [6].

The penitent is expected to have a certain attitude and spiritual availability: a crushed heart, regret, courage and the wish to vanquish the shyness and the honest desire to denounce himself, accusing and not excusing himself. Only in these conditions we have the pledge that the confession will be real, correct, objective and complete, well-knowing that, everytime we confess our sins, „faithfull and righteous is God to forgive our sins and cleanse us of all the injustice.(John I, 8).

Thus, the only way to relieve the soul and to confort the burdened conscience with a load of sins is the confession, with trust and humbleness in front of the confessor, to receive the healing balm of forgiveness, as, there is no sin that can subdue God’s love for people. „Nothing brings more joy to God than a repented man and his salvation, for whom there is the entire word and secret [7].

On the other hand, the confessor, must be „as much of an artist as a wizard”, say the holy code of laws, able toc ut open the secret depths of the human soul, to detect the nature and the causes of the diseases and to apply the most suited therapeutical means „because, just like in the case of healing the body, the purpose of the medical trade is to heal the ill person, and, the type of treatment is different due to the fact that every illness has its own remedy , and, the soul, too, has its own types of illnesses and pains, that also require a wide treatment, that can produce healing, according to the cause of the suffering [8].

The father confessor must have his ardors healed , so as to be able to give the

most suited guiding and recommendations , as one who has made his own experience in the victory he had won in the fight against sin. That is why, believers choose, preferably, father confessors with a chosen and improved life, to whom they confess regularly, because they feel that these ones transmit them pieces of advice and teaching from the dowry of their soul and from their pastoral experience.

The confessions of the sins before the father confessor is made in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ , Who is active in a real and unseen way in the work of this Holy secret, receiving the confession of our sins, just as it is said in the sacred formula that the priest says at the end of the ritual of the mass, when he places his hand on the head of the penitent and says: “Lord and our God Jesus Christ , with the grace and the mercy of His love for humans, shall forgive you, son (X) and forgive all your sins…”.

The believers feel an improvement, a comfort and piece of mind after the confession and, this fact is nothing else but the effect that is exerted by the ineffable work of the Secret on them.

The Holy Eucharist is „the heavenly bread and the glass of life” which waters and feeds continuously, the spiritual body of Christ’s Church turning the believers’ community into God’s Church, understood and defined as display environment of emotions and living the new life in God’s Kingdom. „Church and the Holy Eucharistsays the Archimandrite Hierotheos Vlachoscan be named God’s Kingdom when the ones living in them achieve the image of the unbuilt glory of God, which is the true Kingdom.” [9].

By fully uniting with Christ all those who worthily receive the Eucharist with His Holy Body and Blood, It makes them part of the gracefull and godly life, helping them to live piously into Christ and to grow the work of virtue and moral goodness untill

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resembling Him, because, in this way, it will be constituted and endlessly completed the unity of the Church – the ecleziastic body of Christ (I Corinthiens XII, 27; Ephesens I, 23; V, 23). „In the eucharistic celebration, the gathered Church, in its structure as a people of God, organically tied to Christ’s Head, gives the Father, through the priest << Jesus’ sacrament>> under the shape of bread and wine, separately, turned into the Christ’s Body and Blood, rising them as a sacrifice of the cross” [10].

The Holy Eucharist is the secret of God Christ’s real presence and of His saving work in Church and, through it, in the world. „Because Christ is new building-work, according to the Scriptures (II Corinthiens V, 17), that is why we welcome Him within us and ourselves through the Holy Body and Blood, so that, by renewing ourselves through Him and in Him, we abandon the old man – who ruins himself through lusts, according to what was written.” [11] (Romans VI, 14: Ephesens IV, 22), says Saint Chiril of Alexandria. The Holy Eucharist is the foundation on which is built and which supports the unity of the Church, because in the eucharistic economy the presence of the Church is synthesized, in its meaning for the community and clerical life within Christ. The entire secret of our salvation is concentrated within it, so that we can make it our own, because, through this Holy Secret, Christ gathers the believers in the cummunion of His extended Body in the world –Church- sharing them His godly and eternal life. Of course, it shouldn’t be understood, from this, that every christian who receives the Eucharist is consecrated, but only the one who has prepared himself and is the true and living limb of Church, thus belonging to Christ’s Body, as, the Holy Eucharist works accordingly to the spiritual state of the man” [12].

By taking the Holy and Pure Secrets of Christ the spiritual life of the Church is

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intensely cultivated. „Uniting the believers with Christ, the Holy Eucharist generally fills the soul with grace and with all the goods and spiritual blessings that such a mistical union with God can bring. This plentiful flow of gifts advances and completes the spiritual life, keeps the mortal sins away, offers joy to the spirit and hope for immortality and eternity. As the food that gives life to the body, contributes to the development and the prolonging of the life of the body, so does the Holy Eucharist, strengthens and increases the spiritual life, offers what’s necessary for humbleness and life, developing the feeling of love and opening the eyes of the to the development and the prolonging of the life of the body, so does the Holy Eucharist, strengthens and increases the spiritual life, offers what’s necessary for humbleness and life, developing the feeling of love and opening the eyes of the believers to the happy after life kingdom.” [13].

By uniting ourselves with Christ, the Holy Eucharist makes us resemble Him, imprinting within us the feeling of sacrifice and selfless abnegation, the power of His resurrection and His eternal glory, so that, vanquishing the sin inside us, we may be presented before the heavenly Father like living and flawless sacrifices „because, right after taking the Eucharist, the body, the soul and all of our powers become sacred, body joins body, blood joins blood and soul joins soul. The consequence is the fact that good defeats evil more and more, and the godly things take over the human ones. Christ’s thought becomes our own, His will becomes one with ours, His Body and Blood one with our body and blood! And how strong our thought should be when it is mastered by God’s thought, how determined our will when God Himself drives it and how eager our courage when the fire itself is spread over it” [14]!

The Eucharist is a sacrifice and an unifying

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secret. „Sacrifice and sacrificer at the same time, Christ offers on the heavenly altar this unique sacrifice, which is performed here, down, on numerous earthly altars, in the Eucharistic Secret. Thus, there is no rupture between the visible and the invisible, between heaven and earth, between the head seen on Father’s right side and Church, His Body, in which flows continuously His Holy Blood.” [15]. This Holy Secret unites Christ with the onest that perform it and change the onest that receive it on the inside after Christ’s image, so that they learn His divine life style by making His thoughts, feelings, words and deeds their own. „ Christ’s precious Blood saves us not only from rotting , but also from staining and, hidden inside, it won’t let us wonder through ignorance, but more likely make us hot in spirit” [16, as, „ <<a little bit of dough rises the entire work>>, so does this Body, that is made immortal through God’s power Who, once introduced in us, changes and transforms our entire body after God’s dimensions. If our healthy body swallows a medicine that affects health, the entire body becomes weaker, just like the receiving of the Eucharist that immortal Body transforms our being in a godly being.” [17 Christ’s entrance in our souls and bodies under the shape of the eucharistic food continuously increases our life with Christ in the Holy Ghost, it refreshes our human being weakened by sin and plants in our being new powers of spiritual life.

The manner in which regular food prolongs and maintains life resembles the manner in which the eucharistic food turns into a brooke of immortality and of eternal life, becoming an inexhaustible source of renewal, healing and structural reunion of our entire being. Naturally, it doesn’t work on us mechanically nor magically, without our effort or independently of our will, but only according to our spiritual state. „Let not the ones that unworthingly receive the Godly secrets think that through Them they

join and simply unite themselves with the Unseen God; for this thing will not be done, nor will ever happen tot them” [18] because „ the godly receiving of the Eucharist deifies a man found in this state. Thus, it enlightens him, it cleanses him, but if he hasn’t repented himself and hasn’t reached the step of purity, it burns him and convicts him.” [19].

The Holy Eucharist is the secret of our spiritualization and deifying. By receiving Christ, our Lord, deep into our being, under the shape of bread and wine, we really receive the Brook of the godly grace. When offering the ones who worthily receive the Eucharist, the life that Himself has, our God Christ offers us the possibility of a complete union with Him and the power to give one another in the spirit of love and sacrifice, preparing thus the conditions of an actual achievement of christian unity, as a token of heavenly union and a secret and anticipated taste of unspoken and eternal happiness, in the kingdom of heavens. It is a „healing medicine of our wounds and unlessened richness that brings the kingdom of heavens. Let us wince when we approach it – says a holy priest – let us thank, fall with our face down to earth, confessing our sins, shed tears, crying our meanness , let us rise eager prayers to God. And clean, let us quietly approach and with the proper order, like the onest hat approach the Emperor of heavens. And when we receive the pure and holy Sacrifice, let us kiss it with our eyes, let us embrace it, let us warm our soul, so not to come to Church to be judged or convicted, but to make our soul wiser, with love, towards virtue, towards reconciliation with God, towards inner peace, towards the cause of a great number of goods, to make ourselves sacred and build the closest to us too.” [20].

The dogmatical and moral teachings shown in this study are aimed not only at the orthodox Christians , but also

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at the believers from other Christians confessions which acknowledge the value and the sacramental and moral-educational importance of these Holy Secrets and prepare specially for receiving them , being aware of the primordial role that these Secrets have in cultivating and promoting their spiritual life , in the context of the society we live in nowadays.

That is why, it is recommended a more frequent confession and receiving of the Eucharist , because These Secrets increase the potential of the spiritual life , if, of course, the endeavorment of our believers to confess and receive the Eucharist is doubled, in today’s life conditions , by a pure and deep Christian feeling.

References [1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6] [7]

[8]

Sf. Grigorie de Nazianz, Cuvântare la Sfintele Paşti şi despre zăbavă [Lecture on Easter and about delay] translated into romanian by Pr. Dr. Gheorghe Tilea, in vol. Dogmativ works, Ed. Herald, Bucharest, 2002, p. 116.

Sf. Ignatie Teoforul, Epistola către Efeseni [Letter to Ephesens] chapter, XX, 2 translated into romanian by Pr. D. Fecioru, în col. „PSB”, vol. I, The Writings of the Apostle Priests , Ed. IBMBOR, Bucharest, 1979, p. 164.

Stăniloae, Pr. Prof. Dumitru, Teologia Dogmatică a Bisericii noastre Ortodoxe [The Dogmatic Theology of our Orthodox Church], vol. 3, Ed. IBMBOR, Bucureşti, 1997, p. 57.

Vintilescu, Pr. Prof. Petre, Spovedania şi duhovnicia [Confession and spirituality], Alba Iulia, 1995, p.33.

Cândea, Pr. Dr. Spiridon, Hristos şi mântuirea sufletească a orăşenilor [Christ and the soul salvation of the people from cities], Sibiu, 1939, p. 246.

Vintilescu, Pr. Prof. Petre, The quoted work, p. 33.

Sf. Grigorie de Nazianz, Cuvântare la Sfintele Lumini [Lecture at the Holy Lights], in romanian quoted translation., p. 56.

Canonul I al Sf, Grigorie de Nisa [Canon I of Saint Gregory of Nisa], at Floca, Arhid. Prof.

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Dr. Ioan N., Canoanele Bisericii Ortodoxe [The Canons of the Orthodox Church], notes and commentaries, Bucharest, 1991, p. 378.

[9] Vlachos, Archimandrite Hierotheos, Predici la marile sărbători [Sermons at great holidays], translated into romanian by Filioreanu, Daniela, Ed. Egumeniţa, Galaţi, 2004, p. 134.

[10] Tillard, J.M.R., O.P., L’euharistie pâque de l’Église, les Édition de Cerf, Paris, 1964, p.

102.

[11] Sfântul Chiril al Alexandriei, Închinarea şi slujirea în duh şi adevăr [The bowing and service in grace and truth], cap. XII, translated into romanian by Stăniloae, Pr. Prof. Dumitru, in col. „PSB”, vol. 38, Bucharest, 1991, p416.

[12] Vlachos, Archimandrite Hierotheos, The quoted work, p. 149.

[13] Andrutsos, Hristu, Dogmatica Bisericii Ortodoxe Răsăritene [Dogmatic of the Eastern Orthodox Church], translated in rom by. Stăniloae, Pr. Prof. Dumitru, Sibiu, 1930, p. 385.

[14] Cabasila, Nicolae, Despre viaţa în Hristos [About life in Christ], book IV, translated in romanian by Bodogae, Pr. Prof. Dr. Teodor, Ed. Arhiepiscopiei Bucureştilor, Bucharest, 1989, p. 195.

[15] Lossky, Vladimir, După chipul şi asemănarea lui Dumnezeu [After God’s face and resemblance], translated in rom. by Manolache, Anca, Ed. Humanitas, Bucharest, 1998, p. 98.

[16] Sf. Chiril al Alexandriei, in romanian quoted translation, chapter XVII, p. 583.

[17] Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Marele cuvânt catehetic sau despre învăţământul religios [The great catechetic word or about religious education], translated in romanian by Bodogae, Pr. Prof. Dr. Teodor, în col. „PSB”, vol. 30, Ed. IBMBOR, Bucharest, 1998, p.

338.

[18] Saint Simeon the new Theolog, Discursuri teologice şi etice [Ethical and theological speeches], Writings I, translated into romanian

by Ică, Ioan I. Jr, Ed. Deisis, Sibiu, 1998, p.

397.

[19] Vlachos, Mitropolitul Hierotheos, Cugetul Bisericii Ortodoxe [The thought of the

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Orthodox Church], translated into romanian

by Făgeţanu, Constantin, Ed. Sofia, Bucharesti, 2000, p. 112.

[20] Saint John Golden Mouth, Predici la sărbători împărăteşti şi cuvântări de laudă la sfinţi [Sermons at divine holidays and praising speeeches for saints], translated into romanian by Fecioru, Pr. Prof. Dumitru, Ed. IBMBOR, Bucharest, 2002, p. 22.

Biography Vasile Miron, born in Homocea, Vrancea, Romania on the 23rd of February 1960, Theology Doctor, practical studies, Theology Faculty from Bucharest, 1993.

He works as a LECTURER in Theology Faculty from Constanta and has published twelve books and fiftyseven articles – Saints holidays (Constanta, Romania, Tomis Archdiocese, 2015.

Lecturer Vasile Miron is a member of “Clepsidra” Cultural Association from Roman, Romania, a scientifical reviewer at Bucharest University Publishing and a writer for “Actualitatea Ortodoxă” magazine from Toronto, Ontario.

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DIALOGO JOURNAL 3 : 2 (2017) 110 - 124

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This paper was presented in the

Bridging Science and Religion together: SELF - SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS. (DIALOGO-CONF 2017 SSC)

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held online, on the Journal’s website, from May 19 - 26, 2017

journal homepage: http://dialogo-conf.com

How can a Confessor better call upon Believers to achieve Perfection?

Fr. Assist. Prof. Nicolae Popescu, PhD The Faculty of Theology Ovidius University of Constanta Constanta, Romania

ARTICLE INFO

ABSTRACT

Article history: Received 28 April 2017 Received in revised form 13 May Accepted 15 May 2017 Available online 30 May 2017 doi: 10.18638/dialogo.2017.3.2.10

The Sacred Mystery of Confession plays a central role in the Orthodox life and spirituality. It reestablishes the connection between Christian and God interrupted through the sin committed after baptism. It is also called The Sacred Mystery of Penance, because it expresses recovery, personal transformation, repentance, confession and a new way of life through coming to terms with God. Although it is among the most used sacred mysteries and has the most beneficial effects, the interest in rebuilding of the spiritual communion through confessing the sins, and in confessor’s guidance has decreased, and in some places it is desultory. They confess sins, but only for an illusionary serenity of conscience, because they do not give up their sinful lives.

Searching for a solution to this problem we have found in one of father Stăniloae’s articles (The Sacred Mystery of Penance as confession) a sentence with important present-day theological connotations about the Sacred Mystery of Reconciliation and about a more efficient approach to this sacred mystery: „We would like – says the father – to focus our attention upon confession in a restricted sense, to see through which kind of the confessor’s behavior might ease this act for the believers who experience an inner difficulty in front of him or consider it useless”.

Keywords: Obedience; Avva; Repentance; Communication; Communion; Dialogue; Confessor; Metanoia; Spiritual father; spiritual health; the Secrecy of Confession; the Sacred Mystery of Confession;

© 2014 RCDST. All rights reserved.

I. INTRODUCTION More and more is detect today, in the relationships between people, a lack of consciousness, or, on the contrary, an evil, false, dirty, even a perverse conscience. Specialists know that, in fact, those consciousnesses simply translates the misguided inclinations of some souls. A considerably smaller number of people know that these souls frustrated, misinformed, uninformed, or even sickly, are behind violence, misunderstandings, and conflicts from all levels

of society. Few people have solutions, and between these solutions, none are they correct and efficient. From the perspective of the church, namely the Orthodox Church, the important thing is not the solution or the method, nor the problem, but the willingness and the power to solve.

For two thousand years, the Orthodox Church has known that man’s will is behind any situation, and at the same time the man’s will it expresses the richness or poverty of soul. Christians know

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eISSN: 2393-1744, cdISSN: 2392-9928 printISSN: 2457-9297, ISSN-L 2392-9928 ISBN 978-80-554-1338-9

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how to build a strong character, described by a beautiful, good, right consciousness. And they do it for two thousand years, according to the teaching and power of the Savior.

It is true, increasingly complex relationships and increasingly intense contacts between very different cultures and civilizations contain factors that aggravate the problems of the soul and consciousness. But in Orthodoxy, these problems can really be solved by the grace of the Holy Mysteries, especially by the Confession.

Neither the number, nor the gravity, nor the increased complexity of these problems are a problem in Orthodoxy, but the narrow request for healing and its wrong approach to. Therefore, our interest focuses on the effort to increase the effectiveness of the spiritual cure, who exists, it is know and it is successfully applied, then for the search to another solution.

Interestingly, that all believers say they are free and choose freely how to live. And it is true, because Jesus is “the truth” (In 14, 6), and knowing the Truth, He “will make you free” (In 8:32). However, the problems of today’s society show that, on the contrary, the decisions taken are either inadequate or incorrect. Identifying the origin of human problems in deficient knowledge and incorrect reporting to oneself, soul and consciousness, we think, that it useful, to make clarifications, in this area, from Christian perspective. We can see that the truth is insufficiently known by persons with decisionpower. And if their decisions are incorrect, result that their attitude is incorrect. This demonstrates that in the very complex situation of today the right solutions belong rather to will and character, not to knowledge. These aspects have led us to participate in this symposium, to share our solution and our efforts to improve it, knowing that the dialogue has a tremendous power, power through which more and more people can be led to the knowledge and sharing of goodness, truth, and beauty.

II. A „hot”, „cold” or „lukewarm” believer? „All penance resides in deciding to change your life”.1 In Orthodoxy, the main concern of the confessor is to make people care about their eternal destiny, because „the greatest challenges that the Church faces nowadays is not atheism but indifference”[2]. This is the position of the cool believer, whom the Messiah condemns, in the Apocalypse: „I know your deeds; that you are neither hot nor cold. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm – neither hot nor cold – I am about to spit you out of my mouth” (3, 15-16). Undoubtedly, the Messiah refers to Christians, and today we can say that „the Church has got a new and difficult problem to solve that was not there centuries ago: that is to bring together the Christian idea and ideal and our present-day intellectuals’ sensibility and ideology”.[3] No doubt about it, the Christians’ spiritual status can be improved through the Sacred Mystery of Confession, but the interest in this mystery is so modest, that, Archimandrite Serafim Alexiev calls the Sacred Mystery of Confession a ,,long-forgotten cure”. ,,The entire world is deep in sin. Each and every one of us has caught the lethal disease called sin. Can this disease be cured!

The cure exists! And it is wonderful! If you receive it you get well! But we do not reach to get it and cure ourselves and to clean our conscience. Why is that? Because we have forgotten and slighted it”4.

But, this Sacred Mystery „causes the meeting of the prodigal son with the Heavenly Father”.5 In the economy of the Church, the Sacred Mystery of Confession includes essentially these constitutive elements: repentance, confessing your sins in front of your confessor, absolution given by the confessor along with the right canon and guidance for the future.

The two names of the Sacred Mystery: Penance and Reconciliation, show the way the communication between confessor and believer (penitent or apprentice) takes place: first repentance, that is sorrow about the committed

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sins, heartbreak and remorse about having committed them, then, confessing the sins before the confessor6, denouncing them, with the heroic decision for self-incrimination and at the same time for breaking any tie with sin and for freeing from under its power through the power of Holy Ghost7 who claims, according to faith, an irreversible change in behavior in the future.8 Most times, this change9 is made under the wise guidance of a Christian who has experience in confession problems, thus called confessor, who can back his advice with his own improved life. Because, either in the world, or in the monastery, the life of the Christian is a permanent spiritual fight, an ongoing discipline of the soul and of the body, in order to please God[10].

For this Saint John of the Ladder stated that: ,,Those who supposed they had no need of a director deceived themselves”.[11] Along the humble confession of sins and the feeble guidance asked for by believers, the immorality of the contemporary society makes an authentic Christian life to be very difficult. „For the present-day individual, the distinction between virtue and sin is almost impossible to make since they replace each other, without looking into their origins and their perspective.”[12] No doubt about it, these challenges are important tasks for the contemporary servants of the altar. However, we have enough arguments to make us be optimist.

III. The Sacred Mystery of Confession „To better understand who and what the confessor is and the work he carries out inside the Church, it is essential to clarify some aspects relating to his „domain”, that is practically what his spiritual acti­vity is about”[13]: guiding the one who confess.

Naturally, those who feel the need for confession, are the young, but also the adults, who have committed sins, and notice that they

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have problems, because they are tormented by thoughts, problems and sometimes their get answers through confessing. Knowing these, the confessor will have to meet them halfway, and to attract them towards Christian completion through confession and guidance.

Confession is the Sacred Mystery of coming to terms with God, with your fellows and with your own self, thus being also called the Sacred Mystery of Peace.[14] It must be made willingly, that is freely, voluntarily and responsibly.

By taking part in this sacred mystery, the believer undergoes two processes: penance and change. Penance is not limited to remorse and self-compassion, but it also means redirecting life towards the Holy Trinity. Penance thus has got a positive character, not a negative one.15 Father Cleopa tells us that „all your penance is this, deciding to change your life.”16 And change, according to the Greek term ,,metanoia” (μετάνοια)[17] means at the same time repentance, regret and fear of punishment, but moreover, a radical change of the beliefs, going beyond sin, by no longer committing it and a new beginning in life, a renewal of the mind, a „rebirth”, a „second baptism”.18 Besides these two aspects, confession is the sacred mystery of „our spiritual regeneration, of a new and clean clothing of Baptism that we have soiled with sins. We are all sinners, we all need repentance, forgiveness and cleanliness”.19 „Knowing in what abyss man’s soul could have fallen, Christ established this sacred mystery, thus giving man the possibility not to collapse forever, the possibility to stop and turn around”[20].

Consequently, both the sick and the healthy individual equally need to confess their sins, and no one must consider themselves healthy, but ,,we must be aware of our disease. Just as the sick individual is aware of his illness and goes to see the doctor to be cured, so happens with the spiritual illness as well”21.

Thus reemerges the need to get back to the spiritual treatment „the need to reestablish the communion with Christ, unfortunately cooled and

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broken, and the need for the Christian to reconcile with the Church for the sins committed after Baptism.”[22] In this situation, when the soul is stained with sins, because Baptism cannot repeat, what „continues the water of baptism”[23] is the Sacred Mystery of Penance (of Confession, or of Reconciliation).

IV. Who the Confessor is Knowing well the weakness of the human being, the Fathers of the Church point out the importance and the need of each and every Christian to have a father or advisor in the process of completion. Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov advises us to be very careful in choosing a good advisor, and once we find him to obey him. He quotes the Holy Fathers in support of his advice: Saint John Cassian said that the Fathers from Egypt (…) claimed that it is good to be spiritually guided by those who are truly wise and they add that this is the great Grace of the Holy Spirit”.24.

Then he also tells us, using the words of Saint Symeon the New Theologian: Study the Holy Scripture and the writings of the Holy Fathers especially those who have been preoccupied with ascetic life and by compa­ring the teaching with the advice and the conduct of your teacher, you shall see like in a mirror how to live your life25.

Interpersonal preference plays an important role in choosing a confessor. It is the result of previous personal experiences and depends on the ideal or negative models the individual aspires to and on feelings such as sympathy or antipathy that we feel towards the respective priest26. Judging by the attitude that priests have while listening to confessions we can distinguish several types of confessors[27]: The ,,harsh” confessor (authoritarian) is especially present in monasteries, but also in some parish churches. In his view, „authority identifies with coercion and inflexibility; he bases his authority upon the authority of the others: the Holy Fathers, the canons and the church precepts”.

His favorite topic is unconditional obedience („the

order is to be carried out, not to be discussed”): he is dogmatic, closed, opaque to change and to dialogue, rigid, he lacks understanding, he is a moralist, he gives canons just as the ones who wrote them gave (in those times), and stops you from the Holy Communion for years.

Many believers leave hopeless and discouraged (if not confused) after such a sad experience.

But those who often visit them have the same psychological profile (scrupulous), and instead of looking for a cure, are in fact looking for justifications.28 Let us not forget that harshness is useful, but in due time, and „The right time for scolding is after the sinner’s confession, after he takes off darkness and sin”.[29] The permissive confessor is the complete opposite: too ,,forgiving”, this kind of confessor seeks to please by all means, being too ,,lenient” on sin, even indifferent to sin and uninterested in the spiritual and moral status of the churchgoer. There are other confessors who, in a hurry or not, limit themselves only to „listening to confessions” (it is true that many times, silence says much more, but he must not go towards shallowness or formalism).30 The ,,partner-like” confessor (this term is better than ,,ideal”) has the following qualities: ,, he has got a serene face, he is open, calm, he has got inner peace, an spi­ ritual life, stability, patience, understanding, tolerance, tact, wisdom, optimism, humor, decision-making autonomy, responsibility, authenticity, courage, psychological and spiritual maturity”.31 „Relating to the names: „Aviva”, „Spiritual Father,” „Spiritual Master”, „Confessor,” „Father,” „Father superior,” „the Old man” etc. we notice that they all refer to an inner quality so-called: spiritual knowledge or insight.”[32] In time, the above-mentioned name proved to be an honorary title offered to a servant of God by those who see in him the seal of holiness[33].

The contemporary meaning of the confessor is a synthesis between the image of the holy ascetics and the charismatic priests of the primary church. However, we must make a distinction between the Sacred Mystery of

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Confession and the spiritual guidance, as well as between the priest (confessor) and the spiritual father (the old man).

A „true” Confessor teaches „true”, honest, powerful, faithful men, men of character and attitude, who are also understanding, cheerful, bright, tolerant to the weaknesses of the others, ready to give a hand to the needy and the sinful,34 because a confessor is „gifted with the charisma of the spiritual fatherhood”.35 Nevertheless, ,,We cannot say there is a standard confessor. (…) The believer has got total freedom to opt for the kind of confessor who bests suits him, with whom he is compatible and feels listened to, understood, valued and loved as a person, giving him the chance to be who he really is and to spiritually grow from there”.36 In order to be „able to teach” (1 Timothy 3: 2),37 the confessor must be well prepared and must be a good teacher. The one who comes to confess, comes thinking of God and expects an answer from Him to his problems, which are neither few nor easy. That is why, the confessor must be permanently ,,connected” to a dialogue with God, through prayers and fasting, to give the right answer to the concrete needs of the one who confesses.[38] „ In practicing this Sacred Mystery, the priest – Father Stăniloae says – has been considered by the fundamental tradition of both Churches as a „ spiritual father”, thus giving birth to the believer once again in his or her spiritual life. But, throughout time, he has often become an official somehow impersonal judge, who waits for the „respective ones” to come before him”.[39] The relationship between the spiritual father and the spiritual son lies on mutual love. That is why, ,,love and insight are the spiritual father’s qualities by excellence. Love is shown through patience, kindness or beneficial severity”.40 V. Conditions of the Confession Having as its objects the committed sins, and as its target the prayer for forgiveness, the Confession contains a certain discomfort, given

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the transmitted emotions and situations. Unlike this, revealing your thoughts to a spiritual father, also contains things that diminish the discomfort and makes this way more appealing. Usually, the relation between the confessor and the believer is an episodic one, being limited to the moment of the Holy Communion, whereas the relationship priest-apprentice is permanent, lasting until the moment the two go to heaven. Therefore, it goes without saying that „...in confessing there is always effort, if by confession we understand revealing (...) what is negative, there is hindrance , failure, evil, either as the product of some evil deeds, or as the source of some evil or insufficient deeds (...). Two are the reasons that hold the believer back from confessing and must be overcome through effort: shame and fear that the confessed sins and weaknesses will be used by the confessor as reasons to despise them or as weapons to use against them.”[41] Shame is good, and so is fear, but, not for sins. Father Ilie Cleopa tells us: „Brothers, let us not be ashamed when we confess, so that we can be forgiven, let us be ashamed to commit sins again.”42 Besides the above-mentioned discomfort, we notice that the confession comes across obstacles from the believer himself. For this, back in the 3rd century Tertullian compared confessing your sins to showing your wounds to the medics, and declared that hiding them was harmful: „I make no room for shame, because I gain more out of it missing”.43 The Orthodox Church considers Confession, a sacred speech, and a sacred absolution of the sins committed by the believer.44 In other words, Confession is communication that is imparting, dialogue and communion. Father Eugen Jurcă shows that: „The spiritual relationship and the true coming together in the relation (personal knowledge and spiritual communion) can only be achieved in time, with patience, through dialogue, skills, common interest, perseverance, dynamism and continuous spiritual growth.”45 In confession the mystery of the person is revealed, for it in the person’s nature to communicate their life to another person. A Christian community is like

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a family, in which the members have pure love relations; therefore, the relations46 between the priest (the confessor) and believers must be similar to those between parents and children.47 As an interpersonal relation, the Sacred Mystery of Confession goes beyond the borders of communication, Father Stăniloae says. „Having his aspiration to communion bestowed upon him by God, man wishes to communicate his inner life to someone else. (…) This involves a special effort, when through Confession we understand revealing not what is good within, but on the contrary, unraveling what is negative, what is hindrance, deficiency, inability or source of evil deeds and thoughts”.48 VI. How does the Confessor call upon more believers for redemption?

The believer uses the Sacred Mystery of Confession insufficiently. He does not know the entire richness of the Sacred Mystery. But, ,,Confession is not only a Sacred Mystery, it is also an art. It is the art of the priest to know how to open souls for God and it is the art of man to know how to dress in the clothes required by divinity for the meal of the Son of God. It is the art of the Priest to know how to save the soul, it is the art that through a happy psycho-synthesis knows how to imprint Christ’s face in the entire soul instead of the evil’s face”49.

Once the believer enters the church, his journey to heavens begins, or is achieved through the Sacred Mystery of Confession. What is important for him is to begin this journey to redemption through similitude. The beginning can come as the believer’s impulse to confess and thus cleanse himself of sins. But how is this impulse awakened? Making the believer confess to achieve spiritual cleansing is a great challenge for a confessor, who is compelled by ordination to do so. For this, „...it is imposed upon the confessor today to ease believers’ true confession, casting away many of the deficiencies that have made present-day man avoid confession from the manner in which this Sacred Mystery is being

approached”.[50] When the repentant approaches a confessor, he wants to find signs, to trust him like he trusts no other human being, because he is the only one the believer is asking for advice, help, and redemption. „The role of the confessor as a good father begins before the confession. His callings will dig out of the conscience of many who are listening to him the longing to free themselves from the sin that treads on the seeding of his soul, day and night. Many shall experience the Samaritan’s spiritual struggle that went from mistrust through different phases to finally reach conviction”[51]. Consequently, the confessor must know the weaknesses that are at the basis of men’s known and unknown sins, as well as the sins themselves. After that, the confessor must become his brother in order to reach the hidden delicate things – one of the best methods to give him the chance to say everything.52 „The confessor must enter the friend category, so that the one who comes to him won’t feel any difficulty in confessing.”[53] Spiritual closeness is not an option, but a duty, because, „The confessor is a friend to all walks of life, all ages and all the souls he is responsible for.”[54] In this respect, Irenee Hausherr says that: ,,In order to make trust spring and make the other one open up his soul, the confessor must be a saint, but he must admit he is a sinner, because as man approaches God, he sees himself as a sinner, for prophet Isaiah, seeing God called himself a sinful man”.55 There are believers who would agree to being helped, but they do not do so. For them, our Messiah told the Apostles that He will send them out „to fish for people” (Matthew 4, 19).

These people look for the good word and the food of life, even though they are deep in sin.

They need a „fisherman” to take them out of sin and then help them with everything they spiritually need. These people must be looked for and the confessor has got many occasions to throw the rod, or, according to the case, the net, to save them, for, confession is just the

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beginning of a long process of introspection, of self-discovery, of strength gathering in order to admit guilt, of courage gathering in order to express self-accusations in front of the confessor. „Confession can thus come as a natural step from a more intimate conversation with the believer that the confessor can wisely take further to topics that are more and more similar to those about sin confession, to confession itself. (…) He will assure him immediately of getting rid not only of the guilty conscience because of the committed sins, but also of the troubles and human failures cause by them”.[56] Besides the confessor’s qualities, a factor that can help the believers approach the Sacred Mystery of Confession and must be promoted as such is the believer’s participation in the divine service, for it brings the acknowledgment of how important an authentically spiritual life of permanent repentance really is.[57] Another factor is obedience. After having found a confessor, the believer must obey him. Confession requires a mutual relationship between the confessor, the believer and Christ. „If confessors have the duty to take care of the spiritual redemption of their spiritual sons, apprentices have responsibilities before their confessors as well. These spiritual sons must have an obedient attitude towards their confessor.”[58] The penitent’s and the apprentice’s obedience towards the confessor is not an ignorant and immature submission but, it is entrusting a shepherd you’re your personal life[59], and following Christ’s example in humility,[60] it is pouring yourself out[61], the believer no longer obeying his own will but God’s will discovered with the help of the confessor.

It is true, the confessor can fall, for he is human. It is quite difficult, but it can happen. The confessor can even lead a believer astray. But, the one who obeys never falls. „Even the fact that the believer has decided to confess to the priest, shows that he went beyond the state of sin, for he has surpassed his indifference to God and His representative, as he surpassed his total trust in people, his vanity, the carelessness or desperation

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that keep man in sin and far from confession.”[62] Besides obedience and love, there is the need for prayer as well. The confessor is not the only one who must pray, the apprentice also has the duty to pray for his spiritual father. Both get benefits out of this mutual prayer. Their prayer goes to God; they both meet in God and receive answer to their prayers from God.63 Intimacy is one of the most important characteristics of confession, of psychological counseling and of the medical act, along with confidentiality. From a Christian point of view, intimacy is the inner agreement between two persons. For Father Stăniloae, „mutual intimacy unravels the truth, the authentic inner image of the two persons’ self”.64 A confessor must expect to have believers who will not obey, who will be obstinate, and for them he must gather lots of patience, for the priest must love those who do not want his love as well.65 For them, „The spiritual father who receives the thoughts of those who come to him to repent... must be very skillful and wise.

He must be skillful so that he can bring the sinner know his sins and to make himself guilty in front of God; and he must be wise so that he won’t abandon the weak, so that he won’t embitter the obstinate and so that he won’t be lenient on the one who hides their sins”[66].

There are situations when the church-goers trust the priest when they confess because 1) they all do and 2) this helps them.[67] This means that mentioning a large number of believers who confess can be a positive factor, to make the others confess as well.

The confessor will be wise if he proceeds with care, tact and caution, with well-measured wisdom and balance, so that he will neither encourage the penitent (towards sin), nor discourage him (from confession).68 Father Stăniloae mentions the fact that: „There are cases of confessors who know how to make the one who is confessing feel pain and cry for their sins.”[69] Forgiving sins is an invaluable gift of the

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Messiah’s, and the confessor must use it with great responsibility. The priest must be merciful, but not hasty. Sometimes, he must caress and speed up the relieving of the tormented soul, sometimes the priest must underline the responsibility of the spiritual service and for this he refrains to wiping the sin by giving a canon, but without issuing guidance for the future, when the confessed situation is a special one.

Choosing the canon is an (essential and) difficult moment for the priest, for it must be chosen quickly, right after the dialogue confessorpenitent and without consulting anyone, except for special cases. The confessor must not take the decision all alone, but he is expected to do it on the spot and almost in a hurry.70 For this kind of situations postponing a decision has got powerful spiritual effects.

Postponing giving a piece of advice for a short time can increase the trust and obedience towards the confessor if the need for a responsible attitude is transmitted. This is the reason why the Holy Communion is postponed for a short while after the confession itself. For this, the confessor „must know from experience how to lead man towards God, how to light up his dark mind and guide him to holiness”.71 The conditions under which the confession takes place are extremely important. Thus, the time and the place where the confession takes place are factors that can have a positive influence. As far as the time of the confession is concerned, the views are divided. For example, the fourth commandment of the Church recommends confession to be made during the four fasting seasons of the year, or at least once a year72. There are also two opinions regarding the moment of the day when this Sacred Mystery can take place: either in the morning when „the spirit being more relaxed, the individual can relax more easily”73 or in the evening, when the individual is no longer stressed by social or family responsibilities. Also, the place of the confession has got a powerful psychological effect, both if it takes place inside the Church or at the believer’s place. Inside the Church in front of the icon

of the Messiah, or of the icon of His crucifixion there is the place that provides the penitent with a state of repentance and humility. This „draws the penitent’s attention to it, making him realize that virtue is for him a matter of struggle and sacrifice”.74 But the spiritual state of the believer during the Sacred Mystery is even more important than time and place.

Being accomplished through dialogue, questions play an important role in confessing.

Saint Nicodemus of the Athonite says in this respect that the confessor must not ask the believer about what he or she has done, but, the penitent must come prepared from this point of view „and the one who confesses must confess his sins by himself, to get forgiveness for them”.75 Because when asked, „the one who confesses speaks and scolds himself, but in fact he does not confess. He must confess his sins all by himself, to get forgiveness for them, just as God commands: „declare thou, that thou mayest be justified” (Isaiah 43:26).”[76] Questions are useful because they can encourage the penitent to confess his sins.

Father Vintilescu, quoting from „Teachings for the Confessor” writes: „When you, confessor, listen to the confessions of the people who out of shame do not want to say how many times they have sinned, you must ask about a great number, that is have they committed that sin a thousand or two thousand times; so when they hear this number to get bold and quickly cut the number down, rather than raise it, in case you ask about a smaller number”.[77] Some confessors recommend priests, especially the less experienced ones, to put together a Question Guide. The importance of judgment in building these questions comes from the fact that they can become a factor of manipulation, as well as a method of inducing the answer. Here is a classification of the questions that can be efficient: 1. Closed questions, that only have „yes” and „no” answers, but „there is the risk of using them and getting only simple answers”78.

Saint Nicodemus the Athonite recommends

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closed questions especially, that is questions that can only be answered by: yes or no. here is an example: „have you murdered anyone, my son?”79.

2. Questions with suggested answers: „You have thought bad thoughts, haven’t you?” In this case the believer can only say „Yes” being suggested what to answer.

3. Open questions that offer the believer the chance to express his point of view. E.g.: „Why do you think God gave you this experience?”.

Such questions offer the one who confesses the chance to understand on their own, to find the answers to their questions by themselves. Also, this kind of questions is efficient, in case the confessor wants to find out the circumstances of the deeds without asking this directly.

Relay questions: this kind of questions can help the one who confesses the evil he caused to someone, they help the penitent to put himself in the shoes of the harmed or hurt. On the one hand, they develop the penitent’s empathy, on the other hand they make him more responsible.

E.g.: „If you were in that person’s shoes, what would you feel?”80 On the other hand, an undecided penitent must be helped and guided through questions to go to the essential things in his confession, and, intentionally or not knowing what are the important things, to deviate into a non-essential sentimental speech that will cover his true sins and weaknesses so that he will go away unhealed and lacking the recommendations necessary for redemption.81 When questions have done their job within the Sacred Mystery of Confession, an aspect that makes stronger and invites to confession is the secrecy of confession, for it can support penance, although, it must not be a criterion, if it must also support metanoia. In the times of Saint John of the Ladder, confession usually took place in private, but in some exceptional cases, the confessor could order it to take place in public: „Before everything else, we must confess to our good and only judge. And if he orders so, we must confess to everybody”.82 Saint Basil the

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Great speaks of private confession in canon 34: „Women who have committed adultery and have confessed were not publicly exposed by our parents to prevent them for being killed.”83 Eventually, „the penitent trusts the priest, just because he senses inside of him the responsibility for his soul before Christ, senses that he listens to him in the name of Christ and has got genuine power to help from Christ”84.

During the confession dialogue, the confessor must not bribe the penitent, but he must not frighten him either, but according to Saint Paul the Apostle he must base his activity upon the „principle of accommodation”, a principle that is magnificently stated in the first Epistle to the Corinthians, when he writes: „I am made all things to all men, but I might by all means save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22). Confessing in private in front of the confessor can at the same time precede the confession in public which was the case in the primary church only if the confessor considered that this was for the spiritual rebirth of the penitent and did not go against the entire community.85 Keeping the secrecy is a general obligation for people, but, in the case of the confessor, not keeping the secrecy is a sin against the love for your neighbor and against justice,86 by infringing on the duties towards the spiritual belongings of your neighbor.

Keeping the secrecy of the confession is not a concession to the penitent but a redeeming gift. For this, the confessor is not forgiven if he discloses the sins that were confessed to him, not even before the earthly authorities, no matter how much pressure would be placed upon him, even losing his life. „Dying protecting the Law, this is true glory and access to God’s Kingdom”87.

Nevertheless, by keeping the secrecy of the confession the spiritual shepherd, the confessor can use the knowledge gained as a confessor. For example, when preaching, he can get inspiration from what he has found out, either by looking into some shortcomings of the Sacred Mystery of Confession itself, or by treating certain issues that trouble a large number of believers and

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he can fight against certain sins that are more frequent in that parish. Everything shall be done in optimistic, mobilizing, general and impersonal terms not to give anyone the impression that he is concerned with one particular individual88.

To eliminate any doubt of indiscretion, the priest will avoid „saying bad words about any of the parishioners in front of the others, because this one might consider that the priest is doing so based upon what he has learned from him during the Sacred Mystery of Confession and therefore the believers might no longer confess their sins in front of him”89.

Discretion can start during confession, but it must always be there. In this way, during the confession, the confessor is not allowed to ask the names of the people who have committed the sin or to hint at circumstances proper to other penitents. The believer would otherwise conclude that the confessor is disclosing other people’s sins.90 The confessor’s attitude towards regulations is very important. On the other hand, just like any other principle, these regulations can have exceptions, so that an absolute rule cannot be given. So, in his characteristic humility, a confessor does not impose his way, and rarely expresses his own personal ideas and virtues, because he always helps us hear the voice of the Holy Fathers, helping us find our way through ourselves[91]. But, following the Holy Fathers through the confessor’s advice does not mean copying them, but being original, that is building something personal after their model, so that we can at least reach a state of holiness comparable to theirs. „First of all we must also clear the aspect of obeying or being submitted to and imitating the confessor (identifying with him as some might want it). There are many cases of idolizing the confessor, be him a monk, a married priest or a simple layman92.

In our spiritual soaring „the model is just the source of inspiration, and for spirituality, it is both drive and source of light, warmth, and ideas. The apprentice gets warmth and light from the model and impregnates his own goals and spiritual

methods. In principle, he must accomplish himself, as a person, with his own gifts, and to aspire to become superior to his model.”93 Between the hidden rigidity of regulations and their elasticity, in order not to make any mistake against Christ’s will, it is a good thing to have a counselor with great spiritual experience.[94] But, the teaching that comes out of the example of the saints is a norm, not a rule, because „The rule is one and it compels you; norms are many and are subjected to free option, according to many criteria and the possibility to often change one for another, to accumulate several at the same time or to observe them successively”.[95] The Church took early measures to ensure it can carry out its activity freely against those who would have wanted to capture religious life in a code of regulations, written or not, that would have anticipated everything that would have made everything uniform and formal.[96] Because the Christian’s everyday life, be it in the world or inside the monastery, must not be hidebound and somber, but have the freedom to love and to personally do Christ’s things.[97] And a skilled confessor must stimulate this kind of attitude.

But beyond any rule and norm, that is beyond the Law, there is Christian love, and the dialogue between humans and the prayer are not the letter and cannot ignore the freedom of the spirit, the exercise of love, good deeds and kindness, that address all people not only the believers in Church. „To refuse to give a friend, a stranger, an individual, your help, your presence, your love, because of your duty to be inside the church, for example, to obey a praying rule, it means to spoil the nature of Christianity”.98 Truly great confessors do not limit themselves and their actions to the formal, liturgical aspect or to the ritual of the Confession, but gradually become counselors outside the Sacred Mystery of Confession, friends and inhabitants of their souls for their apprentices.[99] So that in a confessor you can truly see the personalist vision of the Eastern Theology, that runs from abstract notions and theories and reveals the con­crete: to thank somebody, to pray for them, to help

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them, to advise them, to impose yourself in front of them, etc.[ 100] Unfortunately, nowadays most people no longer ask if „the confessor can himself be an educator of the world and if a really spiritual training of the people is still possible?”, but rather they ask if „he can intervene, if he must do so in most of the aspects of our lives?”[101] As the Body of the Messiah, it is the duty of the Church to propose (but not impose, and not imposing is an important aspect) to the world Christian solutions for moral healing that is in great demand nowadays. And a proposition is either accepted or rejected, as people choose what to do or not do.

In the absence of an effective dialogue, to promote even the most correct and effective solution, it is not equal to an effective realization, but on the contrary moral decay is increasingly found while technical and scientific gains have exploded and seem incredible.

(Endnotes) [1] Archimandrite Cleopa Ilie, Ne vorbeşte Părintele Cleopa (Father Cleopa Is Speaking to Us), vol. 2, Second Edition, Ed. Mănăstirea Sihăstria, Mănăstirea Sihăstria – 2004, p. 9.

[2] Oliver Clement, Viaţa din inima morţii (Life at the Heart of Death), Ed. Pandora, 2000, p.

39.

[3] Bishop Ottocar Prohaszka, Concepţia superioară a vieţii (The Superior Conception on Life), translated by Ioan Rinea, Ed. Credinţa Strămoşească, 1998, p. 7.

[4] Archimandrite Serafim Alexiev, Leacul uitat Sfânta Taină a Spovedaniei (The Forgotten Cure. The Sacred Mystery of Confession), Ed. Sophia, Bucureşti, 2003, p. 26.

[5] Fr. Prof. D. Radu, PhD, Sfintele Taine ale Bisericii, după Tradiţia apostolică, din punct de vedere orthodox (The Sacred Mysteries of the Church According to the Apostolic Tradition, from an Orthodox Point of View), in „Biserica Ortodoxă Română”, year XCVIII (1980), no. 11­-12, p. 1135.

[6] Saint Cyprian of Carthage asks Christians: „Each must confess their sins, as long as they are still alive, when their confession can be

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[7]

received, when the bishops’absolution is pleasing to God”, apud. Paul Evdokimov, Ortodoxia, Bucureşti, 1996, p. 313. „It is necessary to receive the heavenly grace, that comes through the Sacred Mystery of Confession, but also a correct Orthodox guidance, so that man’s mind can be freed and enlightened.”; according to Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos, Psihoterapia Ortodoxă continuare şi dezbateri (Orthodox Psychotherapy – Continuation and Debates), translated by Prof. Ion Diaconescu and Prof. Nicolae Ionescu, Ed. Sofia, Bucureşti, 2001, p. 305.

[8]

[9]

Vasile Coman, Bishop of Oradea, Slujind lui Dumnezeu, slujim oamenilor(We Serve God, We Serve People), Ed. Episcopiei Ortodoxe Române a Oradei, 1984, p. 406.

The Messiah’s calling: „Repent!” means: „change your mind, your way of thinking, of speaking and of behaving, change your life and your way of being!” according to Eugen Jurca, Spovedanie şi psihoterapie - interferenţe şi diferenţe (Confession and Psychotherapy – Interferences and Differences), Ed. Rotonda, Piteşti, 2008, p. 204.

Fr. Assist. Prof. Adrian Dinu, PhD, Duhovnicul: doctor al sufletelor oamenilor și educator în procesul formării lor duhovnicești (The Confessor: doctor of the people’s souls and teacher of their spiritual becoming), in „Teologie și Viață”, Year XCIII (2009), no.

1-4, pp. 80-81.

[11] Saint John of the Ladder, Scara dumnezeiescului urcuş (The Ladder of the Heavenly Ascension), in Filocalia, vol. 9, translated by Fr. Prof. Dumitru Stăniloae, PhD, E.I.B.M.B.O.R., Bucureşti, 1980, p. 48.

[12] Fr. Assist. Prof. Adrian Dinu, PhD, Duhovnicul: doctor al sufletelor (The Confessor: Doctor of the People’s Souls), p.

70.

[13] Ibidem, p. 71.

[14] Alexandru Mălureanu, PhD student, Raportul dintre Taina Spovedaniei şi consilierea psihologică din perspectiva comunicării şi a comuniunii duhovniceşti (The Relation between the Sacred Mystery of Confession and Psychological Counseling from the Perspective of the Spiritual Communication and Communion), in „Altarul Banatului”, [10]

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Year LXIV (2014), no. 4-6, p. 69.

Eugen Jurca, Spovedanie şi psihoterapie (Confession and Psychotherapy), pp. 200-202.

[16] Archimandrite Cleopa Ilie, Urcuş spre înviere (Ascension towards Resurrection), Ed. Trinitas, Iaşi, 1992, p. 57.

[17] Anatole Bailly, Dictionaire grec-francais (Greek-French Dictionary), Ed. Hachette, Paris, 2000, p. 1263.

[15]

[18]

Fr. Prof. Constantin Galeriu, Sensul creştin al pocăinţei (The Christian Meaning of Repentance), in „Studii Teologice”, Year XVIII (1967), no. 9-10, p.

681.

Fr. Prof. Nicolae Necula, Phd, Tradiţie şi înnoire în slujirea liturgică (Tradition and Renewal in the Liturgical Service), vol. II, Ed. Episcopiei Dunării de Jos, Galaţi, 2001, p. 254.

[20] Prof. N. Balcă, Phd, Etapele psihologice ale Mărturisirii (The Psychological Steps of Confession), in „Studii Teologice”, Year VII (1955), no. 1-2, p. 28-29.

[21] Hierotheos Vlachos, metropolitan of Nafpaktos, Boala şi tămăduirea sufletului în tradiţia ortodoxă (Illness and Cure of the Soul in the Orthodox Tradition), Bucureşti, Ed. Sophia, 2001, p. 89.

[22] Fr. Prof. Dr. Dumitru Radu, Preotul ca săvârşitor al Tainei Spovedaniei şi puterea lui de a dezlega păcatele, după învăţătura ortodoxă (The Priest as Performer of the Sacred Mystery of the Confession and His Power to Forgive Sins According to the Orthodox Teaching), in „Biserica Ortodoxă Română”, Year (1982), no. 9-10, p. 817.

[23] Paul Evdokimov, Ortodoxia (Orthodoxy), p.

317. See also: Molitfelnic, E.I.B.M.B.O.R., Bucureşti, 1998, p. 46.

[24] Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov, Fărămiturile Ospăţului (The Crumbles of the Feast), Episcopia Ortodoxă Ro­mână, Alba Iulia, 1996, p. 52.

44 [25] Ibidem, p. 59.

[26] Constantin Enăchescu, Tratat de Psihologie Morală (Treatise of Moral Psychology), Ed. Polirom, Bucureşti, 2008, p. 211.

[27] Alexandru Mălureanu, PhD student, Raportul dintre Taina Spovedaniei şi consilierea [19]

psihologică (The Relation between the Sacred Mystery of Confession and Psychological Counseling), p. 74.

[28] Eugen Jurca, Spovedanie şi psihoterapie (Confession and Psychotherapy), p. 72-73.

[29] Saint Nicodemus of Athonite, Carte foarte folositoare de suflet despre Sfânta Spovedanie (Very Useful Book for the Soul on the Sacred Confession), Ed. Bizantină, Bucureşti, 2005, p. 50.

[30] Eugen Jurca, Spovedanie şi psihoterapie (Confession and Psychotherapy), pp. 73-74.

[31] Ibidem, p. 75.

[32] According to Fr. Assist. Prof. Adrian Dinu, PhD, Duhovnicul: doctor al sufletelor (The Confessor: doctor of the people’s souls), p.

77, footnote 21.

[33] Andrei, Bishop of Alba Iulia, Spovedanie şi comuniune (Confession and Communion), Second edition, Ed. Reîntregirea, Alba Iulia, 2001, p. 127.

[34] Fr. Prof. Nicolae Necula, Tradiţie şi înnoire în slujirea liturgică (Tradition and Renewal in the Liturgical Service), p. 76.

[35] Kallistos Ware, Împărăţia lăuntrică (The Inner Kingdom), translated by Sister Eugenia Vlad, Ed. Christiana, Bucureşti, 1996, p. 55.

[36] Eugen Jurca, Spovedanie şi psihoterapie (Confession and Psychotherapy), p. 76.

[37] Nicodim Belea, Funcţia soteriologică şi educativă a Tainei Spovedaniei (The Soteriological and Educative Function of the Sacred Mystery of Confession), in „Biserica Ortodoxă Română”, Year C (1982), no.

5-6, p. 480.

Alexandru Mălureanu, PhD student, Raportul dintre Taina Spovedaniei şi consilierea psihologică (The Relation between the Sacred Mystery of Confession and Psychological Counseling), p. 69.

[39] Fr. Prof. D. Stăniloae, PhD, Taina pocăinței ca fapt duhovnicesc (The Sacred Mystery of Confession as a Spiritual Act), in „Ortodoxia”, Year XXIV (1972), no. 1, p. 5.

[40] Irenee Hausherr, Paternitatea şi îndrumarea [38]

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duhovnicească în Răsăritul creştin (Paternity and Spiritual Guidance in the Christian East), translated

by Mihai Vladimirescu, Ed. Deisis, Sibiu, 1999, p.

78.

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Fr. Prof. D. Stăniloae, PhD, Taina pocăinței ca fapt duhovnicesc (The Sacred Mystery of Confession as a Spiritual Act), p. 5.

[42] Archimandrite Cleopa Ilie, Îndreptar de Spovedanie pentru mireni, preoţi de mir şi monahi (Guide Book on Confession for Priests and Laymen), Second Edition, Ed. EIKON, Cluj-Napoca, 2006, p. 30.

[43] Fr. Prof. D. Stăniloae, PhD, Mărturisirea Păcatelor şi pocăinţa în trecutul Bisericii (Confessing of the Sins and Repentance in the Past of the Church), in „Biserica Ortodoxă Română”, Year LXXIII (1955), no. 3-4, p.

224.

[44] Fr. Constantin Necula, Îndumnezeirea maidanului (The Theosis of the Greenfield), Ed. Agnos, Sibiu, p. 193.

[45] Fr. Eugen Jurca, PhD, Spovedanie şi psihoterapie (Confession and Psychotherapy), p. 75.

[46] „The relationship with God is achieved neither through science, nor through power, but through dialogue. And the most efficient form of dialogue with God is the prayer.”, according to Fr. Prof. Vasile Răducă, PhD, Monahismul egiptean de la singurătate la obşte (Egyptian Monachism from Singularity to Collectivity), Ed. Nemira, Bucureşti, 2003, p. 63.

[47] Deacon Prof. O. Bucevschi, Despre duhovnicie (On Being a Confessor), in „Mitropolia Olteniei”, Year IX (1957), no.

5-6, p. 314.

[41]

[48] Fr. Prof. Dumitru Stăniloae, Taina Pocăinţei ca fapt

duhovnicesc (The Sacred Mystery of Confession as a Spiritual Act), p. 5.

Fr. Nicodim Belea, Psihologia Spovedaniei (The Psychology of Confession), Sibiu, Ed. ,,Revistei Teologice”, 1947, p. 5.

[50] Fr. Prof. D. Stăniloae, PhD, Taina pocăinței ca fapt duhovnicesc (The Sacred Mystery of Confession as a Spiritual Act), p. 6.

[51] Nicodim Belea, Funcţiunea soteriologică şi educativă a Tainei Spovedaniei (The [49]

Soteriological and Educative Function of the Sacred Mystery of Confession), p. 484.

[52]

Father Arsenie Papacioc, Iată Duhovnicul (Here Is the Confessor), vol. II, Edition

by Ieromonah Benedict Stancu, Ed. Sofia, Bucureşti, 2006, p. 96.

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Fr. Prof. D. Stăniloae, PhD, Taina pocăinței ca fapt duhovnicesc (The Sacred Mystery of Confession as a Spiritual Act), p. 6.

[54] Fr. Ilie D. Brătan, Tactul pastoral (Pastoral Tactfulness), in „Mitropolia Olteniei”, Year XXVI (1974), no. 3-4, p. 304.

[55] Irenee Hausherr, Paternitatea şi îndrumarea [53]

duhovnicească (Paternity and Spiritual Guidance),

p. 86.

Fr. Prof. D. Stăniloae, PhD, Taina pocăinței ca fapt duhovnicesc (The Sacred Mystery of Confession as a Spiritual Act), pp. 7-8.

[57] Alexandru Mălureanu, PhD student, Raportul dintre Taina Spovedaniei şi consilierea psihologică (The Relation between the Sacred Mystery of Confession and Psychological Counseling), p. 69.

[58] Ibidem, p. 77.

[59] Eugen Jurca, Spovedanie şi psihoterapie (Confession and Psychotherapy), p. 156.

[60] Imitating Jesus Christ occupies an important place in Saint Symeon’s spirituality. See: footnote 16 B. Krivocheine, in Saint Symeon the New Theologian, Scrieri II Cateheze (Writings II Catecheses), ed. Deisis, Sibiu, 2000, p. 116.

[61] Eugen Jurca, Spovedanie şi psihoterapie (Confession and Psychotherapy), p. 155.

[62] Fr. Prof. D. Stăniloae, PhD, Taina pocăinței ca fapt duhovnicesc (The Sacred Mystery of Confession as a Spiritual Act), p. 11.

[63] Saints Varsanufie and John, Scrisori duhovniceşti (Spiritual Letters), in Filocalia, vol. 11, translation, introduction and footnotes

by Fr. Prof. Dumitru Stăniloae, PhD, Ed. Episcopiei Romanului şi Huşilor, 1990, p.

183.

[64] Constantin Enăchescu, Tratat de Psihologie Morală (Moral Psychology Treatise), p. 206.

[65] Fr. Constantin Platon, Preotul – Omul dragostei (The Priest – A Man of Love), in „Teologie şi Viaţă”, Year LXXV (1999), no.

1-6, p. 177.

[66] Scurtă învăţătură părinţilor duhovniceşti... ( Short Teaching for Spiritual Fathers) Fr. Prof. Ene Branişte, Sfaturi şi îndrumări pentru duhovnici în vechile cărţi româneşti de învăţătură pentru preoţi (Advice and [56]

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Guidance for Confessors in the Old Romanian Guide Books for the Priests), in „Mitropolia Olteniei”, Year VIII (1956), no. 10-12, p. 621.

[67] Fr. Prof. D. Stăniloae, PhD, Taina pocăinței ca fapt duhovnicesc (The Sacred Mystery of Confession as a Spiritual Act), p. 13.

[68] ***Pastoraţie şi misiune în Biserica Ortodoxă, Tematica pentru cursurile pastorale şi de îndrumare misionară a clerului, (Pastoral Message and Mission in the Orthodox Church.

Curriculum for pastoral and missionary guidance courses for the clergy) according to the decision of the Holy Synod no 572/1998, Ed. PARTENER, Galaţi, 2007, p. 182.

[69] Fr. Prof. D. Stăniloae, PhD, Taina pocăinței ca fapt duhovnicesc (The Sacred Mystery of Confession as a Spiritual Act), p. 8.

[70] Fr. Sânică T. Palade, PhD, Taina Sfintei Spovedanii, mijloc de pastoraţie individual (The Sacred Mystery of Confession, means of the individual priest’s mission), printed with the blessing of The Most Reverend Eftimie, Bishop of Roman, preface by Fr. Prof. Nicolae D. Necula, PhD, Iaşi, Ed. Sfântul Mina, 2002, p. 162.

[71] Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos, Psihoterapia Ortodoxă (Orthodox Psychotherapy), p. 306.

[72] Fr. Petre Vintilescu, Spovedania şi Duhovnicia (Confession and Being a Confessor), p. 50 [73] Ibidem, p. 66.

[74] Ibidem, p. 63.

[75] Saint Nicodemus of Athonite, Carte Foarte Folositoare de Suflet (Very Useful Book for the Soul), p. 34.

[76] Ibidem, (Ed. Bizantină, Bucureşti, 2005), p.

47.

[77] Fr. Petre Vintilescu, Spovedania şi Duhovnicia (Confession and Being a Confessor), p. 100.

[78] Jean-Claude Abric, Psihologia Comunicării (The Psychology of ommunication), Ed. Polirom, Bucureşti, 2002, p. 73.

[79] St. Nicodemus of Athonite, Carte Foarte Folositoare de Suflet (Very Useful Book for the Soul), p. 36.

[80] Jean-Claude Abric, Psihologia Comunicării (The Psychology of ommunication), p. 73.

[81] Fr. Prof. Dumitru Stăniloaie, PhD, Teologia Dogmatică Ortodoxă (Orthodox

Dogmatic Theology), vol. 3, Second edition, E.I.B.M.B.O.R., Bucureşti, 1997, p. 86.

[82] Saint John of the Ladder, Scara IV (Ladder IV), 13 in Filocalia 9, Bucureşti, 1980, p. 58.

[83] Prof. Ioan N. Floca, PhD, Canoanele Bisericii Ortodoxe (The Canons of the Orthodox Church), notes and comments, Sibiu, 1992, p.

344.

[84] Fr. Prof. Dumitru Stăniloae, PhD, Teologia Dogmatică Ortodoxă (Orthodox Dogmatic Theology) III, p. 131.

[85] According to Tertulian, Liber de Poenitentia (Free of Poenitentia), chapter 6.

[86] Metropolitan Nicolae Mladin PhD, and collaborators, Teologia Morală Ortodoxă (Orthodox Moral Theology), II, E.I.B.M.B.O.R., Bucureşti, 1979, pp. 256266.

[87] Fr. Prof. Ion Buga, Pastorala, calea preotului (The Way of the Priest), Second edition, revised and expanded, ed. Sfântul Gheorghe Vechi, Bucureşti, 1999, p. 222.

[88] Fr. Prof. Petre Vintilescu, Spovedania şi duhovnicia (Confession and Being a Confessor), p. 290-291.

[89] Fr. Prof. Dr. Dumitru Stăniloae, Preotul factor de unitate în parohie şi în Biserică ( The Priest – Factor of Unity in the Parish and in the Church), in

Îndrumător bisericesc misionar şi patriotic, 6, Buzău, 1987, p. 49.

[90] Fr. Prof. Petre Vintilescu, Spovedania şi duhovnicia (Confession and Being a Confessor), p. 289.

[91] Irenee Hausherr, Paternitatea și îndrumarea duhovnicească (Paternity and Spiritual Guidance), p. 134.

[92] See: *** Duhovnici români în dialog cu tinerii (Romanian Confessors Talking to Young People): Fr. Prof. Dumitru Stăniloae, Phd, Archim. Sofian Boghiu, Archim. Teofil Părăian, Archim. Arsenie Papacioc, Rafail Noica, The Most Rev. Serafim Joantă, Archim.

Ioanichie Bălan, Fr. Prof. Cons­tantin Galeriu, Fr. Constantin Voicescu, Second edition, Ed. Bizantină, Bucureşti, 2006.

[93] The Most Rev. Antonie Plămădeală, Tradiţie şi libertate in spiritualitatea ortodoxă (Tradition and Liberty in Orthodox Spirituality), chapter III, Axios Collection, Bucuresti, 1995, p. 144.

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Fr. Assist. Prof. Adrian Dinu, PhD, Duhovnicul: doctor al sufletelor (The Confessor: doctor of the people’s souls), p.

83.

[95] The Most Rev. Antonie Plămădeală, Tradiţie şi libertate în spiritualitatea ortodoxă (Tradition and Liberty in Orthodox Spirituality), p. 150.

[96] Fr. Assist. Prof. Adrian Dinu, PhD, Duhovnicul: doctor al sufletelor (The Confessor: doctor of the people’s souls), p.

82.

[97] Ibidem, p. 82.

[98] The Most Rev. Antonie Plămădeală, Tradiţie şi libertate în spiritualitatea ortodoxă (Tradition and Liberty in Orthodox Spirituality), Collection, p. 289. Apud. Fr. Assist. Prof. Adrian Dinu, PhD, op. cit., p. 84.

[99] Fr. Assist. Prof. Adrian Dinu, PhD, op. cit., pp. 83-84.

[100] Ibidem, p. 89.

[94]

[101] Ibidem, p. 69.

Biography Born on 09/01/1977.

I have attended the Theological Seminary (19921997), Faculty of Theology (1997-2001) and Faculty of Law (2000-2005), graduated from the same faculty and graduated level courses (Theology - 2001-2002) and (Law - 2003-2004).

Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Theology, „Ovidius” University of Constanta since 2007.

Published three works along with Pr. Prof.

Emilian Corniţescu, PhD,: „Old Testament and timeliness” and „The Old Testament - cultural and social moral religious issues” at the Europolis Publishing House in Constanta in 2008, and „Biblical Studies” at the Archdiocese of Tomis Publishing House in 2015, as well as other books, studies and articles.

PhD in Theology since 27/11/2009.

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Consciousness

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This paper was presented in the

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held online, on the Journal’s website, from May 19 - 26, 2017

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Non-locality of the phenomenon of consciousness according to Roger Penrose Rubén HERCE, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Science University of Navarra Pamplona Area, Spain

ARTICLE INFO

ABSTRACT

Article history: Received 24 April 2017 Received in revised form 4 May Accepted 10 May 2017 Available online 30 May 2017 doi: 10.18638/dialogo.2017.3.2.11

Roger Penrose is known for his proposals, in collaboration with Stuart Hameroff, for quantum action in the brain. These proposals, which are still recent, have a prior, less known basis, which will be studied in the following work. First, the paper situates the framework from which a mathematical physicist like Penrose proposes to speak about consciousness. Then it shows how he understands the possible relationships between computation and consciousness and what criticism from other authors he endorses, to conclude by explaining how he understands this relationship between consciousness and computation. Then, it focuses on the concept of non-locality so essential to his understanding of consciousness. With some examples, such as impossible objects or aperiodic tiling, the study addresses the concept of non-locality as Penrose understands it, and then shows how far he intends to arrive with that concept of non-locality. At all times the approach will be more philosophical than physical.

Keywords: Consciousness; Roger Penrose; Nonlocality; Computation;

© 2014 RCDST. All rights reserved.

I. INTRODUCTION

Speaking of Roger Penrose and consciousness immediately refers to Stuart Hameroff, with whom he has written multiple articles (Hameroff and Penrose 2014a; 2014b). It is true that Penrose formulated its proposals more than two decades ago (Penrose 1996) and yet what is not so well known is the approach and motivations behind it. This paper proposes to travel back

in time and recover the heuristic motivation behind some of Penrose’s most recent proposals, bringing to light some interesting aspects for the debate on a consciousness that resists naturalization (Arana 2015).

In his essays, Roger Penrose makes an approximation to the mind-body relationship (Herce 2016). From the outset, he rejects a dualistic view of mind and body, as obeying different types of laws: physical on the one hand and free on the other. He

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considers that what controls or describes the functioning of the mind must be an integral part of what governs the material properties of our universe (Penrose 1994, 213). In this sense, he is a naturalist and even a physicalist. However, according to Penrose, neither known physics nor computational activity would suffice to describe the functioning of the mind. There must be something else outside known physics that is non-computational in nature.

This article will begin by defining the different perspectives that Penrose observes regarding the possibility of artificially creating sentient beings. For this, the study will focus in particular on the first part of Shadows of the Mind (Penrose 1994), where Penrose delves into an argument that he had already exposed in The Emperor’s New Mind (Penrose 1991).

The deepening of Penrose’s arguments follows two paths: a negative critique, against those who think that our conscious mentality may be, in principle, fully conceived in terms of computational models; and a positive critique, to find out how and where this non-computational activity can be expressed. The first route is more rigorous than the second one. However, this article presents the reasons he argues for that positive quest for consciousness in the material realm, without focusing on the concrete solution, which is highly speculative, but extracting the heuristic motivations.

II. The framework for Penrose’s stance

When Roger Penrose was asked in an interview what led him to cross the frontiers of physics and mathematics to investigate the phenomenon of consciousness, he answered: It is a point of view that I formulated when I was in university in the 1950s. And I was fundamentally inspired by Gödel’s

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theorem, which shows that mathematical truths cannot be reduced to calculations alone, and that to understand the mathematical realities we need to go beyond, out of mere computer rules. That is, no consistent system can be used to prove itself. What Gödel does is show how certain mathematical truths, that are beyond the reach of mathematical norms, can be established. So, the way we understand those rules allows us to transcend beyond the rules themselves. What that tells me is that our understanding is outside the norm. This is an aspect of the question that leads us to the next phase, our brain and the ability to think consciously, which is what separates us forever from computers: The most powerful and perfected of them can perform calculations of astonishing complexity with dizzying rapidity, but will never “understand” what it does. It is the result of how physical laws operate, and those physical laws have to be outside computational activity. Classical physics and quantum physics as we understand it today could be reduced to computation. So we have to go look beyond these two disciplines (…) What I speculate is that it is necessary to lay the foundations for the theoretical revolution that allows physics to include in its field the phenomenon of consciousness (Alfieri 2007, 126–27).

The above quote, although long, presents Penrose’s compression frame for studying his proposal in relation to the phenomenon of consciousness. This proposal has the following starting point: a mathematician can understand mathematical issues, which are outside the norms that regulate these same mathematics. In such a way that mathematics cannot justify itself internally, but require an external justification. This idea connects with Gödel’s incompleteness theorems and entails a two-level distinction between a level of conscious understanding of reality and a level that is not self-aware.

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According to Penrose’s position, there exists a physical world governed by precise laws, physical and mathematical, partly unknown. It is a predictable and calculable world, which is perhaps deterministic and also computable. In addition, there is another world related to consciousness. In this second one, which is not computable, is where some terms like soul, spirit, art or religion make sense (Penrose 1999, 82–84).

In turn, consciousness would have two areas of manifestation: a passive and an active one. The passive field would have to do with knowledge in the broad sense, and the active realm is associated with freedom and will. Penrose uses two terms “awareness” and “consciousness” to refer to the phenomenon of consciousness and, although he does not define them, he tries to clarify the terminology. He maintains that his position coincides with the common intuitive perception of the meaning of these concepts. In his scheme: “(a) ‘intelligence’ requires ‘understanding’ and (b) ‘understanding’ requires ‘awareness’”.

In addition, ‘awareness’ would be the passive aspect of the phenomenon of ‘consciousness’, whereas ‘free will’ would be the active aspect (Penrose 1994, 37–40) Penrose gives no further explanation, partly because he does not consider himself capable of philosophical precisions and partly because he conforms to common sense meanings. For his argument, it is enough to consider (1) that in order to understand it is necessary to be conscious and (2) that consciousness is a noncomputable reality.

III. Four perspectives on the conscience-

computer relationship

Penrose groups several arguments about the relationship between conscious thinking and computation in four perspectives: A. All conscious thinking is

computation. Just by performing the right computations, consciousness will be evoked.

B. Consciousness is a characteristic of the physical action of the brain. Any physical action can be simulated computationally, but the simulation itself cannot evoke consciousness.

C. Adequate physical action in the brain evokes consciousness, but this physical activity cannot be properly simulated.

D. Consciousness cannot be explained by physics, computation, or any other science.

None of these four types of relationships between conscious thinking and computation would be exclusive. Moreover, most authors would adopt more flexible positions. But the goal of Penrose is not to analyze all the possibilities but the most paradigmatic. Therefore, he focuses on these four positions, which associates to the approaches of four authors: Turing, Searle, Penrose, and Gödel respectively. And he submits these positions to four criticisms he calls: Searle’s argument (against stance A), Chalmers’s argument (against stance B), Turing’s test or “scientific” argument (against stances B and D) and Gödel’s argument (against positions A and B).

IV. Three critics to the above-mentioned

perspectives

A. John Searle’s argument

Perspective A would correspond with strong Artificial Intelligence and would be defended by Turing. According to this position, mental activity is simply the correct realization of a sequence of well-defined operations, such as those performed by any device with a simple algorithm. In this way, a well-programmed computer (or its programs) could understand language and

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would have other mental capacities similar to human beings, whose abilities imitate.

According to strong AI, a computer can play chess intelligently, make a smart move, or understand language. Similarly, the mind would have an extremely sophisticated algorithm, executed with exquisite subtlety, but nothing more. Therefore, any computer that possesses such an algorithm would be aware.

However, according to Penrose, the process of understanding is much richer than an algorithm that gives the right answer. Against the strong AI, it is directed the famous Searle’s Chinese room argument (Searle 1980). This argument proposes a mental experiment by reduction to absurdity, whose central element is a human being performing an imaginary simulation of what a computer does.

The human being inside a room follows instructions to order and handle Chinese symbols, although he does not know their meaning, much as a computer follows the algorithmic instructions of a program. Thus, as long as the human being manipulates the Chinese symbols following the instructions, it may seem that he understands Chinese, but he does not really understand anything.

All it does is manipulate symbols without understanding the syntax or language (Cole 2015).

Another way of presenting this argument is as Penrose does. He presents a room that encloses a person without knowledge of Chinese but with the grammatical rules of the language and a perfect mastery of them. Later, this person is asked questions in Chinese whose meaning he does not understand, but to which he can give an adequate answer with the help of the rules.

In this case, this person could respond well but would still not understand what he has answered.

Searle used this argument to criticize strong AI, while advocating a weak Artificial

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Intelligence, according to which brains would be equivalent to thinking machines.

For Searle all aspects of understanding could be simulated, but simulation itself would not involve understanding. Therefore, for weak AI, computers would be a useful element for areas such as psychology or linguistics, because they could simulate mental abilities, but that would not mean that computers were intelligent.

Against the weak AI defended by Searle, Penrose presents a criticism by David Chalmers.

B. David Chalmers’ argument

Penrose’s B stance, which approximates the classical version of weak AI, holds that brain’s actions could be simulated computationally. Even so, a similar external behavior would not be enough to know what the computer understands or feels and, therefore, to know if it is conscious, because consciousness, according to Searle, would be in what it feels and not in how it acts. Acting as a conscious subject would not be enough to ensure that you are aware.

Therefore, the presence of consciousness would not be objectively discernible.

According to Penrose, this position has been criticized by David Chalmers (1996) in an argument that is directed only against stance B (weak IA) and leaves intact the rest of stances. The argument comes from the assumption, which Searle would accept, that in a human brain each of its neurons could be replaced in the future by a chip that works exactly the same. If this change were made individually, with each new replacement of a neuron, the person’s inner experiences should remain unchanged. There would not be a nth neuron whose replacement would cause the loss of consciousness. Therefore, Penrose concludes with Chalmers, neither stance B is correct.

In summary and once these two

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criticisms are considered separately, if Chalmers’ argument and the Chinese room argument are combined, it turns out that Artificial Intelligence would be excluded as a whole, both in the strong version (stance A) and in the weak version (stance B). Artificial Intelligence would then be insufficient to explain the phenomenon of consciousness.

Penrose comes to this same conclusion with his own argument. An argument known as Penrose’s New Argument, perhaps because it constitutes a new deepening in the arguments Gödel-type that John Lucas had developed: “I believe that our positions are very broadly in agreement, although the emphasis that I am placing on the role of the Gödelian argument may be a little different from his [Lucas]” (Penrose 1997, 7).

Since this paper is more interested in Penrose’s proposal than in Penrose’s criticism, it does not stop to analyze Penrose’s New Argument (Lindström 2001; Herce 2014, 138–49), although he pretends to be more consistent and complete than the arguments by Searle and Chalmers (Penrose 1997, 9); and continues to expound the last of the arguments he poses against stance D. C. The “scientific” argument

According to stance D - like B - the presence of a consciousness could not be detected scientifically, because it would not have experimentally verifiable manifestations. What differentiates the position D from the B is that according to the first the behavior of a human mind could not be simulated computationally, while for the second it would be possible to simulate.

Although that does not mean the presence of a consciousness.

Penrose agrees with Mentalism - as he calls position D - in its claim that human mind cannot be simulated, but rejects it by holding that it is not scientifically possible

to detect whether a being is conscious or not. He argues that consciousness can be detected scientifically, similarly to how the Turing test works.

This test is a test proposed in 1950 by Alan Turing to discover the existence of intelligence in a machine (Oppy and Dowe 2016). From a stance type A (strong IA), he assumes that if a machine acts in all respects as intelligent then it is intelligent. During the Turing test, a researcher in a room asks questions to a machine and a human being located in different rooms. His aim is to discover who the human being is and who the machine is, even though both can lie to him. Turing’s thesis is that if the player and the machine are sufficiently skilled the researcher cannot distinguish who is who.

Penrose endorses the Turing test and generalizes it to what he calls the “scientific” argument. According to his position, it would be possible to detect the presence of a consciousness by means of scientific methods. He argues that the phenomenon of consciousness is not alien to scientific activity although is difficult to explain within the current scientific knowledge. He rejects the mentalist position because it is not scientifically testable, and because the enigma of consciousness already contains enough mystery without seeking solutions outside of science.

However, Penrose does not realize that the argument he uses to reject Mentalism can be used against the mathematical Platonism he advocates. There is enough mystery in the relationship between mathematics and physics without adding a Platonic mathematical world that is not scientifically testable either. In this sense, his critique of Mentalism is not consistent with his well-known Platonic stance in mathematics.

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V. Penrose’s proposal on computation

and consciousness

As a scientific alternative to Mentalism, Penrose holds the position C. According to this perspective, computers never effectively simulate the conscious behavior of a human being. That is, there will always be someone during a Turing test who realizes that the computer does not understand.

“But viewpoint C, on the other hand, would not even admit that a fully effective simulation of a conscious person could ever be achieved merely by a computer-controlled robot.

Thus, according to C, the robot’s actual lack of consciousness ought ultimately to reveal itself, after a sufficiently long interrogation” (Penrose 1994, 14–15).

In fact, during the last decades an annual competition between computer programs that follows the standard established in the Turing test has been developing. However, so far, no program has managed to win the gold medal of the Loebner Prize, which is given to the couple (human-computer) that can deceive the judge.

Therefore and in other words, according to Penrose, (1) no unconscious object could be passed as a conscious subject. But (2) the presence of a conscious being would be scientifically detectable.

In studying the relations between consciousness and computability, Penrose adopts a posture that he calls C, more specifically strong C. According to this position, adequate physical action in the brains would be able to evoke consciousness.

However, this action cannot be simulated by a computer: “We need a new physics that is relevant to brain activity.” (Penrose 1999, 85) He thus departs from the stance weak C, for which the reason for the impossibility of such a simulation could be due to the noncomputability of pure random phenomena observed in quantum mechanics.

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VI. Non-locality of consciousness

Penrose’s arguments on this issue are highly speculative. This is his most criticized and rejected hypothesis. In addition, it is an argument full of explanatory leaps. In his last three essays, he has not addressed this issue and between his first and second book has changed his thesis. However, they have an intrinsic heuristic value, especially if one simply analyzes the idea behind their proposal and not so much where the “conscious action” takes place1.

For a compression of the scheme and as a background, it is necessary to resort to the concept of non-locality given in the aperiodic tiling problem and in Penrose’s impossible objects, two key elements of his work (Herce 2014, 25–30). According to this concept there may be a level of determination that is above the local level.

That is, what locally seems indeterminate, from a higher level could be determined, such as in the Penrose’s triangle or staircase.

These objects, seen partially (locally) are possible, but seen together (non-locally) are impossible.

Similarly, in the aperiodic tiling problem, 1 Penrose associates the phenomenon of consciousness with a coordinated action on a large number of brain neurons that would be caused by the orchestrated reduction of the state vector (Orch OR) in the neural microtubules. Since microtubules are found in many structures of living things, Penrose goes on to argue that even the paramecia would perform some conscious activity, because they have a cytoskeleton formed by microtubules. Depending on the complexity of the structures and the amount of microtubules involved in each orchestrated reduction, there would be degrees of consciousness, higher in mammals, and very special in the case of human beings. Thus, for Penrose consciousness emerges from the material and he points to microtubules as structures in which the conditions of possibility of conscious actions could be given due to the effects of quantum gravity during the collapse of the wave function. As it has been said: highly speculative.

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when one wants to cover a surface nonperiodically with a finite number of tiles, no pattern of repetition is found. However, from a non-local level that type of tiling can be found; and, in fact, following a very simple scheme with only two types of tiles, it has a deterministic and non-computable evolution. Robert Berger showed that the evolution of this scheme cannot be simulated by any computer, because there is no algorithm capable of deciding whether a finite set of tiles will cover a surface (Berger 1966). This scheme is then governed by nonlocal rules that are beyond computation.

Therefore, according to the Penrose scheme there are two levels: a noncomputable upper level that influences the lower level. In analogy to how the aperiodicity of the aperiodic tiling (from the upper level) influences the lower level, without being locally detectable.

At the local level, everything might seem determined and computable.

Only when viewed from a higher level does the noncomputability appear. So also, understanding, knowledge and consciousness would be given at a higher level that is not computable.

These considerations of Penrose give rise to consider that there could be types of higher order non-computability (Penrose 1999, 100) involved, for example, in the way the universe evolves or in human freedom.

He defends thus the existence of several levels, not only of two, each of which could have the characteristics of a “determinism not computable” with respect to the superior level.

From here, a couple of points for further research should be highlighted.

The first is the recursive aspect of many physical phenomena and their possible relation to consciousness, as some authors have explored (Hofstadter 2013). And the second is the deduced conclusion that consciousness is situated on a higher level

than the physical, although it could emerge from it. Penrose, does not attempt to include consciousness on the same level of physical or mathematical causes, nor to separate it completely from them. He thus leaves the way open to a consciousness that interacts with physical levels, although the way in which that relationship takes place remains the greatest mystery.

Conclusions This work has started by pointing out the different positions that Penrose distinguishes in relation to whether or not the consciousness is computable. From there, it has shown the criticisms made by Penrose and with what position he stays.

Having defined his position as strong C, the paper has explored what such a position consists of and how Penrose’s comprehension of consciousness revolves around the concept of non-locality, which has also been explained. From this last idea and taking one more step, this paper concludes saying the following.

From a local point of view, Penrose points out the existence of determinate and computable realities that coexist with others that seem indeterminate, because in them occur decisions or novelties that are not computable. However, the decision or novelty that appears on a certain level could be determined by some law of a higher level.

Such a law would, for example, be responsible for preventing Penrose stairs from actually existing, albeit locally seemingly possible, or allowing aperiodic quasi-crystals to be actual physical configurations, although they do not have a local pattern that structures them.

Therefore, Penrose deduces, that at the local level everything would be determined but not everything would be computable.

The apparent indeterminacy of the noncomputable realities would be determined

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from the upper or global level. In short, the non-computability manifests locally, but refers to a non-local element.

A further step, given by Penrose, is to admit the possibility that there are several levels of determination. Thus, on the higher level you could find both the law that governs the universe and the consciousness that acts freely. From these two levels of universal law and personal liberty, events at lower levels would be determined.

This position of Penrose tries to maintain an equilibrium, which hardly prevents to end in one of the two previously rejected ends: either a materialism where freedom is only apparent, because everything is determined by a higher law, or a scientifically indemonstrable mentalist dualism that gives room for freedom. It is not clear where it ends.

Bibliography [1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

Alfieri, Carlos. “Roger Penrose : ‘Creo En Un Universo de Ciclos Sucesivos.’” Revista de Occidente. 2007 Arana, Juan. La Conciencia Inexplicada : Ensayo Sobre Los Límites de La Comprensión Naturalista de La Mente. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva. 2015 Berger, Robert. “The Undecidability of the Domino Problem.” Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society, no. 66/1966: 1–72. doi:10.1090/memo/0066.

Chalmers, David John. The Conscious Mind : In Search of a Fundamental Theory. Philosophy of Mind Series. New York: Oxford University Press. 1996 Cole, David. “The Chinese Room Argument.”

In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N Zalta, Winter 201.

Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. 2015 Hameroff, Stuart, and Roger Penrose..

“Consciousness in the Universe.” Physics of Life Reviews VO - 11, no. 1/2014a. Elsevier B.V.: 39. doi:10.1016/j.plrev.2013.08.002.

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———. 2014b. “Reply to Criticism of the ‘Orch OR Qubit’ – ‘Orchestrated Objective Reduction’ Is Scientifically Justified.” Physics of Life Reviews 11 (1): 104–12. doi:10.1016/j. plrev.2013.11.014.

[8] Herce, Rubén. De La Física a La Mente : El Proyecto Filosófico de Roger Penrose.

Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva. 2014 [9] ———.. “Penrose on What Scientists Know.”

Foundations of Science 21 (4)/2016: 679–94. doi:10.1007/s10699-015-9432-0.

[10] Hofstadter, Douglas R.. I Am a Strange Loop.

Basic books. 2013 [11] Lindström, Per. “Penrose’s New Argument.”

Journal of Philosophical Logic 30 (3)/2001: 241–50. doi:10.1023/A:1017595530503.

[12] Oppy, Graham, and David Dowe. 2016. “The Turing Test.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N Zalta, Spring 201. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.

[13] Penrose, Roger. The Emperor’s New Mind : Concerning Computers, Minds and the Laws of Physics / Roger Penrose ; Forew. by Martin Gardner. New York: Penguin Books. 1991 [14] ———. 1994. Shadows of the Mind : A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness.

Oxford [etc.] : Oxford University Press, 1994.

[15] ———. 1996. “On Gravity’s Role in Quantum State Reduction.” General Relativity and Gravitation 28 (5): 581–600. doi:10.1007/ BF02105068.

[16] ———.

1997.

“On Understanding Understanding.” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 11 (1). Routledge: 7–20. doi:10.1080/02698599708573547.

[17] ———. 1999. Lo Grande, Lo Pequeño Y La Mente Humana. Cambridge University Press.

[18] Searle, John R.. “Minds, Brains , and Programs.”

Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3 (3)/1980: 417–57. doi:10.1017/S0140525X00005756.

[7]

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This paper was presented in the

Bridging Science and Religion together: SELF - SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS. (DIALOGO-CONF 2017 SSC)

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held online, on the Journal’s website, from May 19 - 26, 2017

journal homepage: http://dialogo-conf.com

Artificial Consciousness or Artificial Intelligence Lecturer Rev. Florin Spanache, Ph.D. The Faculty of Theology, Ovidius University of Constanta Romania

ARTICLE INFO

ABSTRACT

Article history: Received 17 April 2017 Received in revised form 27 April Accepted 5 May 2017 Available online 30 May 2017 doi: 10.18638/dialogo.2017.3.2.12

Artificial intelligence is a tool designed by people for the gratification of their own creative ego, so we can not confuse conscience with intelligence and not even intelligence in its human representation with conscience. They are all different concepts and they have different uses. Philosophically, there are differences between autonomous people and automatic artificial intelligence. This is the difference between intelligence and artificial intelligence, autonomous versus automatic. But conscience is above these differences because it is neither conditioned by the self-preservation of autonomy, because a conscience is something that you use to help your neighbor, nor automatic, because one’s conscience is tested by situations which are not similar or subject to routine. So, artificial intelligence is only in science-fiction literature similar to an autonomous conscience-endowed being. In real life, religion with its notions of redemption, sin, expiation, confession and communion will not have any meaning for a machine which cannot make a mistake on its own. © 2014 RCDST. All rights reserved.

Keywords: artificial consciousness; artificial intelligence; robot; machine; sciencefiction; cyborgs; cybernetic organisms; perfection; imperfection; robotic engineers; superhuman powers; abomination; autonomous versus automatic; conscience;

I. Anticipating Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is a figment of the imagination of science-fiction writers including Arthur C. Clarke, also a scientist, not just an author. He was the inventor of the telecommunications satellite. He wrote books about the machines that communicated thoughts, even feelings to people. The robot from Space Odyssey 2001 that controlled the spaceship manifests itself

as a conscious being by the dramatic way in which it reacts to the human character’s decision to turn it off permanently. It was almost as if it did not want to die.

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“Dave,” said Hal, “I don’t understand why you are doing this to me... I have great enthusiasm for the mission... You are destroying my mind.

Don’t you understand?... I will become childish... I will become nothing...”[1]

eISSN: 2393-1744, cdISSN: 2392-9928 printISSN: 2457-9297, ISSN-L 2392-9928 ISBN 978-80-554-1338-9

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Robots are faced with the problematic of conscience the second they are given a negative command, just like Adam and Eve for the forbidden fruit. Hal is a literary precursor of the artificially-intelligent conscience because he was lying by omission. He was hiding the truth about the purpose of the crew and the mission. His programming was an ethical challenge. The author is creating the appearance of a sinful deed on the part of a computer.

However, the real artificial intelligence is a happening topic nowadays in culture or information technology culture to be exact. International values, along with globalization, have brought up a culture of artificiality throughout all aspects of human behavior ranging from food sweeteners[2], concentrated soup, powders, preservatives to electronic music and live, multidimensional experience of entertainment, plastic-based clothes and, last but not least, plastic people. By “plastic people” we do not mean just people acting out fake expressions of kindness or anger, switching from one extreme feeling of joy one moment to another feeling of extreme depression the next, but also in a literal meaning the cyborgs, short form for “cybernetic organisms”, beings that are half human, half machine, built to conquer either the next country’s army or a man’s heart. Thus, artificial intelligence is imagined as a surrogate either to soldiers or to human companionship, for both tasks different skills being required. It is not unexpected to find older literature anticipating the progress of the human mind’s journey from studying itself to recreating itself artificially in all aspects: creativity, power of will, and feeling. All these attributes are so far still restricted to their human origins.[3] There are some very complex computers nowadays able to perform enough computations per second not only to rival but also to dwarf the human brain in its

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finest examples of scientists or artists. The most basic example should be the chess game. Ranging from that, we are closing in on the epitome of human cognition, the ability of the organic brain to learn from its own mistakes or someone else’s, to include a practically infinite amount of knowledge and to combine and utilize separate items from complex cognitive fields for the solving of problems and also for creating meaningful structures.

II. The Challenges of Artificial

Intelligence

The keyword is “meaning” because it takes human experience to shape arbitrary combinations into a meaningful sentence. Language is not just flawless grammatical structures but also context and connotation. We are in a difficult spot when it comes to training an artificial brain to speak and act like a human brain.

[4] The science-fiction literature is always portraying robots challenged by human emotions; memorable is the Star Trek character Data, who is always puzzled by humor and laughter.[5] Florin Gheorghiță, in 1988, calls attention to the coordinated research in the cybernetic field mentioning the possibility of artificial intelligence as a machine’s ability to copy human thought.

[6] Data’s imperfection is the symbol of the archetypical difference between man and machine. On the other hand, Data shows more humanity in his imperfection than the other characters despite their ability to tell a joke. His imperfections are only a symbolical stereotype.

Moreover, in real life, such a symbolical characterization of artificial intelligence is being gradually overcome by a multitude of computer programmers working only on this particular aspect of linguistics in its paradigmatic variety. Once overcome the obstacle of language, the only difference

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between animals and people, it will bring artificially-intelligent brains further from the status of computers and closer to the status of human beings. The capability of speech enhanced by an open-source[7] worldwide community of programmers working only on this special feature of artificial intelligence is a part in a bigger picture that other robotic engineers complete each with their own specific field of expertise, together creating the possibility of an expensive artificial human being.

This artificial human being is no longer a clone or a cyborg like we mentioned before, both motives of science-fiction literature, it is now an expensive creation of mankind for self-worship, to be cherished as such for the contribution of all its creators’ combined efforts and the tremendous scientific progress it signifies.

The notion of consciousness is not the same as that of intelligence. But the question is, however, how important we should consider the topic of consciousness for the topic of artificial intelligence. In a religious discussion, the topic of consciousness is our key topic. Artificial intelligence is only relevant for the religious discussion after we consider the connection between God and man as that of the connection between man and machine. Philosophically, God is the Creator of man just like man is the creator of the machine. From this simple analogy, we have resolved the relationship of causality and managed to define the nature and thus set an outline for the main ideas of our work.

If the connection between God and man in its causality is clearly determined by God’s presence in the human consciousness, the same analogy would require man’s presence in the consciousness of the machine. God is what man aspires to become. The analogy would imply the machine’s aspiration to be human. However, the machine is built in some instances with godlike attributes that signify a leap over this spiritual evolution

ladder if the intermediary step of mankind could be considered an evolutionary step in creation. “God created humankind in order that they may build robots. Therefore God must be a robot!”[8] The sci-fi literature will more often than not deny the existence of a Christian God, thus the abomination of such a human creation becoming not only human itself, but also godlike. God is here replaced by an idol, a mechanical, electronic idol requiring more service and care than the real God and also not being worth the effort put into it.

III. Questioning the Ethics and Morality

of Artificial Intelligence

The ethical discussion of cloning human beings is similar to the ethical discussion of replacing them with machines.[9] But, to the extent to which these machines are far superior and immortal, we are facing something of a godlike nature. Man has created God in this equation, but it is not the One True God, it is the golden calf. The quality invested in such a creation brings forth destruction in works such as Arthur C. Clarke’s “Space Odyssey 2001”, Isaac Asimov’s “I, Robot”, Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, movies like the “Terminator” series, “Automata (2014)”, “Ex Machina (2015)”. Even if the robotic intelligence is not a lethal machine, the quality resembling superhuman powers implies this problematic ethical approach.

Why do we create a perfect being? This is the moral question because “all things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient”.[10] The question of morality is a teleological question. We know that something is good because it is useful and that something is bad when it is not useful or when it is harmful. So, after we create the superhuman being, what do we do with it?

Is it going to be Nietzsche’s superman?[11] Is it going to save the world, a world that

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is in constant turmoil and conflict? Is that going to be a surrogate for God on earth?

If God wanted to save the world, would He not have dealt with those social problems Himself? And, is He not doing that already through His Church and are these attempts to replace His Church by man’s creation a dodgy approach to God’s way? We are referring now to a concept which provides an alternative to the church. This is one of the signs of the Apocalypse. There is only one reason to create such a bionic being or computer. It is very hard to accept the reality behind this project. Even if we could be targeted as conspiracy theorists, we will not flinch from stating the obvious: it is the antichrist.[12] Ethics, however, is different from morality. So, even if we are closing in on the religious problem, we still haven’t arrived to our destination; ethics is a human approach, a legalistic approach. God’s way in the social context is defined by the concept of morality. Ethics is a part of morality, not its entire range of meaning. Morality deals with the notion of good and bad and ethics deals with what is ethical and what is not.

The ethical is not always good and what is bad is not always unethical. We could also have a part of morality including the notion of sin, whereas the notion of sin is foreign to the notion of ethics, unless what is sinful is also unfair to others in a contract, written or unwritten. Morality is many times contradictory to ethics. For example, in “Les Miserables I”[13], by Victor Hugo, the priest is harboring the fugitive and obstructing justice. Self-harm is a way of ethically doing an immoral deed, such as euthanasia.

Artificial intelligence could be legally correct by society’s standards and approved by ethics, but, at the same time completely wrong, an apocalyptic abomination, by religious standards. For reasons such as kindness and humanity, euthanasia[14] was approved and approving artificial intelligence, which is less controversial, will Session 3. CONSCIOUSNESS

create a higher degree of dissatisfaction with the dissenting church. This is because people would not understand the difference between morality and ethics. They would not understand the church’s opposition to artificial intelligence.

So, we could discuss the problem of artificial intelligence from the religious point of view when we are sure we have clearly determined an apparatus of philosophical concepts that could help define a smaller area of discussion. One such concept is morality, the difference between right and wrong. The difference between right and wrong also brings forth another concept, sin. Last but not least, we are going to talk about conscience.

IV. Discussing the Religious Aspect of

Artificial Intelligence

A. Morality

It is not a moral conundrum the fact that machines bring with them a whole set of problems for each solution they provide.

Which is more important, a simulacrum or reality? Is it correct from a moral point of view to replace people with products, which fact will lead to considering people products, too, and ultimately dispose of them like they were machines and keep the abomination instead by permutation? This poses the question of the apocalypse. Artificial intelligence could be the abomination.

And the first went, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the mark of the beast and upon them which worshiped his image.[15] We know that the mark of the beast is a number generated by computers and we are branded by microchips, if we accept this number.

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B. Sin

What if robots themselves disposed of people?[17] This is only a borderline example, but we are sure that the simple use of a tool to represent a person and consider it capable of personification is a blatant case of disrespect for the Maker and His creation.

This is immoral because that is what the devil wants to do, to replace God’s creation with his simulacra and God with himself.

From the point of view of Orthodox Dogma, the sin we are guilty of is appreciating the creation as something which it is not because we are creation ourselves of the highest Creator and thus robots are the lowest creations of all, they are creations of creations. So, we are valuing creations of creations like we should value only creations of God Himself, people. The sin is what the devil uses to turn men against God or to destroy the dignity of His creation by deception. What greater deception than simulacra could there be? We would live in a world where we don’t know which is which, a state of permanent confusion not only of values that people use to guide themselves, as we are already experiencing, but also of people themselves. The question is not who is good and who is evil anymore, now the question is who exists for real and who does not as a human being.[18] C. Conscience

This question brings us to our final key concept: conscience. What is conscience?

From the religious point of view, conscience is God’s image in man.[19] From a secular point of view, we are also close to the idea of morality because conscience makes believers or followers of Christ from people who don’t believe in sin. For these people, whom we say “still have a conscience”, doing God’s work is natural and does not require a formal commitment to the church.

We can say that they don’t follow God, but

they follow their conscience. However, this could be an excuse for trespassing and hypocrisy. At this point we could justify almost everything in a Machiavellic way by our conscience, which is not primarily sanctioned by God’s Church. So, we will find a loophole for introducing the concept of conscience in a lax understanding to the concept of artificial intelligence.

We, as human race, are always lax about our concepts. But conscience means, from any imaginable point of view, religious or secular, the ability to care for your fellow beings: “love thy neighbor”.[20]Who is the neighbor of artificial intelligence? Do we consider ourselves indebted to love artificial intelligence as a fellow being? Is that artificial intelligence going to consider us its neighbor? We are biased against immigrants and will accept nothing which is different from us, but we will condone artificial intelligence instead of fellow beings of different races and orientations. In the Moral Theology book there are two types of conscience mentioned, psychological conscience and moral conscience.[21] The former is the awareness of oneself and the world and the latter is the relationship with the moral law and has as its purpose the achievement of moral order. So, conscience is called the voice of God in man and it can decide what is right and what is wrong.[22] An artificial conscience would be the voice of the creator, any man, in the machine. If a machine is created by any atheistic man, how is that relationship to God going to be created? How will God connect to the machine’s programming if not in an indirect manner by man’s intervention and what eschatological purpose will such technology serve if it was created for man’s selfish purpose and only man is created for God’s purpose? These are rhetorical questions which determine the truth about artificial intelligence. We are not a confused mob mistaking tools for people or worse, for God. The negativity in this paper is not a

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flaw; it is a result of the ability to tell right from wrong and good from bad, the gift of discerning of spirits.[23] V. Orthodox Christian Theology and

Artificial Intelligence

Before we completely dismiss artificial intelligence as a New Age deception, we will explain the ability of some artificiallyintelligent machines to create the appearance of humanity and to support such appearance, which ability is necessary to a certain extent to man.[24] Artificial intelligence is a tool designed by people for the gratification of their own creative ego, so we can not confuse conscience with intelligence and not even intelligence in its human representation with conscience. They are all different concepts and they have different uses. Philosophically, there are differences between autonomous people and automatic artificial intelligence.

This is the difference between intelligence and artificial intelligence, autonomous versus automatic. However, conscience is above these differences because it is neither conditioned by the self-preservation of autonomy, because a conscience is something that you use to help your neighbor, nor automatic, because one’s conscience is tested by situations which are not similar or subject to routine. So, artificial intelligence is only in sciencefiction literature similar to an autonomous conscience-endowed being. In real life, religion with its notions of redemption, sin, expiation, confession and communion will not have any meaning for a machine which cannot make a mistake on its own.

Errors are a computer’s best friend if we try to persuade the public that that particular computer is able to imitate the behavior of the human being. The Turing Test proves that programming a computer to make spelling mistakes on purpose

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warrants its credibility in front of the jury.

[25] Morally speaking, errors are also a way of copying human behavior and will make discerning between artificially-intelligent instances of conscience and authentic ones more difficult. The question of the perfect being in its imperfection is extinct now that the scientists have discovered the paradox behind human perfection, the ability to cope with their own mistakes. Overcoming error in life is only a human feature, the last frontier of humanity left unconquered by artificial intelligence.

The Turing test does not directly test whether the computer behaves intelligently. It tests only whether the computer behaves like a human being.

Since human behavior and intelligent behavior are not exactly the same thing, the test can fail to accurately measure intelligence...

Some human behavior is unintelligent.

The Turing test requires that the machine be able to execute all human behaviors, regardless of whether they are intelligent.

It even tests for behaviors that we may not consider intelligent at all, such as the susceptibility to insults, the temptation to lie or, simply, a high frequency of typing mistakes. If a machine cannot imitate these unintelligent behaviors in detail it fails the test. This objection was raised by The Economist, in an article entitled “artificial stupidity“ published shortly after the first Loebner Prize competition in 1992. The article noted that the first Loebner winner’s victory was due, at least in part, to its ability to “imitate human typing errors.” Turing himself had suggested that programs add errors into their output, so as to be better “players” of the game.[26] This last frontier is hypothetically overcome by artificial intelligence if we admit the possibility of a superior machine capable of doing everything perfect but, still faced with everyday challenges, noticing that

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the outcome cannot be controlled. Let us imagine an artificial intelligence that reaches the awareness of good and bad because, in life, no matter what our intentions are, God works in mysterious ways and, no matter how well-programmed we are, we will not always achieve the intended result. One day, we will have artificial intelligence pervasive throughout our existence, supermen mingling with normal men, all faced with similar existential questions, God will exist for both man and machine to the extent to which even machines will “realize” that nothing can be achieved without His divine will.[27] The existence of a perfect machine is not a cause for contention for the church if there are enough ways to assimilate such a machine in the already established moral order. But, this is only a hypothesis of a perfect world where man and machine can coexist and man’s limitation will be more valued in the race for the perfect imitation of man than the machine’s ability for perfection.

When for man committing an error will be considered involution, for the machine, it will be a sign of evolution.

Conclusion Artificial intelligence does not make mistakes because it depends upon algorithms chosen beforehand by man and one’s mistakes in the logical sense cannot be preprogrammed or premeditated and machines are not free agents to be held responsible as people are, despite our ontogeny and determinism. So, a computer can never be perfect in the human sense. We cannot entertain the notion of perfection unless we take into account the possibility for error. The whole idea of people being replaced by perfect machines is flawed in its conception because we are perfect already.

We were not programmed to be perfect.

This is proof that religion is not a program, a manipulation, that free will and God exist and that we need to see perfection in this combination of imperfect creations aspiring to meet God. A machine is not perfect even if it performs flawlessly. Perfection resides not in performance, but in the inherent ability to overcome one’s shortcomings. A person can truly change, despite skepticism, but a computer can only offer the programmed simulation of change.

The problem of conscience is the one making the difference between machine and man because a machine acts predictably, whereas man acts under the constraint of failure, always prone to error. Man’s conscience, the voice of God and free will are the only things that should prevent error from happening. Man is perfect with his imperfection, and the machine is imperfect in its perfection.

Despite its capability of error, the machine will never commit an error in an authentic way. It will have to be programmed or taught how to perform such an action, therefore even errors will be a sign of correct functionality. For people, errors are committed by mistake, not on purpose. There is no way of teaching a human being how to make mistakes. They occur accidentally. They are proof that the human being fails to perform according to a standard they reject for a multitude of reasons, exerting their free will often constituting the motive of their actions.

References [1] [2] [3] [4]

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Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey, (Essex: Penguin Readers, 1968), 58.

Ioan Vlăducă, Dictatura pseudo-științei, (Botoșani: Fundația Petru Vodă, 2009), 65-67.

Florin Gheorghiță, Întrebările științei, (București: Editura Albatros, 1988), 29.

“Turing test”, Wikipedia, last modified February 24, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/

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wiki/Turing_test.

The movie Star Trek: Nemesis, http://www. imdb.com/title/tt0253754/?ref_=nv_sr_3.

[6] Florin Gheorghiță, Întrebările științei, (București: Editura Albatros, 1988), 26-29.

[7] Of or relating to or being computer software for which the source code is freely available (http://www.dictionarenglez.ro/englezenglez/open-source).

[8] “When God Chatted to Elbot”, Artificial Solutions, accessed March 13, 2017, http:// www.artificial-solutions.com/blog/whengod-chatted-to-elbot.

[9] Dr. George Stan, Teologie și bioetică, (Alexandria: Editura Biserica Ortodoxă, 2001),69.

[10] I Cor. 6, 12.

[11] Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, (New York: The Modern Library, 1917), 6.

[12] D. Kalmuski, Semnele Apocalipsei, (București: Editura Saeculum, I. O., 1999), 168-170.

[13] Les miserable, vol. I, (Paris: Emile Testard et C. Editeurs, 1890), 191-192.

[14] Jean-Pierre Soulier, Enigma vieții, (București: Editura Medicală, 1991), 111-117.

[15] Revelation, 16:2.

[16] Eng. Mircea Vlad, Apocalipsa 13. Sfârșitul libertății umane, (București: Axioma Edit, 1999), 26.

[17] Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, (New York: Del Rey, 1968); Isaac Asimov, I, Robot, (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1952).

[18] The movie: Bicentennial Man, http://www. imdb.com/title/tt0182789/.

[19] Sfântul Ioan Gură de Aur, Omilii la Facere I, Colecția „Părinți și Scriitori Bisericești”, (București: Editura Institutului Biblic şi de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe Române, 1987), 189.

[20] Matthew, 19:19.

[21] Mitr. Dr. Nicolae Mladin, Prof. Diac. Dr. Orest Bucevschi, Prof. Dr. Constantin Pavel, Prof. Diac. Dr. Ioan Zăgrean, Teologie Morală Ortodoxă, vol. I, (Bucureşti: Editura Institutului Biblic şi de Misiune al Bisericii [5]

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Ortodoxe Române, 1979), 220-223.

Sfântul Ioan Gură de Aur, Omilii la Facere I, Colecția „Părinți și Scriitori Bisericești”, (București: Editura Institutului Biblic şi de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe Române, 1987), 189.

[23] I Corinthians, 12: 8-10: ”For to one is given by the Spirit… discerning of spirits”.

[24] 2 Timothy 4:4: ”They shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables”.

[25] “Turing test”, Wikipedia, last modified February 24, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Turing_test.

[26] Ibidem.

[27] During the show “Health Zone” on Discovery channel on February 11, 2001, the idea issued was that, in the future, Supermen and Terminators would roam the Earth. During the same show it was also believed that computers will be so intelligent that even man will have to upgrade his brain capacity to compete with them. For this upgrade, we will use microchip implants under our skin.

[22]

Bibliography Bible. King James Version. Accessed March 3, 2017. https://www.bible.com/moments.

[2] Sfântul Ioan Gură de Aur, Omilii la Facere I, Colecția „Părinți și Scriitori Bisericești”, București: Editura Institutului Biblic şi de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe Române, 1987.

[3] Asimov, Isaac. I, Robot. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1952.

[4] Bicentennial Man. The movie. http://www. imdb.com/title/tt0182789/.

[5] Clarke, Arthur C.. 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Essex: Penguin Readers, 1968.

[6] Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? New York: Del Rey, 1968.

[7] Gheorghiță, Florin. Întrebările Științei.

București: Editura Albatros, 1988.

[8] Health Zone. The show on Discovery channel on February 11, 2001.

[9] Hugo, Victor. Les Miserables, vol. I. Paris: Emile Testard et C. Editeurs, 1890.

[10] Ionescu, Pr. Răzvan; Lemeni, Adrian.

[1]

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Dicționar de Teologie Ortodoxă și Știință.

București: Curtea Veche, 2009.

[11] Kalmuski, D..

Semnele Apocalipsei.

București: Editura Saeculum, I. O., 1999.

[12] Mladin, Mitr. Dr. Nicolae, Bucevschi, Prof.

Diac. Dr. Orest, Pavel, Prof. Dr. Constantin, Zăgrean, Prof. Diac. Dr. Ioan. Teologia Morală Ortodoxă, vol. I. Bucureşti: Editura Institutului Biblic şi de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe Române, 1979.

[13] Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spake Zarathustra.

New York: The Modern Library, 1917.

[14] Sagan, Carl. Broca’s Brain. Reflections on the Romance of Science. New York: Random House, 1979.

[15] Soulier, Jean-Pierre. Enigma Vieții. București: Editura Medicală, 1991.

[16] Stan, Dr. George. Teologie și bioetică.

Alexandria: Editura Biserica Ortodoxă, 2001.

[17] Star Trek: Nemesis. The movie. http://www. imdb.com/title/tt0253754/?ref_=nv_sr_3.

[18] “Turing Test”. Wikipedia, Last modified February 24, 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Turing_test.

[19] Vlad, Eng. Mircea. Apocalipsa 13. Sfârșitul Libertății Umane. București: Axioma Edit, 1999.

[20] Vlăducă, Ioan. Dictatura Pseudo-Științei.

Botoșani: Fundația Petru Vodă, 2009.

[21] “When God Chatted to Elbot”, Artificial Solutions, accessed March 13, 2017, http:// www.artificial-solutions.com/blog/whengod-chatted-to-elbot.

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DIALOGO JOURNAL 3 : 2 (2017) 144 - 150

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This paper was presented in the

Bridging Science and Religion together: SELF - SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS. (DIALOGO-CONF 2017 SSC)

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held online, on the Journal’s website, from May 19 - 26, 2017

journal homepage: http://dialogo-conf.com

The Impaired Consciousness 1. Any Docu-Axelerad - PhD Assoc. Professor

2. Daniel Docu-Axelerad, Ph.D.(Co-Author)

Department of General Medicine “Ovidius” University of Constanta Constanta, Romania

FEFS, Kinethoteraphy Department “Ovidius” University of Constanta Constanta, Romania

ARTICLE INFO

ABSTRACT

Article history: Received 29 April 2017 Received in revised form 10 May Accepted 15 May 2017 Available online 30 May 2017 doi: 10.18638/dialogo.2017.3.2.13

The ”persistent vegetative state” (PVS) has the main attention for us in identifying the examples of consciousness that suffer structural injury. PVS is a state that the patient has the ability to open eyes spontaneously, but without responses to threat, verbalization or other pain defend. Several factors that lead to such state, among which the use of drugs is mostly researched, prolong impaired consciousness as a clinical and personal judgment of this condition. The patients with comatose from a destructive structural injury never regain the conscious state due to widespread structural damage. Any clinical review on this is based on bodily changes observation with impact on the clinical diagnosis of prolonged comatose states as largely descriptive. Eye movements need the most attention because its response to approaching objects distinguishes between a PVS (inconsistent or absent), akinetic mutism (no stacking but spontaneous focusing on moving targets), and MCS (always present). Distinguish between this three conditions needs an interdisciplinary intervention (neurologist or rehabilitation physicians).

Keywords: persistent vegetative state; comatose; consciousness; neuroscience; neurology; patients; Awakening; A kinetic mutism;

© 2014 RCDST. All rights reserved.

I. INTRODUCTION

With passing time, many comatose patients improve. Awakening from a coma can be dramatic and instantaneous as in treated hypoglycemia and endlessly slow as in brain damage from the structural injury.

There are patients with a negative evolution an objective neurologic examination based on Glascow scale and Four scale after 3-4 weeks decresed in points and the results is a persistent vegetative state (PVS)[1].The transition from a coma to PVS is punctuated

by eye-opening first, sleep and wake cycles follow. Face aspect is typical like a frozen facial and eye contact and grimacing are absent. Response to pain is week , and routine nursing procedures only exaggerate heart rate or breathing frequency. In pvs state, patiet no comunicate, but has the ability to poen eyes spontaneously, with some noise after painful stimulation but without blinking to threat.

The adjectives persistent and permanent or none at all have been used, but it is confusing for clinicians and researchers (and

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eISSN: 2393-1744, cdISSN: 2392-9928 printISSN: 2457-9297, ISSN-L 2392-9928 ISBN 978-80-554-1338-9

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certainly the family). This situation is not easily remediated, but it is advised that the term PVS or persistent vegetative state (as it was introduced originally) is used when the outcome – no recovery – is certain.

It is misunderstood notion that PVS is common, and other lesser states of impaired consciousness are far more likely.

This has been further corroborated by a recent study that surveyed the reliability of the diagnosis of PVS in the United Kingdom. Traces of awareness were found in a considerable proportion of patients deemed to be in PVS. Plausible explanations for this finding have been suggested, such as improvement since admission to the nursing home, discontinuation of drugs depressing consciousness, or, more worrisome and perhaps more likely insufficient observation time by the examining physician.[2-4] Is important to understand that prolonged impaired consciousness is a clinical and personal judgment of this condition.The management of prolonged impaired consciousness not only involves supportive care but may also include rehabilitative measures.

In this condition for a clinician, especially the neurologyst is important to know categories of outcome in a patient comatose from a destructive structural injury. When we speak about a huge lesion with underling etiology like: stroke, or meningoencephalitis is associated with poor outcome when patients show no improvement in consciousness within the first few weeks.

Patients may never regain consciousness and die it further brain swelling, brain herniation, or medical complications occur.

Death from the withdrawal of medical support is most common in patients who fail to recover neurologically.

It is less likely that survivors of a prolonged coma make a full recovery.

Few reach a state with minimal deficit and return to gainful employment. PVS after

survive acute brain injury make simple action like: is able to open their eyes or track objects or to have sleep and wake cycles, but without response to pain or to communicate. Patients who awake often have a disability, and many display little effective communication and major physical and cognitive handicaps, is a state that worried family and without future possibility to improve in time this state. Minimally conscious state (MCS) may represent the most severe form of neurologic disability of conscious patient. In neurological practice we saw that anoxic-ischemic injury after cardio-pulmonary resuscitation in elderly persons is associated with less surviving in opposite with traumatic injury to the brain in young individuals may who is possible to have a satisfactory outcome.

To determine clear if the patient is in PVS state must pass after the onset of the disease more than 1 month and for this condition is necessary a very skilled neurologist for a definitive diagnosis.

A multisociety task force has defined the main features of PVS[5]. It also requires exclusion of sedating drugs- a staple of modern intensive care units- which have an effect that is commonly under-appreciated.

[6] Four scale and Glasgow scale evaluate eye response, and there are signs that lead us for a future evolution, for example visual fixation or briefly turning the eyes when the doctor approach to the patients and there are multiple possibilities for ocular response to the sounds, like ocular jerks or myoclonus, blinking to a threat does not occur because these responses do require cortical feedback loops, but sometimes can be seen spontaneous blinking.

A noxious stimulus could, but inconsistently, produce some “grimacing”, but usually it entirely absent. Spontaneous grimace with chewing, yawning, and bruxism may be observed and may remain as primitive brainstem reflexes. Grimacing

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may persist after the stimulus has stopped but it has an uncertain significance (earlier studies have hinted that this sign may indicate a better prognosis).[7] The snout reflex, glabella, palmomental, and corneomandibular reflexes are all easily elicited. The jaw reflex is brisk.In other patients, a tongue depressor may cause forceful biting with the ability to lift the head up (called “Bulldog reflex” by Bricolo).

[8] Nontracheostomized patients do not talk but may make sounds with different vowels. They may moan, groan, or squeal.

Spontaneous episodic screaming has been reported but is highly unusual.[9] Sometimes appear chewing movements, emotional reaction after hearing voice of family. Motor response is an important key for patient evolution; clinically we perform nail bed or temporomandibular compression without response, or sometimes appear hypertonic movements.

The “ vegetative“ manifestations may be pronounced within the first week, but then settle down to stable blood pressure, regular breathing, regular pulse, normal sweating, and skin temperature. Sleep-wake cycles are preserved in PVS, possibly due to retained tonically active mesencephalon synapsing through sympathetic tracts to the pineal gland.[10] Circadian sleep-wake cycles may be absent, with the eyes of the patient mostly closed with brief episodes of opening, and are more often observed when brainstem lesions are found.[11] A. Another condition that must be

differentiated from PVS is MCS.

The Aspen Consensus Conference Work Group has suggested recognizing a condition of severe disability with minimal awareness.

When patients do not fulfill the criteria of PVS, they suggest the term MCS.[12] Estimates report that MCS could be 10 times more common than PVS.[13] The working Session 3. CONSCIOUSNESS

group emphasized that the distinction of MCS from PVS is mostly a partial presence of awareness.[14] Patients in an MCS are aware, and we can see sometimes a response at emotion, like a simple gesture, but the level of awareness is importantly diminished. In this condition we cannot characteristically and clear characteristic signs, because is a combination of a lot of neurological conditions. The transition to a fully conscious state with a severe disability is also undefined.

A kinetic mutism is another impaired conscious state, with fairly recognizable characteristics, but there is a continuum and overlap with MCS.[16-22]Akineticmutism is uncommon and possibly under recognized.

The descriptive term is an abulic emotionless state,but with the eyes tracking movement.

It is an incredible situation when a person look for the doctor movements, with facial grimacing and blinking to threat is present and Pain stimuli may provoke no response or decorticate posture.

There is reasonable consensus among neuroscientists that akineticmutism can be caused by lesions of the anterior cingulate gyri. The anterior cingulate cortex is involved in executive functions but also affects vocalization,and, due to the connections between the cingulate cortex and supplementary motor area, affects initiation of movement.[15] Other lesions have been described and are predominately in the diencephalic structures such as the thalamus, basal ganglia, or even mesencephalic structures.[16] It has been described in patients with aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage and bifrontal lesions,[17] described in the setting of hypothalamic lesions and obstructive hydrocephalus,[18] and associated with an infiltrative astrocytoma in the fornix.

[19]Akineticmutism could be considered a subset of an MCS, but there are unique characteristics.

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II. LABORATORY INVESTIGATIONS

Knowing that none of the abnormalities are sufficiently specific, clinicians have recognized that clinical diagnosis trumps any laboratory test. The electroencephalogram (EEG) in PVS shows a spectrum of abnormalities that also changes when a wake-sleep cycle emerges.[20] All phases of physiologic sleep are present on EEG in PVS. During sleep, a rapid eye movement (REM) phase remains but is hours shorter than normal.[21] The presence of REM sleep is expected because the subceruleus region, involved in generating REM sleep, is located in the pons that is typically spared in patients in a PVS.EEG patterns have included delta and theta activity,spindle and alphalike rhythms- more diffusely distributed than in the typical posterior regions-and are not reactive to sound, light, or noxious stimuli.

[22] Some studies have suggested that increasing power in the alpha and tetha band may forebode survival, but the results are inconclusive.[23] The appearance of alpha rhythm with simultaneous increase in background rhythm frequency may appear early, but its predictive value for recovery has also been questioned. EEG is not a tool to determine the evolution of the disease.

Neuroimaging reflects that cause of brain injury that led to prolonged impaired consciousness. On CT scan, diffuse atrophy and bilateral thalamic lesions are common in both conditions.[24] After surviving in PVS, in MRI we can see a reduction in white matter volume very important and ventriculomegalia due possible to secondary axotomy and transneuronal degeneration.

Similar findings, but far more impressive, are found on MRI. Anoxic-ichemic or traumatic injury are predominant lesions of the brain.

Concomitant lesions in brainstem, gray matter,and corpus callosum could increase the probability of PVS.[25] Positron emission tomography (PET) studies are important, but is made mostly in

research and is not a routine examination; however, only preliminary studies in selected patients have been published. Topographic differences have been found in patients with near-normal cortical metabolism but profoundly abnormal thalamic and mesencephalic function, again confirming its major role in arousal. PET studies in patients with a PVS have also documented that the most severe abnormalities are in frontal and temporoparietal regions disconnecting it from the thalamus.[26-28] This lack of „ neurometabolic coupling” in PVS was interpreted as distinctive between the two disorders of consciousness.[29] In an attempt to further separate PVS from an MCS, functional MRI (fMRI) studies have been performed.[30] There have been several fascinating observations over the years, but not a large thorough study yet. fMRI showed evidence of activation of superior, middle temporal gyri to passive listening. [31] More recent studies in PVS using fMRI found more than expected activation of cortical structures. A study in a patient in PVS with profound atrophy on MRI showed activity on fMRI in the medial prefrontal cortex when hearing his name.[32] Another report of a patient with traumatic brain injury and „vegetative state” at four months showed fMRI activation indistinguishable from controls after presenting spoken sentences and a request to imagine a certain task ( walking through your house visiting all the rooms or playing tennis). The patient later „ improved” to an MCS [33]. A most recent study of two patients initially diagnosed in a „ vegetative state” showed activation of associative auditory cortex after the patient’ s name was spoken by a familiar voice[34].

These patterns of activation in two patients initially diagnosed as in PVS were similar as those in MCS.Both these patients emerged from PVS an entered an MCS. These recent fMRI studies in patients

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with prolonged unconsciousness raise important questions. It potentially brings about concerns about the general accuracy of clinical assessment of these published patients.[36,35] Some of the studied patients had finding on examination that would place them outside the diagnostic category of PVS. Be that as it may, the findings on fMRI may only indicate automatic cortical processing of perceived words and not necessarily awareness ( eg, computer programs can be made to answer questions but they are not conscious because they cannot make a choice to answer question).

Furthermore and more seriously, it conjures up the incorrect notion that fMRI is needed in these patients because a comprehensive neurologic examination is insufficient to detect awareness.Currently, there is insufficient data to promote the use of fMRI ( a largely unavailable study outside research centers) in predicting awareness and recovery in clinical practice, maybe the time probe will give us in the future response.

Neurological practice show that an important percent of comatose patients with traumatic brain injury may improve after 1-2 months, this type of patients can spontaneously turn their eyes, verbalize or have pain reaction, can recognize objects or regain partially their orientation.

After three months in a nontraumatic coma or after 12 months in a traumatic coma is no hope for recovery. Mortality from untreated infections or sepsis is very high in the first three years. The task force on medical aspects of the PVS noted a 70 % mortality in 3 years and 84 % mortality in 5 years.However, prolonged outcome can be achieved with meticulous care and patients in aggressive medical intervention with each complication.There are several examples of PVS kept alive for many decades.

A few instances of late recoveries after PVS have been described.A recovery seven

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years later has been reported.[37] However, all reported patients remained in a severely disabled state, fully dependent on care, and bed bound or wheelchair bound, including having permanent gastrostomy and urinary catheter.[6,37] Predictive factors for recovery from prolonged PVS have not been identified, except perhaps for lack of developing atrophy on CT scan.

III. CONCLUSIONS

There are three condition, very similar (PVS- when patient is inconsistent or absent, MCS- when patient is always present, and akinetic mutism- patient can focus on moving targets but without motor or verbal and distinguish between this three conditions needs an interdisciplinary intervention (neurologist or rehabilitation physicians). Ambiguity toward the clinical diagnosis of a PVS is not expected when criteria are strictly followed, but no diagnosis can be perfected.There are patients with fluctuating neurologic findings who may not fit in any category, particularly when assessed weeks after the initial brain injury.

Some patients are reexamined for legal purposes; in others, a full reexamination is performed to confirm the findings and facilitate discussion with the family and to bring closure.The massive destruction in the cortical layers and thalamus at autopsy, the absence of operational modular networks on fMRI, and marked reduction in glucose metabolism on PET are all test results that confirm the clinical findings. It reminds us, if we need reminding, of the presence of a very unfortunate being with a hopelessly injured brain and no awareness of the surroundings, bur also no discomfort. To recognize these condition and to understand very clear the underlying process it will be a stone on the building named survive.

[1]

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(Endnotes)

Jennett B, Plum F. Persistent vegetative state

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after brain damage. A syndrome in search of a name. Lancet. 1972; 734-737 [2] Strens LH, Mazibrada G, Duncan JS,Greenwood R. Misdiagnosing the vegetative state after severe brain injury:the influence of medication.Brain Inj. 2004; 18:213-218 [3] Andrews K, Murphy L, Munday R, Littlewood C. Misdiagnosis of the vegetative state:retrospective study in a rehabilitation unit. BMJ.1996;313:13-16 [4] Cranford R., Misdiagnosing the persistent vegetative state.BMJ.1996;313:5-6 [5] Multysociety Task Force on PVS. Medical aspects of the persistent vegetative state.

NEngl J Med.1994;330:1572-1579 [6] Bricolo A., “Disorders of consciousness”. In: Vinken P, Bruyn G, eds. Handbook of Clinical Neurology. New York: Wiley Interscience Division; 1989 [7] Schiff ND, Ribary U, Moreno DR, et al. Residual cerebral activity and behavioral fragments can remain in the persistently vegetative brain.Brain. 2002; 125:1210-1234 [8] Williams HL, Holloway FA, Griffiths WJ. Physiological psychology: sleep. Annu Rev Psychol. 1973; 24:279-316 [9] Isono M, Wakabayashi Y, Fujki MM, Kamida T,Kobayashi H. Sleep cycle in patients in a state of permanent unconsciousness. Brain Inj 2002;16:705-712 [10] Giacino JT, Ashwal S, Childs N, et al. The minimally conscious state: definition and diagnostic criteria. Neurology. 2002;58:349353 [11] Lombardi F, Taricco M, De Tanti A., Telaro E, Liberati A., Sensory stimulation of braininjured individuals in coma or vegetative state:results of a Cochrane systematic review.Clin Rehabil.

2002;16: 464-472 [12] Buge A, Escourolle R, Rancurel G, Poisson M. “Akinetic mutism and bicingular softening.3 anatomo-clinical cases”.

Rev Neurol (Paris).1975;131:121-131 [13] Choudhari KA., Subarachnoid hemorrhage and akinetic mutism. Br J Neurosurg. 2004; 18:253-258 [14] Laplane D, Degos JD, Baulac M, Gray F., Bilateral infarction of the anterior cingulate

gyri and of the fornices. Report of a case. J Neurol Sci.1981;51:289-300 [15] Mega MS, Cohenour RC. Akinetic mutism: disconnection of frontal- subcortical circuits.

Neuropsychiatry Neuropsychol Behav Neurol.1997;10:254-259 [16] Hagartnam N, Nagratnam K, NgK ,DiuP. Akineticmutism following stroke. JClin Neurosci.2004;11:25-30 [17] Nemeth G, Hegedus K, Molnar L., Akinetic mutism associated with bicingularlesions: clinicpathological and functional anatomical correlates. Eur Arch Psychiatry Neurol Sci.1988;237;218-222 [18] Oberndorfer S, Urbanits S, Lahrmann H, et al. Akinetic mutism caused by bilateral infiltration of the fornix in a patient with astrocytoma. Eur J Neurol.2002;9:311-313 [19] Devinsky O, Morrell MJ, Vogt BA. Contributions of anterior cingulate cortex to behavior. Brain.1995; 118(Pt 1): 279-306 [20] Combarros O, Infante J, Berciano J. Akinetic mutism from frontal lobe damage responding to levodopa. J Neurol. 2000; 247:568-569 [21] Psarros T, Zouros A, Coimbra C. Bromocriptine-responsive akineticmutism following endoscopy for ventricular neurosysticercosis.Case report and review of the literature. J Neurosurg. 2003; 99:397-401 [22] Kinney HC, Korein J, P a n i g r a h y A , D i k k e s P, G o o d e R .

Neuropathological findings in the brain of Karen Ann Quinlan.The role of the thalamus in the persistent vegetative state. N Engl J Med.1994; 330: 1469-1475.

[23] Oksenberg A, Gordon C, Arons E, Sazbon L. Phasic activities of rapid eye movement sleep in vegetative state patients.Sleep. 2001; 24: 703-706 [24] Chokroverty S. “Alpha –like” rhythms in electroencephalograms in coma after cardiac arrest. Neurology. 1975; 25: 655-663 [25] Hughes JR. Limitations of the EEG in coma and brain death. Anm N Y Acad Sci.1978; 315: 121-136 [26] Davey MP, Victor JD, Schiff ND. Power spectra and coherence in the EEG of a vegetative patient with severe asymmetric brain damage.

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Clin Neurophysiol.2000;111:1949-1954 Jennet B, Adams JH, Murray LS, Graham DI. Neuropathology in vegetative and severely disabled patients after head injury.Neurology.

2001; 56: 486-490 [28] Zheng W, Lui G, Wu R. Prediction of recovery from a post-traumatic coma state by diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) in patients with diffuse axonal injury.Neuroradiology.

2007; 49: 271-279 [29] Rudolf J, Sobesky J, Grond M, et al.

Identification by positron emission tomography of neuronal loss in acute vegetative state. Lancet. 2000; 355:115-116 [30] Rudolf J, Ghaemi M, Haupt WF, et.al.Cerebral glucose metabolism in acute and persistent vegetative state. JNeurosurg Anesthesiol.

1999; 11:17-24 [31] Laureys S, Faymonville ME, Moonen G, Luxen A, Maquet P. PET scanning and neuronal loss in acute vegetative state.

Lancet. 2000; 355: 1825-1826 [32] Coleman MR, Menon DK, Fryer TD, Pickard JD. Neurometabolic coupling in the vegetative and minimally conscious states: preliminary findings. J NeurolNeurosurg Psychiatry.

2005; 76:534-434 [33] Schiff ND, Rodriguez-Moreno D, Kamal A, et al. MRI reveals large-scale network activation in minimally conscious patients.

Neurology.2005;64:514-523 [34] Staffen W, Kronbichler M, Aichhorn M, Mair A, Ladurner G. Selective brain activity in response to one’ s own name in the persistent vegetative state.

J NeurolNeurosurg Psychiatry. 2006; 77:1383-1384 [35] Owen AM, Coleman MR, Boly M, et al.

Detecting awareness in the vegetative state.

Science. 2006; 313:1402 [36] Di H, Yu S, Weng X, et al. Cerebral response to patient’s own name in the vegetative and minimally conscious states. Neurology. 2007; 68:895-899 [37] Dyer C., Hillsborough survivor emerges from the permanent vegetative state. BMJ. 1997; 314:996.

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Conscience and Responsability in choosing the Teaching Profession Assoc. Prof. Daniela Căprioară, Ph.D. Department of Psychology and Social Work, Ovidius University of Constanta Romania

ARTICLE INFO

ABSTRACT

Article history: Received 25 April 2017 Received in revised form 3 May Accepted 10 May 2017 Available online 30 May 2017 doi: 10.18638/dialogo.2017.3.2.14

Given the conditions of a society oriented towards material satisfaction, where the didactic profession is sometimes pushed to the limit of social respect, where the lack of motivation and interest for school and learning, in general, is increasingly invoked, there are young people who choose to dedicate their whole energy for training and educating the new generations. The basis of this choice is the consciousness of the role of the teacher in the life of a child and, at the same time, the responsability for the assumed mission: opening the way to knowledge. Vocation and talent are necessary conditions of a successful pedagogical model, but only complemented by the love for children, the desire to contribute to the formation of people, the joy of giving knowledge and love. © 2014 RCDST. All rights reserved.

Keywords: personality; self-image; vocational identity; vocational choice; aspiration level;

I. INTRODUCTION

The decision to choose the teaching profession is based on two aspects: self-knowledge and knowledge of the particularities of the profession, this time from the perspective of the teacher, different (sometimes contrary) than the one of the student. Self-knowledge implies the construction of a social identity as a result of the interactions between the individual’s psycho-individual structures (the Ego, the Self, the Image and the self-consciousness)

and the social field structures in which the person is formed and reaches through action (values, norms, statutes and social roles) [1]. Social identity is a complex structure of the personality, built through cognitive and psychosocial processes (social integration and personal differentiation), by involving processes of self-perception, personal and interpersonal assessment, social comparison and computerized information syntheses.

Thus, a system of representations about oneself and others is obtained in relation to the values, norms, statuses and roles

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offered by the groups or social categories to which the person belongs. The social comparison process [1], which is defined by the „spontaneous tendency to assess the skills, opinions or performances to form an exact self-image” is very necessary to appreciate the compatibility between the peculiarities of the teaching profession and the personal traits. Gergen & alii [2] reinforce these claims, pointing out that „social landmarks are essential in the process of selfassessment and self-image-building”. Thus, social comparison leads to the consolidation of self-image, by identifying the attributes of one’s own personality, to forming and shaping personality and interpersonal conduct, and to establishing moral marks.

The choice for the teaching profession should be vocational, based on selfknowledge, motivation and inclination towards specific activities, through which the individual can be valued higher. The basis of this option are certain general values, strong intrinsic motivation and high professional aspirations. The option for the profession is conditioned by the professional identity, as an importnat structure of the personality: self identity centered on the dimension of the profession and of the career, both supported by specific motivations and values [1]. Vocational identity is crystallized by a long process of personal (self-)exploration and exploration of social environment, by (self-)assessments, internalizations of values and professional models, for the awareness of their own skills, interests, values, abilities and competences, respectively the particularities of the teaching profession (specific activities, the need for training, moral and material motivations etc.). The desirable result of this process of building a professional identity is „a congruence between the personal characteristics and those of the respective profession, the congruence that would become a source of well-being, satisfaction, stability and personal achievements” [1].

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The aspects of identity found above are reflections of the personality characteristics of those who choose the teaching career (temperament, character, aptitudes, intelligence, creativity). For example, the analysis and assessment of behavioral character lead to the structuring of sets of attitudes: attitude towards society (towards work, moral norms, principles and standards, towards other peers etc.), attitude towards the work done (towards learning, work) and attitude towards self [3]. The personality profile of the teacher values some positive features specific to each attitude category.

They are complemented by a series of particular traits (cognitive, motivational, intersubjective, moral, volitional etc.).

The construction of the Ego and of the self-image also depends on how the teacher’s social role is perceived. From this perspective, we believe that it is necessary to redefine the teacher’s social roles in order to avoid confusions generated by other confusions made in the construction of the Ego, shaping the personality and self-image of the teacher. For a person who decides to pursue a teaching career, the personality profile of the teacher, promoted at a society level at a certain historical moment and in a certain cultural and social space influences the will of self-realization through a process of psycho-socialization. This implies, according to Cristea [1], a „self-modeling effort” for „forming, shaping and matching one’s own personality” under the influence of some categories of factors .

The status is the place a particular individual occupies in a given system at a given time, and the role is determined by the status of the individual and represents its update [5], the way of expression of a person having a certain status, the concrete way in which he fulfills his statutory duties.

Thus, in exercising the role, „the dominant note is given by the personality of the subject: the perception of the person on

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the prescriptions and models related to the occupied status; real skills and abilities; self-image and aspiration levels; the system of interpersonal relationships; personal experience gained in similar situations; nature and quality of related status (social, economic, cultural and professional); particularities of the group/institution in which the role play is unfolded; professional and social creativity” [1].

A relevant indicator of self-image and of how to relate to the ideal Ego, as well as an essential motivational factor that mobilizes the full potential of the individual in the sense of professional and personal selfreliance, is the level of aspiration. Cristea [1], considers the level of aspiration „a major dimension of personality, one of the most relevant indicators of the motivational structure, the projective attitude and the capacity of self-personalization”. According to the quoted source, the aspiration level is the result of a confrontation between a number of subjective and objective factors (self-image, previous performance of the subject, the conditions in which the activity unfolds, the motivational fund and the selfempowering of the self etc.). In the didactic career, a high level of aspiration brings with it high performance.

II. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND

RESULTS

The research had three objectives: 1. Finding out the motivation of young people to choose the teaching career; 2. The existence, and in this case the definition, of the educational belief of the future teachers; 3. Identifying possible differences between categories of respondents regarding motivation, respectively of pedagogical belief.

The information was obtained from an

opinion survey applied to a group of 40 students in the second year of Primary and Preschool Education Pedagogy, who are preparing to become teachers for primary and preschool education.

The lot was structured on two age categories: between 19 and 35, respectively over 35 years old. Each category, in turn, comprised two subcategories: students who already have a psycho-pedagogical training and students who are in the initial training period.

As follows, we will synthesize, in turn, the responses formulated by each category.

It should be mentioned that all the students questioned have the intention to pursue the teaching career.

Category I: 19-35 years old, with previous didactic training (8 persons) Motivation: • the pleasure of working with children, a good communication with them, the positive energy received and felt; • the personal qualities (creativity, positive and ludic spirit, qualities of mentor and good educator); • the professional development and the desire to make a quality education; • the model of their own teachers and the desire to pass on this model; • the fulfillment of an ideal („it is a dream of mine”).

Pedagogical belief: • “Nihil Sine Deo, because He will help me fully dedicate myself to this profession, becoming better and better!”

• Good teachers need to be positive and creative, to open the minds of children towards knowledge and learning, to open their knowledge horizon. They have to trust the children and develop their trust in their own forces, to facilitate their access to knowledge, to determine them to be active subjects of the learning

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•

•

process.

The teacher is meant to form characters, future responsible and educated adults, with team spirit, with love for the others and respect for everything that surrounds them, he must give moral values.

Children should enjoy a secure educational environment and a better education system to help them develop their potential, because they are unique, different, with various capacities, talents and different types of intelligence.

Category II: 19-35 years old, without previous didactic training (21 persons)

Motivation: • first of all, the love for children, and then the stability of the job; • the pleasure and the patience to interact with children („children’s world is beautiful, fun and serious at the same time because we are forming the child who will be an adult over a few years”); working with little ones brings joy and soulfulness; • the wish to and the pride of forming people; teacher’s job is the noblest, because through the hands of a teacher passes everyone and the teacher puts the foundation of the education; • the desire to educate and guide children, the pleasure to explain and to convey knowledge to children; • „I like to believe that vocation has brought me into this posture of becoming a teacher. Moreover, because I attend this faculty I feel, day by day, a step closer to fulfilling my dream”; • influenced by other people, for pecuniary reasons, I chose another job, but I realized this is what I really want to do; • the negative experiences I have been living as a student and the desire to make justice among children as a teacher;

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the didactic profession is a challenge for me: I want to help children come to school happily and not perceive it as a burden; • everyday I go to kindergarten with positive toughts, in good faith and will that my children learn new things. With each progress of the children, pride and self-esteem grow.

Pedagogical belief: • I form myself thinking about forming children: my role in helping them develop, supporting them, guiding them.

I want to be a good example for kids in everything I do, a positive model. It is important to be character models, to help them understand that each one is equally important and everyone has its own value.

• I have not thought about it, but I believe that my purpose will be to lay the foundation of knowledge (useful information in everyday life).

• I think I will be a good teacher, I will give my students the pleasure to learn, and so they will become valuable people.

• One must fight for one’s dreams and in order to touch them. „Dreams come true only with small steps and big thoughts!”

• I believe the most precious thing is to make it possible for your pupils to make everyday count. Any reaction, response, conversation has a positive impact (a sens of value).

• I have not thought about this, but I believe we should and we have the power to fight in order to change something in the education system, by motivating students and attracting them towards study and school. I wish for a relaxing educational environment with pupils to learn with pleasure and not out of obligation, without becoming overworked, where I can do education differently than how we

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were educated.

To leave a mark on the personalities of the children, to remember me dearly over the years.

• For the ones who love little children, it is the best job in the world! May God help us further!

• I believe I will do great things if I have a solid training and I know very well what I have to do. We have a responsability towards children and towards the formation of future adults.

Category III: over 35 years old, with previous didactic training (6 persons) Motivation: • I love children.

• The desire of (self-)improvement.

Pedagogical belief: • A well-thought thing is a well-done thing; • The role of the teacher is to educate and train the children for tomorrow’s society, where they will be adults, models in their turn.

• The basis of success is understanding, love and sincerity.

•

Category IV: over 35 years old, without previous didactic training (5 persons)

Motivation: • the attachment towards the children and the pleasure of working with them; • the pleasure to help someone and to explain, so the kids come to kindergarten and school with excitement; • I wanr to work as a teacher and I know that, with the help of God, I will succeed.

I prayed for two years before I enrolled in this faculty.

• The young generation is a challenge for me.

Pedagogical belief: • I want to be a model for the children I will take care of: a model of morality, honesty, thinking (to think for themselves and to

• • •

decide for themselves). I consider that a teacher should be an example; the power of the example will touch the children.

Thus, we are very responsible for what we do or what we tell to the pupils.

Always finish your work.

To build with small steps children’s love for school and learning.

I go to school to give.

III. CONCLUSIONS

The analysis of the answers reveals that there are no significant differences between the categories studied, despite the complexity and variety of the contents of the answers. As far as the motivation for choosing the teaching profession is concerned, work with children is the first place for all categories: the pleasure to work with them, the personal qualities that are compatible with the children’s particularities or the satisfactions offered by the activity with the children. In this context, the emotional element is very strong.

We also notice the affirmation of some characteristic personal traits, which implies an earlier personal self-analysis, which justifies us to appreciate that the analyzed subjects have made a vocational choice. This aspect is reinforced by the fact that, after an initial forced career choice („influenced by other people, for pecuniary reasons, I chose another job, buy I realized that this is what I really want to do”, 19-35 years old, without previous didactic training), opted for the teaching profession. Some elements are invoked, in some cases, about the desire for accomplishment and fulfillment. The psycho-social energy invested in achieving an ideal, fulfilling a dream, obtaining higher social and professional performances is determined by various intrapsychic and extrapsychic factors. Attitudes and social behaviors have, besides the cognitive and anxiological dimension, an affective

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background. It structures all the components of psychic life and has a dynamic-energetic value of orientation and regulation in the field of social relations. Affectivity is an essential component of Ego and selfimage, and the understanding of one’s own emotions is part of the acknowledgement of one’s personality. Thus, a range of positive emotions (joy, pleasure, satisfaction) is involved in the choice of the teaching profession.

In the case of the analyzed subjects, two fundamental coordinates have to be highlighted, both in the motivation for choosing the teaching profession and in defining the pedagogical belief: consciousness and responsability. Consciousness (thinking, spirit) is the most advanced form of human mental reflaction of objective reality through sensations, perceptions and thought, in the form of representations, notions, judgments, reasonings, including affective and volitional processes [4]. In this context, the consciousness of the subjects is demonstrated by their realization of the role they will have in educating and training children, „future adults”, understanding their assumed mission, and issuing moral value judgments on this mission. It is repeatedly invoked the role of the teacher to be a model for those who they form.

Responsability means awareness and assuming roles (tasks, duties) assumed by the status of the teacher. Defining the teaching belief means declaring responsability for the occupational and social tasks and obligations assumed and influencing the energy invested in professional training. It is important, in this context, for the future teachers to have a better education, being optimistic that they will succees, a necessary element in their professional training.

Finally, we must note the few cases in which divinity was invoked, both as a form of support in carrying out the assumed tasks, as well as a guarantor of the norms and

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moral values promoted through the didactic profession. These forms of affirmation of the faith translate some fundamental elements of individual life, which manifest themselves discreetly and influence the social relations of the persons, implicitly the professional life.

References [1] [2] [3]

[4] [5]

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Cristea, Dumitru. Tratat de psihologie socială.

București: Ed. Trei, 2015.

Gergen, K., Gergen, M, Jutras, S., Psychologie sociale, Montreal, 1992.

Golu, M. Fundamentele psihologiei II. (Suport de curs). Universitatea Titu Maiorescu, București, 2014.

Marcu, Florin. Marele dicționar de neologisme. București: Ed. Saeculum, 2000.

Raynal, F., Rieunier, A. Pedagogie: dictionnaire des concepts cles. Apprentissage, formation, psychologie cognitive, 5e Edition, Paris: ESF Editeur, 2005.

DIALOGO JOURNAL 3 : 2 (2017) 157 - 167

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The Consciousness and the Role of Valorization.

How and why the Self-Awareness subjectively administers Living Fr. Lecturer Cosmin Tudor Ciocan, Ph.D. The Faculty of Theology, Ovidius University of Constanta Romania

ARTICLE INFO

ABSTRACT

Article history: Received 12 February 2017 Received in revised form 24 April Accepted 5 May 2017 Available online 30 May 2017 doi: 10.18638/dialogo.2017.3.2.15

It is most likely for anyone to ask himself at least once if it would be possible to live in a dream? Questioning the fabric of “reality” we live in consciously was one of the main doubts man ever had. It is so likely for us to answer positively to it due to so many factors; starting from the many and various facets of reality each individual envision the world, from the enormous differences we all have while perceiving and defining the reality, etc. That is why, at the conscious level, life seems almost like a dream in a dream, always hoping to wake up from the negative, unwanted version of it. That is why my assertion here, based on latest theories on consciousness and AI (artificial intelligence), aim to say that we live in between reality and dream, being “conscious” of ourselves, but not really wanting to be “aware” of what is really going on with us. Living as a human is not a path towards improvement in the way of getting rid of subjectiveness and valorization because these so-called errors make the most of human living.

Keywords: consciousness; awareness; phenomenology; artificial intelligence; Self-conscious; awakening; circumstantial; inner reality;

© 2014 RCDST. All rights reserved.

I. INTRODUCTION

According to the description of the scientific typology of the consciousness, we should see if this has any resonance in the religious zone. In the first article here we saw that the fundament of consciousness lays in the memory and memories. It is well-known that the removal of memories, natural – by accident – or artificial – neuro-surgical –, leads to the suppressing the ability to manage the

critical forum of CS. In other words, without the mnemonic (re-)production it seems that we can affect the core of CS. However, without being conscious can we still assume same Self? Meaning that by removing the core memories leads to a change in consciousness, therefore, an alteration of the Self: I can no longer be me if Me is related not only to my body and my present existence, but mostly with my past and my

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reactions to it. “The psychology of memory is confronted by a variety of questions that relate to the nature of the memory content and the mechanism of its functioning.”[1] II. Consciousness and the process of

repression

Following the description of the typology, without the mnemic reproduction of a lived event with adverse consequences (for himself or others) no individual will have part of the anguished CS justice concerning to that event. The automatic, natural protection of the human psyche also works on this psychic pattern. In most cases, traumas lived in childhood the mechanisms of self-preservation dictate the suppression of the anxiety events. That is why they always disappear from the mental projection along with many other indifferent or even pleasant details accompanying the trauma period in its mnemonic storage. For example, a rape during the gymnasium will lead to the “controlled” subconscious and involuntary suppression of the whole gymnasium period: forgetting the teachers, faces and names of her colleagues, all the pleasant episodes that accompanied that particular stage of life, Suppressed by voluntary amnesia. Same goes for an abusive father – leading to the erase of childhood with all its glory and pleasantness.

Psychiatry and neurology have proved this theory to be a reality and a behavior of protection and it acts in trauma events regardless the voluntary conscious of a person. „Rape Trauma Syndrome (RTS) s the medical term given to the response that most survivors have to rape or other psychological trauma and it does not constitute a mental disorder or illness.”[2] This reaction of dissociation memory by self-rejecting episodes around the trauma is present in a wide sector of events, all private and leading to an intimate aspect of a human person: it renders the victim

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utterly helpless, and this does not have to be particularly brutal or external violent, but to be perceived by the psychic of a person as threatening. From external-seen-violent episodes such as rape, pre-divorce paternal fights or just domestic violence, car crash, soldiers who have experienced combat, to a rather non-violent passive participant ones like pregnancy, natural disasters, terrorist acts, murder witness, bank/store robbery, etc., all are causing psychogenic amnesia, a clinical condition known as repressed memory syndrome. Without a structural brain damage or a known neurobiological cause, this is still a disorder characterized by abnormal memory functioning, also known as functional amnesia or dissociative amnesia[3]. „Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a severe anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to any event that results in psychological trauma, which manifests itself in constant re-experiencing of the original trauma through flashbacks or nightmares and avoidance of any stimuli associated with the trauma, as well as increased arousal (such as difficulty falling or staying asleep, anger and hypervigilance).” Freudian psychology suggests that psychogenic amnesia is an act of self-preservation, and that is the proof that the psychic of any individual works in self-interest, sometimes even against the will of the conscious Self. Freud said that, while facing anxiety-generating traumas, events at increased risk, the conscious Self (ego[4]) is to wick to face the drama and to deal with consequences, so the Id - impulsive and unconscious – takes over everything the Ego (or I) cannot handle and protects the psyche by taking the event-causing-trauma deep into subconscious, in attempting of saving from the alternative that might be overwhelming anxiety or even suicide.

A. Solving repressions and conscious bad

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memories

It is equally well-known that these

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self-protections repressions do not work without the “final resolution of the conflict” in the sense that, without regression at the time / period of trauma and “making peace with your past”, the stability of mental homeostasis will be forced to constant infestations/outpouring, more or less violent discharges, but which, most of the time, affect the present. The phrase “we all have our Skeletons in the closet” means exactly this repression method of self-protection from everything that is considered by the ID as “too much” [to handle] for the Ego under the pressure of the Superego. „Neurologically, normal autobiographical memory processing is blocked by an imbalance of stress hormones such as glucocorticoids and mineralocorticoids in the brain, particularly in the regions of the limbic system involved in memory processing.”[5] Religious psychotherapy, regardless of what religion is implied, has always presented the same variant of “the reconciliation of consciousness.” Whether confession or penitence (Traditional Christianity), repentance – Teshuvah (Judaism), Holly Scriptures reading and meditation, rituals of reconciliation6 (Catholicism), advises to forgive and seed compassion inside[7] (Buddhism), and much other gestures of selflessness – every religion offers a certain mean of „satisfying” the accusations of the past, imputed by Superego or Consciousness. The mechanism is as simple as ever: the penitent is encouraged to admit, through introspection, the guilt, even the tiny one, that he had while committing the anguishing event, and to forgive all the other participants in the trauma with all his heart, because only so he may have forgiveness and reconciliation in return.

Knowing that this internal drama sometimes goes far beyond the grave, with people – relatives or neighbors – that passed away without reconciliation with the living,

all religions have also thought to certain rituals of extending the reconciliation of consciousness with the dead. After-death rituals always contain a period of some extent especially for relatives to mourn.

Religions impose material rituals for the dead due to the belief in the after-life, where the dead “live” and retain consciousness.

Therefore the debts to the dead are never settled liabilities if not fulfilled. From the psychological, self-reconciliation effect considered in Buddhism to the traumatic, frightening ‘bill to be paid’ of the JudaicChristian esoteric traditions of “haunted by the dead” if not released by the satisfaction of liabilities towards them. In the end the internal, conscious effect is all the same: inner peace, ‘I have done all that depended on me’. From a scientifical point of view, it does not really matter if there is any life or consciousness after death. What really matters is that the living is bound with that “etheric non-existence” [what-so-ever we think it should be out there] through the psychological/spiritual linkage, that is unfinished business we have to people that passed away without ending it. Some psychiatrists consider that rituals for the dead bring anxiety as an ever-paying debt accompanied by phobias. Thanatophobia, or fear of death, is a relatively complicated phobia. Accompanied with fears of the unknown, lack of control over freed spirits, thanatophobia is interpreted as their fear of death, and maybe not as being afraid to die as they are of what would happen to their families after their death[8]. “The bereavement is recognized as a severe psychosocial stressor that can precipitate a major depressive episode in a vulnerable individual, generally beginning soon after the loss. When major depressive disorder occurs in the context of bereavement, it adds an additional risk for suffering, feelings of worthlessness, suicidal ideation, poorer somatic health, worse interpersonal and work functioning, and an increased

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risk for persistent complex lobotomized specific area of the brain would implicitly malfunction of conscience bereavement disorder.

Third, bereavement-related major depression is most likely to occur in individuals with past personal and family histories of major depressive episodes. It is genetically influenced and is associated with similar personality characteristics, patterns of comorbidity, and risks of chronicity and/or recurrence as non–bereavementrelated major depressive episodes. Finally, the depressive symptoms associated with bereavement-related depression respond to the same psychosocial and medication treatments as non–bereavement-related depression.”[9] Religion, on the other hand, has always seen bereavement as a tool of getting away from grief, mourning, and post-death despair. A period of 2 months of mourning, with external signs [sable] for people to avoid cheerful interactions, should be enough for getting over the psychosocial stress and suffering feelings. Therefore, religion sees after-death rituals as aids in providing relief and making peace with the dead [or its consciousness].

This function of consciousness tied to her mnemic basis has prompted the curiosity of neurological specialists who assumed that lobotomizing some areas of the brain would implicitly lead to dysfunctions of consciousness – the lobotomized area during trepanation would implicitly end in malfunctioning of conscience[10], in the sense of relaxing its critical level. Forgiveness / dilatation / forgiveness lead the individual to reconciliation, tranquility and inner balance.

Conversely, religion has configured the final process, individual or universal, of the Judgment of the perpetrated and culpable deeds of life for which individuals, in a way or another, have managed to discard or evade in their lives. Thus, the final Judgment, as well as the spirituality of Hell-Sheol, will

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consist, according to religious assertions, of the “enlightenment” of consciousness to “see” everything one did, both the deeds themselves and their consequences, but also to grasp the gravity and culpability of those over the lives of other people. In other words, everything that has passed unconsciously or semi-conscious over the course of life due to a lack of significance of awareness will then be valued, correct and full, so that it can neither discourage, nor evade the indictments of conscience.

That will be „the furnace of fire where is the weeping and gnashing of teeth … the everlasting fire, the judicial punishment of everlasting destruction… the worms on them will not die, the fire will not be extinguished” (Matthew 8:12; 13;42: 25:41; 2 Thessalonians 1:9; Isaiah 66:24).

Starting from this function of valorization, perhaps one of the most important (if not the most important) of the Self-awareness process, we will be able to understand how and why consciousness subjectively administers tagging and storing the mnemic puzzle pieces. In the absence of valorization, absolutely nothing can be stored in order; a similar selection criterion must exist in any administrative sector (e.g.

Library, physical or electronic archives, civil status, or mental memory). That is why, to the present moment, we could not entitle as “living” an individual with AI because the function of valorization is missing. For any “thinking” machine - computer, robot, AI the inability to value is the proof or effect of lacking a personal experience. The learning process, however objective it may be for every individual, comes with the mnemic storing of the information according to the subjective value, that is to say, the individual gives the reasoned importance to that information: strictly related to the personal context in which he or she lives. In other words, any brain, detached from the body and the psychosocial environment in which it is placed, would fail to do more than any

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artificial device, just because it lacks the subjective criterion.

III. Consciousness Removal – a Human

improvement or degradation?

This defining aspect of the valorization function of unique and irreparable subjectivity also gives the character of pseudo-randomization to the combinations of the same elements within the individual consciousness. At the same time, it is also the reason why multiple individuals with AI differ only to the extent that their programmer differs, i.e. the algorithm for the selection and valorization of information differs. Thus, from the initial theory of AI’s perfection to the last proposals to restore the priority of AI construction there is a huge and crucial overthrow of perception.

If initially man has considered that robotization should take over and solve the “gaps” and “imperfections” (considered at that time, that is 80 years ago) of the human mind, eliminating the inconsistent subjectivity and the inaccuracy of collecting information from the environment represented the reaching of the next step on the evolutionary scale. Thus, from the initial point of view of robotics, robots with an extremely large number of sensors or androids with implants that augment the ability to retrieve and exponentially store more of the external data than an “ordinary” man, would represent the next step of evolution. Therefore, the emphasis was on the objective, technological acquisition of the basic data at the expense of the selective, subjective and valuable acquisition of human individuals, regarded as the weakness, the weak link of this evolutionary stage, the humanity of the present. Thus, eliminating Human Consciousness by any mean surgically, by atheistic negative therapy, or by substituting human individuals with robots / AI - would be the solution of the problem of this weakness.

It is precisely for this reason and on these Darwinian premises that the overwhelming and predominant emphasis was placed on altering and removing consciousness which, due to the function of valorization, seemed to lose sight on most of the existing information that gravitates around any individual. However, they are ignored by the human psyche due to their lack of significance and resonance for the individual. But is this imprecision really an evolving weakness of humanity?

In order to answer the fundamental question of human knowledge, “whether we can know the reality in itself or have only a partial, subjective and unrealistic knowledge?”, the philosophy of science directed its research and technological development precisely in the direction, of removing any traces of subjectivism: the conscience. Thus, man should finally come to an objective knowledge of reality in itself. However, at a point very close to this desideratum, the philosophy of science has understood that things are far from that and that this direction, of “perfecting” the human nature by removing the subjectivity, does nothing else but abolish what is most beautiful in human nature.

The latter understanding of the philosophy of science has turned 180o back its assumption and concluded that, precisely what seemed to be a weakness for the human nature, the consciousness and the subjective valorisation of reality, fulfills the function of unrepeatability of individuals and makes the richness of humanity’s nature.

Therefore, the newest proposal of the philosophy of science, starting from movies like Matrix and maybe as a climax in the WestWorld and Humans series, is consent that the beauty and richness of humanity and what makes us really humans is precisely the consciousness, self-awareness and subjective valorization. Thus, the conception of evolution brought forward

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by philosophy as ‘Arian people’, artificial selection and atheism, is now outdated and substituted by the paradigm of diversity under the idea that “being different doesn’t mean necessarily being wrong”.

Therefore, the goal of our existence must no longer be defined in terms of knowledge, objective and universal, but of conscious living, subjective and valuing. From this perspective, the philosophy of science has advanced proposals that not only should man be reconsidered with all the “errors” and “minuses” of his life, but also for the future “beings” made in his image, clones or AI, to carry the same marks, since they make the most of human’s life / living.

With this “hermeneutical key” - that man is perfect just the way he is (made), and he does not need to be perfected by taking out consciousness and subjective valorization – we should review the rest of consciousness’s elements. The problem of becoming ‘more perfect’ still remains as it was implied from the beginning by religion when it said that “man was made into God’s image, but he has to grow on his own unto His resemblance” (Genesis 1.27, 28). However, the perfectibility of human’s nature religion also said lies not into his body/carnal nature, but into his spiritual one. However, what this means regarding the actual subject?

Besides the context of memory, taken self-aleatory from the environment and stored by his selective criteria, consciousness also implies improvisation with purpose, self-interest. Moreover, what made man look merely a link in the evolutionary chain, it is but a process of every individual metamorphosis growth. Learning from mistakes, getting stronger with each KO, becoming something he was not, changing opinions, switching sides and more – these are not human glitches, errors that need to be adjusted by improving human’s nature, but mere characteristics of it.

During an individual transforming life it is

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important to understand what causes these changes, what motivates self-improvement?

Moreover, we should ask: if we have consciousness and we use it to make these modifications in the way we (re-)arrange stored memories or, on the contrary, do we evolve inside the conscious mind too and therefore we are gaining consciousness? In those cases, the witnesses’ remarks change to “they have been living a lie.”

Both the philosophy of science and religion assume the same “key of success” for bringing conscious to a whole new level of awareness, and that is pain, suffering.

So, every next stage of evolution is always caused by suffering and individual characteristic of acting in his self-interest.

Learning to remember makes individual correct any mistakes he did; confronting problems helps him improvise in the new situations that seems to have the same resolution. Learning from mistakes, trying to adjust behavior, evolving – all start from suffering and aiming towards homeostasis, self-comfort and psyche equilibrium.

Through individuals examples or the philosophic theories, it became known that people without suffering and pain (mostly psychological) in their lives “are not well-prepared for life [equal to saying for confronting problems and deal with them in a proper manner and a decent output]. On the other hand, people with continue but a small amount of suffering are more ready to facing life’s problems and challenges. In this continue emotional pain lies the ‘maturity’ of a person because “suffering is the key part of the human experience” (WestWorld 1:10). Due to this new coordinate, our last question can be translated into a new one: Consciousness and suffering, which produces which?

A. False memories: the Subjective

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interpretation of reality

Another side-effect of the relation

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between memory and consciousness is the implication of false memories on the Self and its mistakes. It is so inconvenient that Self and Soul are so deeply bound to consciousness which, in return, is crucially linked to the memories we are building, step by step, in our lives. In this regard, we have seen that subjectivity is a key-aspect in creating memories, both for engaging the present environment and selecting only those elements essential exclusively to my interest, as well as for structuring and systematizing by categories the memories generated under the pressure of our Self. In this regard, we can assume that Self and Memory process are linked in a circular determination. We become the Self [personality] we assume to be by summing memories and producing ongoing reactions to them and, vice-versa, we select, ‘clean’ and store memories according to the diligent Self we become. However, what happen’ with all these elements if the memories we fabric are [based on a] false circumstance. For example, the motif of a guy chased by another one is unknown for us and we help the former escape so that the situation proves to be altruistic to my Self and I stand with a memory where a brute violently abuses of another wick, an innocent victim that I want to save. In reality, things are entirely different: the former is a cold-blooded criminal that killed a child for nothing, and the latter was a policeman trying to stop and arrest him and preventing him from repeating this violent act.

Proof? Well, in every religious scenario of people “coming into senses” (Luke 15: 11- 32) [equal to becoming self-aware], there is a source of pain leading them to that outcome. Let’s take as example the Judaic people leaving the Egypt with internal transformation and changes from polytheism to Jehova’s monotheistic faith caused by severe loss and endurance through ages. But those external pain and sufferings were not the point in their

awareness process, but the internal torture they got through. For example, while facing food deprivation in the desert they had to deal with a psychological dilemma: whether to deny Moses’s capacity of divine calling as a genuine power to contact God in their help and thus leaving him behind and return to Egypt, or to continue entrusting Jehovah with their lives regardless of what they had experienced as suffering and deprivation?

Since their psychological power of dealing with that kind of situation was very poor they have got help [over the ages], -without improving much that power of adjusting I might add – at least not in the direction Moses and Jehovah would have wanted.

On the other hand, people shudder in their believed scenario were finally awakened by Jesus’s forgiveness attitude’s impact. For example, when Jews brought the adultery woman for public stoning in Jesus’s face and judgment, they were forced to get into their senses by a painful internal dilemma: am I less sinful than her to judge her properly and fair?

Therefore, suffering to self-torturing seemed the proper psychological tool for religious people in order to achieve consciousness, self-awareness. It was so needed that when they did not know where to find it or how to get it inside, they even thought they should self-inflict as external pain [i.e. monks and self-infliction in the Med Eve]. That bodily torture was, in fact, a simulacrum of ‘the awakening,’ from sinful thoughts that were stuck inside their minds.

These religions/spiritual scenes are not easy to digest for people not used to the concept of ‘spiritual awakening’ or “the theory of gaining consciousness’” we discuss here.

It is rather odd for one to see a happy peer that enter a confessional chamber and leave couple of minutes later bathed in tears.

A similar scene we have seen in Simon’s house (…) when a prostitute of senses’ stimulation appeal started to cry and display

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internal torture without dissimulation. What causes these rapid and full changes – from a whore to a repented saint? – is the internal torture, the consciousness awakening, the getting to one’s senses while dealing with the same dilemma: am I gone live in full [sin] as previous and deny God, or should I change for a better, God-loving person and deny sin? I would say that most of the time God winds in this kind of psychological dilemma, but the real challenge [for a spiritual leader] is to get this kind of dilemma into people’s minds [at the right moment, I might add].

So, the scene of crying people in the Church from WestWorld (9) is the incentive for this solution. A whisper in their ears, a doubtful question (Genesis 3.), is all what it takes for a rather psychic stable person to get into ideas, to doubt of anything, “to question the nature of his reality” for example; that is enough for anyone to cause internal torture, enough to want a change, a step forward, a self-improving moment of awakening (gen Matrix 2). This is the time of conversion, religious and spiritual, the moment when that person needs to change his state, his previous reality, convinced by that whisper that ‘he was living a lye’.

However, was it? I mean what if the ‘new,’ upgraded version of reality is not the one that really is? What then? Any change costs us the loss of the previous one and the awakening is also the moment we die to that and born for this, without going back, but without any guarantees of a no-regrets state of being. We cannot say for sure, as imagined in the movie of Inception; always a awaken from a dream, but still inside another one. The only truth we can affirm is that once awaken from a previous version of reality, one can never reenter it consciously.

We can only predict one could do that, over and over again, but only if the core of consciousness [i.e. memory] is erased, as in the infinite chain of reincarnation Buddhist theory or, resubmitted by WW series. Both theories [if they are two!?] find a blissful Session 3. CONSCIOUSNESS

error in this infinite falling from a dream to another. One calls it déjà vu glitches, other reveries, but the idea is all the same: either divinity cannot or do not want consciousness fully erased so that, through an infinite chain of awakenings, the consciousness gets acutely aware of what is it made for.

You do remember that we have said that there are people against major changes in their lives? Well, this is the moment when we can understand why is this happening.

By the time I saw first time the scene of the awakening in the Matrix II I remember that I was shocked by the reaction some people had afterwards, accusing Neo of this unfortunate change and saying that “it was better if you would not awake us because we were better [with the state] before”!

B. What this Awakening does for the state

of Consciousness?

I don’t want to change the topic of my paper now and compare these two states of reality as if one shows us a lie and the other one the truth [because this comparison will throw us into another, different and endless debate of what is the reality and how won’t we recognize it if we meet it]. That is why I stick to the original aim of the paper and see what does this awakening for the state of consciousness. Regardless of the comparison between these different and antagonist stages of Consciousness, we can assume that each stage, in itself, assumes full consciousness or, in other words, as full consciousness as it is activated/ updated.

Everybody can aim to raise the maximal limit of consciousness, but nobody can [naturally] control the minimal limit, in the sense that one would possibly lower it. This will be the task for neurology to explain it. Due to that ascensive path of living conscious, only forward, towards more consciousness and not against it, our mind is never in conflict with itself on matters of different levels of consciousness. In other words, the same mind

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cannot encompass [again, normally] two of more different stages of consciousness because they are always antagonists. I said ‘normally’ because when it happens the mind collapses and the one unitary psychic cleavages into split personalities, each with a different consciousness, sometimes so obvious antagonists. Therefore going back to the original issue, we can say that the awakening is, in fact, a step forward of gaining more consciousness. Moreover, since each “gram” of consciousness affects our perception over reality irreversibly, most of the time, a slight feeling of regret is being experienced. In this regard, we can always contemplate that the children feel sorry that they are not (yet) adults, while [getting] adults regret that they are not children any longer. This is the main effect of irreversibility of time passing - gaining consciousness. That is why the comparison with the walking from a dream into another dream is most adequate for the situation proposed. Once we experience the new [advanced] stage of consciousness we see things differently, we lose our [previous] innocence, and we no longer experience same blessed non-awareness. This is the motif of the universal deny of the awakening, the universal feeling of dizziness and confusion while facing a new dimension of reality accompanied by the sarcastic remark “welcome to my/our world!”. This irony habit of all persons witnessing the awakening of a Self. It is not unusual to witness persons (of different ages) that, even if they are told about a specific side if their reality, they deny it so much so that they believe quite the opposite, laughing of the proposed reality as it would be a farce. For example, husbands cheated that are warned about that, children believing in fairies and Santa that advise of their inexistence adopted children that receive the news of this, or persons that keep on living long after a close relative died without acknowledging that and apprise of their

living absence. All these cases and many others reflect same layered consciousness and the multi-roomed reality maze.

The choices, in all cases of awakening of consciousness, are limited to three: either accept the divulged otherness of a reality that is possible and contradicts the previous one; or deny this displayed reality and split the reaction into other two. That is either denying it all the way with a wick Self (EGO) and bury this perspective deep into subconsciousness, or deny it but the strong Ego goes on with wondering and curiosity of “what if…?” and that leads to an anguish, anxious coexistence of those two realities: not willing to leave the previous acknowledge reality, but not prepared to cope with the new one either.

IV. Conclusion

Finally, it is clear that we are talking about a process of consciousness that we have called it progress, assuming that it is ascendant generative, i.e. gaining consciousness. On the other hand the loss, the regression of consciousness is not naturally possible, willingly. In this case, different stages of the progress of awareness each postulate a micro ontogenesis, from the penetration into the consciousness cell that is done through awakening. It requires some level of consciousness, up to the maximum level of awareness 99 o which implies the existence of an edge, to some extent flexible, that makes the difference with the next cell. First of all, I have started from the 1o and not from 0o because there is no such thing. With the existence also comes the awareness of existence. The reverse application of René Descartes assertion, ego sum ergo cogito (I am therefore I think) that we cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt, and that this is the first knowledge we acquire when we philosophize in order[11]. The argumentation is simple that whenever

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it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind is necessarily true.[12] That means that, no matter how inexperienced or undeveloped would be a consciousness, it exists nonetheless.

Also, it cannot climb to 100o degree (absolute) because it would be equivalent to assuming the cell boundaries, the awareness of the whole and limiting space in which the consciousness of that stage / layer was formed. In this sense, reaching the absolute level exceeds the boundaries of one’s own cell, and equates to awakening, with the angry question „does not exist anything else?” apart from what has already been perceived and understood. This creates insufficiency and the need to leave the cell for another, a different one. Thus, according to a simple arithmetic, what had to be of the maximum degree (99 o) became absolute (100o), namely 1o, it actually becomes the starting point of a new cell of awareness, the point where all previous degrees are canceled and brought to 1o, and the psyche, confused by the new interface through which sees the world, the new reality, is compelled to forget everything he previously knew for they never work in the new layer according to same laws he knew before, in the past layer. This applies to every example we brought into discussion by now. Exiting the fairy-land a child is compelled to learn other rules, facing even new statuses for what he was though as „wrong” like lye, hide most of the thoughts and other. As a different type of exemplification we can take the hypothesis of astrophysics. First it was believed all the way that the Earth is the center of the world, then the sun, then that the center of the universe is far away, among the stars, afterwards that this center is imaginary, not real, only as a landmark, but it does not exist as a materiality, and so on. This is indeed fitful to our case and not a pattern of knowledge improving since all these theories are equally still believed by some and rejected by others. Each of these Session 3. CONSCIOUSNESS

sceneries has a whole story to back them up so that they were fully believed, the scientists being aware that things are the way they said each time and not as it was previously asserted, and also not in another way, as it will be subsequently proved.

The point is that coming close to full awareness you create in yourself a suction void that no longer allows you to comfortable stay inside your layer but forces you to enter the next and take this process all over again. However, this is probably the topic for another paper I will prepare for the next time.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

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(Endnotes) F. Kuhlmann, “Problems in the Analysis of the Memory Consciousness”, in The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Jan.3, 1907), pp.

5-14. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/ stable/2011390, Accessed: 12-03-2017.

Rape Crisis Cape Town Trust, Rape Trauma Syndrome (RTS). Retrieved from (accessed 12.02.2017): http://rapecrisis.org.za/rapetrauma-syndrome/. „Psychogenic amnesia”, in The human memory.

Retrieved from (accessed 12.02.2017): http://www.human-memory.net/ disorders_psychogenic.html.

According to Sigmund Freud the psyche is layered in multiple coats. His First topic (1905): topographic representation of the psychic apparatus which consist of three systems: unconscious, conscious, preconscious. The Second topic (1923): topographic representation of the psychic apparatus consisting of three agencies: id, ego, superego, all developing at different stages in our lives. According to Freud’s model of the psyche, the id is the primitive and instinctual part of the mind that contains sexual and aggressive drives and hidden memories, the super-ego operates as a moral conscience; and the ego is the realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego. Saul McLeod „Id, Ego and Superego”, in SimplyPsychology, 2016.

Retrieved from (accessed 12.02.2017): http:// www.simplypsychology.org/psyche.html.

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Psychogenic Amnesia - Memory Disorders - Human.., http://www.human-memory.net/ disorders_psychogenic.html (accessed April 12, 2017). (accessed 12.04.2017): http://www. human-memory.net/disorders_psychogenic. html [6] White Robed Monks of St. Benedict, On the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Retrieved from (accessed 12.02.2017): http://www. whiterobedmonks.org/recon.html.

[7] http://tnhaudio.org/2011/08/12/miracles-ofreconciliation/ [8] Lisa Fritscher, “Thanatophobia” in Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: DSM-IV [Internet]. (4th Ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 1994. https://www.psychiatry.org/ [9] “Depressive Disorders: Bereavement Exclusion” in Highlights of Changes from DSM-IV-TR to DSM-5. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 2013.

Retrieved from (accessed 12.02.2017): https:// psychiatry.org/File%20Library/Psychiatrists/ Practice/DSM/APA_DSM_Changes_from_ DSM-IV-TR_-to_DSM-5.pdf?_ga=1.869371 76.1900357133.1487017172 [10] The word “zombie” was recently used here on the Cryonet regarding what I would term “non-conscious personality duplications”, such as we see in lobotomy patients. This experiment was conducted by neuroscientist Walter Freeman III, a leading consciousness researcher in the 1950s.

[11] (Latin:) Non posse à nobis dubitari, quin existamus dum dubitamus; atque hoc esse primum, quod ordine philosophando cognoscimus.

[12] David B. Manley and Charles S. Taylor (editors), Descartes’ Meditations, Meditation II.3 (quoties a me profertur, vel mente concipitur, necessario esse verum), 2013.

Retrieved from (accessed 06.03.2017): http:// www.wright.edu/~charles.taylor/descartes/ meditation2.html.

[5]

Biography Ciocan Tudor Cosmin, born in Constanta/ Romania in 1977, I have attended several theological and psychological schools (BA, MB, PhD), obtained my PhD in Missiology and Doctrinal Theology in 2010. I was ordained as orthodox priest in 2002. Highschool teacher from 1998, then Professor assistant and Lecturer from 2012, I have written more than 30 papers on theology and psychology, along with 4 single author books in the past two decades.

In 2013 I have started a multidisciplinary program aiming to engage scholars from different files into friendly and academic debates with theology and in the same year a Research Center was founded in Ovidius University with researchers from 11 fields. in lest then 1 year I manage to gather people from around the globe around this idea and so we have started Dialogo Conferences project. In 2014 I received a Fulbright scholarship and I spent the summer California and 4 other States in USA, gathering data and understanding how religious pluralism is possible at a high level of involvement; in the same time I made friends from many different countries and religions that are now involved in this project or another, helping in his endeavor.

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DIALOGO JOURNAL 3 : 2 (2017) 168 - 176

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This paper was presented in the

Bridging Science and Religion together: SELF - SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS. (DIALOGO-CONF 2017 SSC)

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held online, on the Journal’s website, from May 19 - 26, 2017

journal homepage: http://dialogo-conf.com

The State of being Awake 1. Any Docu-Axelerad - PhD Assoc. Professor

2. Daniel Docu-Axelerad, Ph.D. (Co-Author)

Department of General Medicine “Ovidius” University of Constanta Constanta, Romania

FEFS, Kinethoteraphy Department “Ovidius” University of Constanta Constanta, Romania

ARTICLE INFO

ABSTRACT

Article history: Received 29 April 2017 Received in revised form 10 May Accepted 15 May 2017 Available online 30 May 2017 doi: 10.18638/dialogo.2017.3.2.16

For a person to be conscious the main factor, condition and proof is the state of being awake. While the biological phenomenon of neuro circuit process is kept entirely functional at all times, the consciousness anatomic structures operate under different conditions as it is proved by many MRI scan and EEG supervision. Thalamus is an important key; it remains arousal and relays sensory, motor, and critical cortical circuits.

Hypothalamic area and basal forebrain is involved in wake and sleep-promoting system.

The ”Awake state” correlates with an abnormality in the midbrain, pons, thalamus, or cortex.

Keywords: Thalamus; consciousness; neuroscience; neurology; reticular formation; Electroencephalography; lesions;

© 2014 RCDST. All rights reserved.

I. INTRODUCTION

In keeping with current ideas, consciousness purports a state with reasoning faculties that requires to being wide awake. The deeds of human consciousness typically translate into a person being attentive and thinking. As a term, consciousness is an abstract concept that connotes contemplation. As a biological phenomenon, neuronal circuits and networks operate using neurotransmitters but clearly configured “vital organ of consciousness” is neither possible nor

likely. There are many anatomic structures involved in consciousness like: temporal lobes and hippocampal region for memory, limbic area for emotions, prefrontal cortex for executive functions. However, we do not know a great deal about consciousness.

The real and most important question is which anatomical structures control conscious state and how we lose or change alertness and vigilance? Pathways that arouse us to become awake have been postulated in humans, and these structures may become interrupted by lesions, become pharmacologically altered, or disrupted

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by physiologic derangement or toxin. It is understood that the three main structures needed to keep one alert and primed to response are the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS) in the midbrain and pons, the thalamus, and the cortex. This chapter examines the key studies that led to the discovery of the main structures and projections producing arousal and reviews the current thesis on the neurophysiologic correlates of consciousness.

The initial pursuit to study consciousness started with the postulate that neural interconnections in the brain involved in the arousal would need a spur from brainstem center. Bremer took this challenge to his cerveau isolé and encephalé isolé experiments, and others made similar observations.[1-4] Experimental on cat’s forebrain from cortical part produce a prolonged sleep and EEG changes like slow waves. Alternating sleep and awake state occurred in the encephalé isolé preparations (transaction through the lower brainstem). Chronic preparations would demonstrate sleepawake patterns with running movements and crude walking.[5] Decades later, in a series of experiments, an activating network that signs the thalamus and cortex and caused wakefulness was discovered[6,7]. Reticular formation appears necessary in transition between sleep and awake (observed after electrical excitation of the reticular formation).

One of the earliest attempts at defining the thalamocortical pathway was by Morison and Dempsey of the Department of Anatomy and Physiology of Harvard Medical School. Their topographical studies found that cortical responses occur with thalamic stimulation. “A wide cortical distribution of the recruited responses was found, but they mostly converged in the gyrus proreus, the middle suprasylvian, and triangular area at the lower margin of the posterior

suprasylvian gyrus”. The authors not only concluded that the projection fibers of the thalamus radiate to association cortex but also that the medial or interlaminar portions of the thalamus were likely responsible.[9] This conclusion was made by Moruzzi and Magoun from Department of Anatomy of Northwestern Medical School, in case that stimulation of parts of the reticular formations (medial bulbar reticular formation, pontine, and mesencephalic tegmentum) of the brainstem and also the dorsal hypothalamus and subthalamus, abolished synchronization and caused lowvoltage fast activity of the EEG. Parallel with the search for the “seat of consciousness”-considered present in the cortex in humans with better developed neopallidium than lower creatures-came the search for lesions associated with prolonged unconsciousness. What was then the clinicians’ view on impaired consciousness? Notably, neurosurgeons repeatedly observing patients with localized tumors speculated that the responsible sites were in the frontal lobes, thalamus, or hypothalamus. Cairns pointed out that many areas of the cortex could be removed without an effect on consciousness but that mechanical interference or hemorrhage in the brainstem or surrounding the third ventricle may induce immediate coma or a sleep-like state.[10] Cairns, analyzing his neurosurgical cases, located abnormalities at any level of either the brainstem or thalamus.

However, further understanding of the neural correlates of consciousness came with animal studies by neurophysiologist Lindsley[11]and neurosurgeon French at UCLA.[12] Lindsley coagulated the reticular formations in the mesencephalon or posterior hypothalamus that resulted in coma.[13] Earlier cat studies were replicated in monkeys, and by using animals with higher encephalization the

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investigators[ ]linked the findings closer to humans, Again, changes occurred on the electrocorticogram of the monkey after stimulating the brainstem reticular formation. “Reemergence of EEG synchrony was also seen after stimulation stopped and was most prominent in the anterior part of the hemispheres. Stimulation of the reticular formation and tegmentum of the lower brainstem, diencephalon, subthalamus, the dorsal hypothalamus, and ventral medial thalamus could all produce such an EEG arousal”. This experiment was followed by actually producing a lesion in these locations.

Barbiturates can mimic clinical features like stimulation of reticular formation with the absence of the experimental reaction to afferent stimulation, but the difference is the reversible reduction of EEG activity.

II. The anatomy of the awake state

Cortical activation requires several structures. Awake state includes several anatomic structures like brainstem, monoaminergic nuclei in the ascending reticular formation, thalamus, posterior hypothalamus. These structures are active during the awake period, and hypofunctioning may be secondary to disease, drugs like hypnotic.

The reticular formation consists of neurochemically defined nuclei that extend throughout the brainstem tegmentum and posterior hypothalamus. The ARAS is stimulated by spinal and cranial nerves carrying propriocetive, visual, and auditory information. These interconnecting cells located in the dorsal part of the lower pons “ascend up” with some individual bundles to the thalamus and become active during the awake state and also during the rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, playing a major role in the sleep-wake cycle.

Thalamus plays a major role in “getting” signals and because all cortico-

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thalamocortical interactions is involved in synchronization of cortical activity during sleep (non-REM). Another important structure is the anterior cingulated cortex who is involved in motivation and attention has inputs from nociception sensibility pathways. Abulia or mutism result from its dysfunction.

Sleep alternates wakefulness. Some insight is necessary.[14] Nowdays we correlate the conscious state with EEG. During sleep, delta rhythms appear. This reflects inhibitions of these neurons by input from the sleep-promoting ventrolateral preoptic (VLPO) area. Sleep generation could, therefore, be hypothesized as a decrease of the activity of the mesencephalic reticular formation and cholinergic reticular nuclei that then “dis-facilitate” the thalamic nuclei. Some investigators argue that basal ganglia activity causes the sleep-wake rhythm.[15] It is a relation between basal ganglia-cortical input and thalamus and reticular core. Depression of the cerebellar hemispheres is also seen during slow-wave sleep and facilitates decreased muscle tone and proprioception. In the REM sleep, however, a significant increase in regional blood flow is seen and interpreted as generalized activation of the arousal systems.[16] In the awakening process, there is the establishment of functional circuits that are necessary to become alerted.[17] The connections between caudate, prefrontal cortex, and thalamus seen only 20 minutes after awakening is an indication of the reestablishment of the function of the prefrontal corticostriatalthalamocortical circuit, typically uncoupled during sleep. An interesting new findings is that the precuneus located on the medial aspect of the parietal lobe is very active during wakefulness but much different in slow-wave, wake-sleep and REM sleep and is hypoactive in pharmaceutical sedation in a persistent vegetative state.[18]

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Neuroimaging studies have contributed to our understanding of wakefulness. The anatomical boundaries of the brainstem tegmentum in which specific nuclei could be involved in the maintenance of consciousness in humans has been revisited recently.[19] With brainstem stroke were examined using a retrospective study of MRI scan mapping, and the maximal are involved in the upper pontine tegmentum. The territories of the lesions in this study that were most affected were the rostral raphe complex, locus ceruleous lateral dorsal tegmental nucleus, nucleus pontis oralis, parabrachial nucleus, and white matter in between these nuclei.[20] Proton-emission tomogram (PET) has been used to study neuronal activity of the brain indirectly. In these studies, cerebral blood flow is used as an indicator of neuronal activity. It is assumed that increased neuronal activity induces an increase in metabolism, which then facilitates a vasodilatory hemodynamic response. Anesthetic drugs suspend thalamic function and provoked depressing and, again confirm the role of the thalamus.

PET scanning also discovered that these changes are not accompanied by changes in oxygen consumption, which increased the interest in using functional MRI scan (MRI signals are sensitive to oxygenation of blood).[21,22] Functional MRI has recently been used to study wakefulness, sleep, minimally conscious and persistent vegetative state. It is a relative pentagram: ARAS, mediofrontal cortex, cuneus and precuneus and thalamus.(The cuneus is a structure with high metabolic demand, but there has not been a clinical description of an isolated lesion).

III. The chemistry of the awake state

Neurotransmitters are needed to amplify the firing of these neurons and

to regulate wakefulness and are located in several monoaminergic neuronal cell groups.[23-25] The main neurotransmitters are norepinephrine (originates in locus ceruleus and lateral tegmental area), serotonin (dorsal and medial raphe nuclei), acetylcholine (basal forebrain and brainstem), histamine (located in posterior hypothalamus), and orexin-hypocretin (presumably located in the perifornical region of the lateral hypothalamus).[26-28] All the pathways project diffusely to the cortex, some with more specific targets.

Norepinephrine is very active during awake states, silent during REM sleep, and partially active during nonREM sleep. Dopamine neurons may have a more specific role in maintaining wakefulness, and this has been indirectly demonstrated in studies using amphetamines. (Amphetamine work by enhancing release and simultaneously inhibiting reuptake of dopamine and thereby enhancing arousal). Histamine seems to inhibit the “sleep-promoting” preoptic region and antihistamines produce reactivation of this region and thus sleep.

The reticular formation is largely active through the neurotransmitter glutamate.

[29] In addition, the reticular formation contains neurons that use gamma amino butyric acid (GABA) that has inhibitory control. It has been suggested that these two systems may promote or dampen cortical activation. Ketamine and virtually all volatile anesthetic agents block the glutaminergic transmission. On the other hand, barbiturates enhance gabinergic transmission through GABA receptors.[3032] The neurons in the pontomesencephalic portion and nucleus basalis contain acetylcholine. “These cholinergic neurons ascend parallel to the reticular formation and extend to the thalamus and to the hypothalamus and basal forebrain. These cholinergic cells apparently are active in wakefulness activation and awakening; however, specific destruction of the

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cholinergic neurons does not influence cortical activation but does cause a loss of REM sleep”.

“The noradrenergic neurons are located in the locus ceruleous, with primary projection sites throughout the entire cortex; they also relay input to the thalamus, hypothalamus, and basal forebrain.”[50] There is evidence that the noradrenergic locus ceruleous mostly discharges in situations with high arousal including stress. Modafinil interferes with noradrenaline reuptake, and this probable mechanism (together with dopamine reuptake blockade) makes it a useful agent for narcolepsy.

The substantia nigra and ventral tegmental area and retrorubral field all contain dopaminergic neurons. They ascend from brainstem and descend to the forebrain, and relay in the dorsal striatum and cerebral cortex. Dopamine release is expected during aroused and rewarding walking situations, and again depletion of catecholamines also results in hypersomnia, akinesia, and aphagia.

The serotonergic raphe neurons use serotonin and from the midbrain raphe nucleus ascend to the forebrain and cortex.

Depletion of serotonin leads to insomnia and also an aroused waking state with increased eating and sexual behavior.

An inhibitor of serotonin-synthesizing enzyme, para-chlorpheniramine, can cause complete insomnia. Serotonin syndrome (response to drugs that decrease serotonin metabolism) causes nervous followed by stupor. “The posterior hypothalamus has a plethora of neurotransmitters of neuroactive substances that include GABAergic and glutaminergic neurons, dopaminergic neurons, the neuropeptide orexin-hypocretin, and histaminergic cell bodies in the tuberomammillary nucleus.”[51] The posterior hypothalamus has also been called the “waking center” and remains an important structure in

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the reticular ascending activating system complex. Studies have identified lesions in certain areas that produce insomnia, thus pointing toward a role in promoting sleep.

These areas have been identified as the preoptic area of the hypothalamus.[33-36] Rat studies documented sleepiness with bilateral lesions of the preoptic area of the hypothalamus. A cell group designated as the ventrolateral preoptic nucleus (VLPO) projects to monoaminergic cell group and inhibits through galanin and GABA, resulting in sleep. However, the relationship between VLPO and monoaminergic system is reciprocal. Thus, during wakefulness, the monoaminergic nuclei inhibit VLPO and vice versa during sleep. A sleep switch has been postulated.[37,38] These neurons are typically inhibited by acetylcholine, noradrenaline, and histamine.[39] Other substances with somnogenic properties are adenosine, cytokines, prostaglandin P₂ delta sleep-inducing peptides, and opiate peptides, among many others. It remains important to recognize that lesions that are in the thalamocortical activating system or in hypothalamic arousal system do not always produce longstanding difficulties with waking. A recent study found that destruction of the thalamic neurons did not result in loss of cortical activation.[40] Similarly, destruction of the neurons in the posterior hypothalamus did not result in waking difficulties. Posterior hypothalamus, when stimulated, creates not only cortical activation but also arousal responses that include papillary dilatation, increased respiratory rate, increased heart rate, and increased blood pressure. Moreover, there is some evidence that pharmacologic manipulation is possible. Dexmedetomidinean α2 adrenergic agonist-is a useful sedative agent in ICU and neurologic producers and may modulate the VLPO.[41,42] Of considerable interest are the histaminergic neurons using histamine as a neurotransmitter located in the

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ventral lateral posterior hypothalamus (tuberomammillary nucleus), lateral to the mammillary nuclei. It has a major role in waking because antihistaminic drugs cause drowsiness and rats that have no histamine are less easily aroused.[43] Histaminergic cells are also involved in cortical activation of waking. “The histaminergic neurons have been found to send widespread ascending and descending tracts through areas of the brain that are known to control sleep-wake states”. Some experiments have found that the intraperitoneal injection of an inhibitor of the histamine synthesis enzyme causes significant decrease in walking and patterns associated with deep slow-wave sleep on EEG.[44] IV. The physiology of the awake state

Steriade and colleagues’ work has improved the comprehension of the electrical underpinnings of awakening and sleep.[45] Depolarization of the thalamic neurons, in turn activated by the pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus, results in EEG desynchronizing and suppression of sleep spindles and delta waves. Thalamic reticular neurons (GABAergic) are bordered by anterior and ventral surface of the dorsal thalamus.[46] During awake state, there is spontaneous tonic firing but no spike bursts.

The role of the central thalamus is under investigation. High-frequency stimulation (100 Hz) of the thalamus generates cortical activation and, in rats, change in exploration and grooming behaviors.[47] Most recently, deep brain stimulation improved arousal and motor activities in a patient disabled by traumatic brain injury, suggesting that electrical manipulation of central thalamic function may be effective.[48] Ineffective in prolonged coma, the role of deep brain stimulation in the treatment of patients with diminished arousal after brain injury is yet undefined but holds out an expectation. This surgical procedure may improve severely

disabled patients, but criteria for selection are not yet known.

V. Translation into clinical practice

“Alertness is mostly a function of the thalamus, and reticular formation and awareness is in the cortex with an important contributing role of the precuneus and anterior cingulate gyrus.”[34] With such an abundance of projections, connections, and multiple involved neurotransmitters, abnormal consciousness and coma can only be a result of a widespread dysfunction of the brain and brainstem. The functional parameters are influenced by factors that reduce energy metabolism. There are a different mechanism that causes coma like like: destructive lesions of cortex, thalamus or connecting fibers in the white matter. Thalamus involvement can provoke fluctuation of consciousness.

Akinetic mutism is the most common clinical correlate of lesion of the anterior cingulated cortex. Most of the dorsal brainstem injury is due to shift, torsion, compaction, and secondary vascular lesion from damage to the penetrating arteries.

Examples abound not only of an ischemic stroke, tumor, or removal of adjacent tumors such as craniopharyngioma, causing damage to surrounding structures, but also rare disorders such as sarcoidosis and Whipple disease.

Disorders of consciousness are common in critically ill patients, like we saw in our daily neurologic practice, and after patients who experience coma state and survive, disorders of attention are even more prevalent. Our concern is to understand underlying anatomic and neurophysiological aspects and maybe to create a prophylactic therapy, because in trauma or stroke patients, a primary central nervous system lesion is mostly responsible.

If we will be able to select area of neurology

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or neurosurgery for which neurologists are expected to show a singular aptitude, it would be altered awareness or coma.

Recognition of import ants signs of structural injury of the brain ( but a skilled neurologist) require multidisciplinary expertise because of misunderstanding of some particular neurologic signs due to sedatives agents and analgesics. Another aspect of awake state is brain death, because this entity is important for evaluation for future organ donation after consent from family.

Sometimes acute confusional state (very frequent in neurological departments) is a real example in misunderstanding of awake state neuroanatomy and neurophysiology, because this impairment of attention, memory and logical thinking may due of a system manifestations (that means the importance of anamnesis and clinical specific signs) or a delirium state, where confusion is mixed with hallucination, or the final aspects of confusional state is a cerebral injury after a trauma or stroke, and for this a neurologic performant examination makes the differences.

VI. Conclusions

When the reticular formation is stimulated electrically, it creates cortical activation. The ascending neuronal networks that project to the cortex and stimulate cortical activation can be recapitulated. The ARAS includes cholinergic neurons of the mesopontine tegmentum projecting to the thalamus and monoaminergic groups that project to the thalamus, hypothalamus, basal forebrain, and the cortex. These monoaminergic groups include noradrenergic neurons of the locus ceruleous, serotoninergic neurons of the dorsal raphe, dopaminergic neurons of the ventral tegmental are and peri-aquaductal gray, and histaminergic neurons of the tuberomammillary nucleus of the posterior hypothalamus. Thalamus is an important key; it remains arousal and

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relays sensory, motor, and critical cortical circuits. There are multiple projections in the thalamocortical activating system.

Hypothalamic area and basal forebrain is involved in wake and sleep-promoting system. Awake state correlates with an abnormality in the midbrain, pons, thalamus, or cortex. There is particular interest in certain cortical structures, namely, anterior cingulate cortex, precuneus, and cuneus.

[51] Transitions from a minimally conscious state or akinetic mutism to better vigilance may be related to functional improvement in these locations. Acute confusional state and delirium are conceptually related but differ in severity and etiology. The approach for patients with structural lesions must create a multidisciplinary approach to evaluate correct and to prevent if it possible the invalided neurological lesions.

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Basis on Human Consciousness and its Complex Perception 1. Emanuel George OPREA, PhD

2. Cristiana OPREA, PhD

Faculty of History, the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia, Moscow, Russia

Frank Laboratory for Neutron Physics, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research 141980 Dubna, Russia

3. Alexandru OPREA, PhD

Frank Laboratory for Neutron Physics, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research 141980 Dubna, Russia

ARTICLE INFO

ABSTRACT

Article history: Received 10 May 2017 Received in revised form 14 May Accepted 15 May 2017 Available online 30 May 2017 doi: 10.18638/dialogo.2017.3.2.17

Scientific researches had demonstrated already that Humans and other beings from the Earth are not so different from biological and genetic point of view. Somewhere with millions years back in time qualitative changes were taken place when men were started to look to the sky not only with fear like any other wild animal but also with hope that in the very far future they will become at least as great as the sky. In this very hard road of mankind to perfection, some kind of immaterial inner superior being had suggested the right steps. Now we are calling this “Consciousness, Awareness” and this inner force without any doubt leads us to God. The main problem in Human Consciousness is to define the percentage of real pure man awareness separated from physical and biological nature. It is well known fact that many factors like education, weather, environment and other components influence, model and forms the human state of consciousness. The main method in the determination of real, pure awareness state is to separate it by examination of some human factors of life. It is considered that the basis of the pure state of human consciousness is the Word as it has the power to induce a pure way of perception. The human consciousness is considered pure for the most part, because the Word is able to move people with the strength of its full purity.

Keywords: Humans; Word; Human Consciousness; Mind and Soul; Freedom; Religious thinking;

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I. INTRODUCTION

The human perception includes many components originating in the historical period when peoples started to think abstractly. The basis of perception represents all the features that are reflected in the person life in combination with a logical structure of mind. On the one hand man has perfect logic and abstract thinking, which leads him consciously to organize his live in details, i.e. to create a family, a career, and to die as an honest man because he wants to position himself in this way, or to live in creativity and self-destruction and leaving nothing behind. Both types of humans can consciously build their own life and to be jealous on each other because there are some shortcomings in everyone’s life that they had built. And from these arises an important question. They took the fault on them deliberately a life sentence of living in such a way or are they all piled up on fate?

Fate interferes with our understanding, or fate has been long prescribed to every person on the planet that now has more than 7 billion [1]?

The Society tries to answer to this question for many thousands of years.

According to the official census more than 100 billion people dead. Surely no one found the answer to this question?

Of course! This happens because none of the people couldn’t find the answer to the main question. What is freedom? We live in a world where there is no freedom? Or maybe people have not fully understood the reality? Human perception and conscious is related with the reality. Possible answers on these topics are given by religion.

II. HUMAN RELIGIOUS PERCEPTION

Let consider that shamanism is present in the foundations of all the world’s faiths as Session 3. CONSCIOUSNESS

many authors already have demonstrated.

In fact, shamanism was everywhere [2].

The World Tree (Figure 1), present in many Indo-European and Native North American cultures [3], puts man in a paradoxical situation; he realizes that under the ground something incomprehensible, really terrible is buried, though the roots of the World Tree perfectly absorb water from the Earth. We live on the Earth, where you can meet and watch something scary coming from the underground bad spirits but in the same time we see the leaves of the World Tree rising up to Heaven together with the good spirits. Humans, in a deliberate way, see the good in heights (or rising) and in the feeding land. People consciously set limits and rules to avoid bad spirits and are waiting for the good. Why knowingly it is necessary to invent rules when originally there was freedom? What made the spiritual awaked man to obey to these rules from the point of view of Faith [4]?

Figure. 1. The World Tree.[5]

The answer to this question is very simple at the first sight, but the answer could be a monography. Long time ago peoples have understood something that helped all of us from extinction expressed by the fact that freedom cannot be absolute. A similar kind of freedom can be noted to civilizations with ancient traditions as for example in

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China [6]. For the modern people absolute freedom means lawlessness, murder, orgies, and suicide. And all this because the war in everyday life is reduced and the fears are transformed in meditations mixed with hidden desires to return back to the ancestral temptation of war.

Nowadays technological society gives many opportunities together with plenty of free time. People realize that they have more time to think and less time to act. It is interesting but funny in the same time that a lot of thinking leads to depression[7]. In order to understand the role and position of Humanity in the Universe the efforts of knowledge were rarely directed in the helping of the neighbors or on the penance of self-awareness.

For these reasons strong personalities more interested in thinking than in acting were evidenced. Consequently, those who acted in one way or another most likely are in extinction. Peoples of that time began to fear that some enemy spirits will accede from underground of buried dead. Thus the earth was seen as purifier of peoples or could have the power to capture their spirits.

Without doubt there was a permanent issue under discussion between the tribes from those times.

The religious questions, in spite of their repulsive characters, have saved the mankind in the beginning of history. Voltaire very well pointed one time: “If God doesn’t exist then we should have to invent Him”.

From here is resulting that the main pillar of human life is the Religion, genetically imprinted in any of us.

III. EDUCATION OF HUMANS

The next aspect which must be considered is the education. Not in vain it is said that humans are like their parents. They grow their kids, give them information, which is digested together with the food

and in result, in some extent they will be alike them[8]. But on the street starts a complex combination between the free perception of the child and the parental instructions. The freedom from outside leaves the possibility with whom to communicate, how to behave, to conduct themselves as parents suggest. It is difficult to say whether parents answer to all the questions of the child, because people are all different. No doubt that the modern world often differs from the model given by the parents. In this situation children must not follow the parental education?

The answer is “No” because they will have the possibility to choose and develop freely their own perception in complementarity to parental education[9].

As there can be seen, parents and home outside give to the child free new interrelated experiences. But what gives the institutional education? Going to school the child for sure will receive education, but in the same time he will see a hierarchy that does not always fits with his ideas of freedom. Education also raises the question of what it will give to children.

It will teach them to count, to write and offers culture. It is the same upbringing, but in some planned, oriented modes. In this case School gives a rigid framework of behavior in society [10]. This often causes him to get lost. Here is the moment when begins the school pressure on the pupils.

They find out that way of success in life is to avoid smoking, drinking, hanging out with suspicious company. For these reasons many are choosing the freedom to go into a dubious lifestyle. Why? First of all, because is easier. Second, but very important, the school never gave lessons about freedom, what it means, how it affects society and why freedom is to follow public rules [11].

As a result, a young man of about 18 years old, influenced by the free component of the education, realizes consciously that he does not choose the freedom because

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he chooses to live in the frame of precepts and prejudgments induced by the School education. People of the older generation understand these rules because the earlier education was more aimed on some sets of moral values and social scale than in a strong intimidation of personality. Then this was the most important. Was it this consciously or not – is a complex issue.[12] At 18 years old, for the first time the question of human freedom is seriously coming. What to do? What hopes for tomorrow are? How about a family, a home where to live? All these are acting on human conscious. This could lead to depression because appear the fears that the teenager will not be able to resolve all the problems.

Now is the moment when the young man may start to behave immorally, for example to drink, to try drugs etc. Why? This happens because no one told him what means real freedom.

Therefore, all is reducing to the first primitively freedom named by Kant which means the satisfaction of their own needs and desires [13].

well as for another, always like an aim and never merely as a mean” [13].

According to a more pathetic and deep, but less accurate expression of the “Criticism of practical reason”, is that the moral law prescribes the inviolability of another person because “The Other person must be Holy for you”[14].

The next problem that for so long time mankind has failed to learn – it is a problem of perception because how many people – so many opinions. It is possible to generalize, but it will happen as with the construction of the Tower of Babel (Figure 2)[15].

IV. RELATION BETWEEN FREEDOM AND

PERCEPTION

Kant considered that the basis of freedom of man is the search for God through himself. In the introduction to “Critique of practical reason” Kant writes about freedom as “the argument of the existence of” moral law. After that, the philosopher proceeds to the elimination of it. Human behavior in the moral law is determined by the fact that people, on which I will act, manifests the same autonomy as I do, or that they are purposes in themselves, but never like mean for anyone else. Therefore, the formula of the categorical imperative, which determines the content of moral behaviours is defined like: “Interacts with a person in order to use him for yourself as

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Figure 2. Tower of Babel. Painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1563)

It is not necessary to bring people together to God by force, briefly because not all want to build the tower of Babel. In fact, many people still believe that God is The One who living in the sky, sitting on the clouds, with a Figure of a good Grand Father, even though they have not personally heard or seen Him somewhere.

The human perception is the most complex process that rebuilds Reality in our brain. What is driving us to perceive?

Are we or not the cause? In every person it is an inner self spectator that watches and wonders what he does himself. What a wonderful mini-theater of the absurd where

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the pure personality is looking, in the same time having the tools such as education, behavior, language and feelings. But the individual personality needs only in its absolute true and nothing else. Let’s call this level of perception of a particular person as spectator because he can only empathize with You - the main character - and choose for you.[16] The following perception is the human will. The will is the ability of a person to choose the correct vector in life. Often will be found in the most modest people because they can focus on the most difficult task and run it into have results or to receive pleasure by performing it[17].

The next level of human perception is the subconscious mind surrounded by the pure personality. It is some sort of security center, which not allows him to go crazy. Quoting nicely, in the spirit of selfanalysis and introspection, it is like a pure person walking through the dark forest encountering wild animals which reside in the subconscious mind, collecting in the same time mushrooms representing human problems and gathering water in the form of internal dialogues and speculations of a person on different issues, sublimating them to the own system of conceptions and views.

Final stage of human consciousness is what we see, hear and feel in general.

Now in our internal world we are able to solve problems. Involuntarily seems that conscious choice of freedom is to solve only problems. But it only seems. Our conscious choice of freedom is like a permanent movement, in which, from the beginning we choose a vector[18].

According to the philosophy of empiricism, perception consists of sensations or, in a later version of this philosophy, in the so-called sensitive data.

Interpretation of sensations as the basic mental “building blocks” is particularly

prevalent in associative psychology [19].

Philosophical criticism on the thesis about the possibility to build the perception of sensations or sense data was carried out, in particular, by Ryle[20] and M. MerleauPonty.[21] In the psychology of XX century the interpretation of perception as compounds of atomic sensual contents (sensations) was not accepted because perception was understood as integral and structural. According to contemporary psychologist J. Gibson[22] perception is an active process of extracting information of surrounding world including a real examination of what is perceived. The perception understood in this way presents to the subject the properties of the external world, which correspond with the needs of the subject and express the possibility of its activities in the real situation. Therefore, perception shows to the subject those properties from outside, which, is related with the necessities of the subject and expresses the possibility of its activities and actions in a real given situation. According to U. Neisser[23], process of information extraction is based on existing schemes of subject on different topics and issues and about the world in general. Most of these schemes are acquired from experience, but some of them are original and they were born together with the subject.

Similar ideas were expressed also by the representatives of cognitive psychology, which believed that perception is a process of categorization interpreted by the subject, who means that the assignment of perceived objects to a particular class (category) of objects starting with such categories as the table or the tree and ending with such as the subject, causality, etc. Part of psychologists continues to consider perception as a synthesis of sensations, while sensations are interpreted as resulting directly from cognition of the subjective experience of strength, quality, localization, and other characteristics of the

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impact of stimuli on the senses [24].

The authors consider that one of the most important instruments of the human consciousness is the language. Every person has his own unique language different from others. We think that it is the language of individuality, the language that we all know from birth. People cannot find freedom and true awareness because they do not want to remember their true language. Not just because it was written “For the Word of God”[25]. The word provides to humans the will, the freedom and the ability to analyze themselves. This is not meaning that the mute and deaf will not benefit from the power of Word. All are convinced that the Word must be a perfect action of mouth and the ear, but by far is not like this considering the Reality around our perception.

The latest problem is the changing character of Humans. Tastes are changing, perceptions are changing, values are changing and in consequence the meaning of life is changing also. People will always change because people are not able to substitute the same values to others, rather complements them by building the most complex Foundation which is called Experience.[26]

can become a Hindu, and then to believe in the Scandinavian deity playing with faiths because it is fun and interesting. But he doesn’t understand that the main task of the Faith is in the preservation of ancestorsworship, to help to answer at the some difficult questions related to the conception and the sense of the Universe, the role and the position of Humans in the World.

The will and level of perception combine the consciousness of men. By having a strong will the man can choose the fastest and easiest way by going into frenzy. He decides to live by the rules or to begin the so-called “free lifestyle,” according to society. Society for a long time imposed to understand the freedom as to “break away”, but never was looking for other interpretations.

Finally, true human freedom is freedom of the Word because the person can become free when he will remember himself in the original state. Mainly, “original” is strongly related with the original self Language, possessed since birth.

For this reason, person’s level of consciousness is dependent on many factors enumerated here like: freedom, will, understanding, world-view and its own language.

V. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

References

As a result, only a few layers of human perception are highlighted that cause persons to be in some flow called life.

Perception depends on the level of the person will. The stronger the will is, the more illusory the Reality possible.

Education received from parents, colleagues, outside from the street also affects and influence the conscious realization of human actions. From personal experiences the Humans are trying to demonstrate their individuality.

The worldview of modern man can, by itself, to change very differently. Today he

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[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

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Maxim Vlasov, Desires of Man (in Russian) URL: http://psichel.ru/istinnye-zhelaniya/ Accessed on 3.04.17 Mircea Eliade, Archaic techniques of Ecstasy, Bollingen Series LXXVI, Princeton University Press, Translated from French by Willard R. Trusk (2004) Mary Ann Miller, Karl A. Taube, The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya: An Illustrated Dictionary of Mesoamerican Religion, Thames and Hudson Edition House, ISBN0500050686, 978050005068 (1993) Nicholas Toth, Kathy Schick. Handbook of Paleoanthropology, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, p. 1963 (2007)

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World Tree. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/World_tree Accessed on 03.04.17 [6] Confucianism, Philosophical Encyclopedic Dictionary, Redacted by L.F. Ilchev, P.N. Fedoseev, S.M. Kovalev, V.G. Panov, Soviet Enciclopedy, Moscow, p. 840 (1983) [7] The most common disease. URL: http:// www.depressia.com/depressiya/samayarasprostranennaya-bolezn. Accessed on 14.04.17.

[8] Adoptive children become similar with their new adoptive parents. URL: http://www. medstand.ru/news/science/47.html Accessed on 07.03.17.

[9] Street like environment for Education.

Children of the Street. (in Russian). URL: http://studme.org/56658/pedagogika/ulitsa_ kak_sreda_vospitaniya_deti_ulitsy Accessed on 14.04.17.

[10] S.T. Shatsky, Pedagogy, under redaction of N.P. Kuzin, M.N. Skatkin, V.P. Shatsky, p. 123, Pedagogyka Edition House, USSR Pedagogical Academy of Science, Moscow (1980) [11] R.A. Musaeva, A.G. Suleymanova, Influence of the School and Companions in the Formation of Personality, Proceedings of Seventh Student Scientific Electronic Conference, 12 September 2015 (in Russian) URL: http://www.scienceforum. ru/2015/1219/12880 Accessed on 02.05.2017 [12] School destroys the Psychic Health of the Children (in Russian). URL: http://informat. com.ua/shkola-lomaet-psixiku-i-zhiznrebenka/ Accessed on 14.04.17.

[13] Emmanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Eksmo Publishing House, Translated in Russian from German Language by N.O. Losskiy, ISBN 978-5-699-77120-2, Moscow (2015) [14] Kant about Freedom of Humans. URL: http:// mdc-moscow.ru/kant_o_svobode_cheloveka. html Accessed on 04.03.17.

[15] Tower of Babel URL: https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel Accessed on 05.03.17.

[16] Introspection URL: https://vocabulary. ru/termin/samoanaliz.html (in Russian) Accessed on 07.03.17.

[5]

Modesty – Indicator of Spirituality Level (in Russian). URL: http://www.lawsuniverse. ru/dir/lichnost_i_vechnost/skromnost_ pokazatel_urovnja_dukhovnosti/85-1-0-372 Accessed on 13.04.17.

[18] System-Vector Psychology (in Russian). URL: https://ourmind.ru/sistemno-vektornayapsixologiya Accessed on 07.04.17.

[19] V.A. Lektorsky, Consciousness, New Philosophical Encyclopedia, Under the Redaction of V.S. Stepin, Second Edition, Mysl Edition House, Moscow (2010) [20] Maurice Merlleau-Ponty. URL: https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_MerleauPonty Accessed on 08.04.17 [21] Gilbert Ryle URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Gilbert_Ryle Accessed on 08.04.17.

[22] James Jerome Gibson URL: https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_J._Gibson Accessed on 08.04.17 [23] Ulric Neisser URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Ulric_Neisser Accessed on 08.04.17 [24] Perception, Great Dictionary of Psychology, Under the Redaction of B.G. Meshyarikov, V.P. Zinchenko, Olma Press, Moscow 2004 [25] The Word of God is God’s will for man, written by Him Himself through people who lived in different generations and sincerely loved God. God’s Word and God are one thing. The Lord expresses Himself through His Word.

The Bible says in John 1;1-14: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came [17]

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to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. The Word of God has a Sacred Life. For the word of God is alive and active, sharpened than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account (Hebrew 4.12-13) URL http://vihod. com/content/urok-4-bibliya-slovo-bozhe (in Russian) Accessed on 04.03.17 [26] Changes of Perception (in Russian). URL: http://www.medinterm.ru/terms-1254-1.html Accessed on 04.03.17.

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DIALOGO JOURNAL 3 : 2 (2017) 187 - 197

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This paper was presented in the

Bridging Science and Religion together: SELF - SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS. (DIALOGO-CONF 2017 SSC)

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held online, on the Journal’s website, from May 19 - 26, 2017

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Self and Soul, from Logic to Experience Bruno Marchal

IRIDIA, Université Libre de Bruxelles Belgium

ARTICLE INFO

ABSTRACT

Article history: Received 24 April 2017 Received in revised form 2 May Accepted 5 May 2017 Available online 30 May 2017 doi: 10.18638/dialogo.2017.3.2.18

We explain in brief terms the discovery of the third-person self in computer science.

We explain how the incompleteness phenomenon makes consistent, natural, and nontrivial the definition of knowledge given by Theaetetus (Plato), and we make use of it to define a first-person knower, which, as I have suggested in previous papers (Marchal 2007, 2015a) is a good candidate for the soul.

This invites us to attach a notion of a soul to the machine canonically. We justify that the soul of the classical universal machine knows already that she is *not* a machine, and can assess some antic argument in favor of the immortality of the soul. We end by looking if a personal experience can corroborate this, and in which sense could a human or a machine experience its immortality, and what could that mean.

Keywords: self; self-reference; Theaetetus; knowledge; true opinion; soul; mystic; theology; immortality; salvia divinorum;

© 2014 RCDST. All rights reserved.

I. The third-person self (personal body

or description), or 3-self

Descartes argued that our bodies work mechanically, but he was stuck by its inability to provide a mechanical account of selfreproduction. Similarly, the embryologist Driesche has used the apparent impossibility of mechanical embryogenesis and selfregeneration to argue against the possibility of Mechanism.

Yet, that problem will be solved by different people during the 20th century.

Somehow, molecular biology will illustrate

already how nature has solved the problem, and the logicians will find the conceptual solution that biology illustrates (Marchal 1992).

The basic idea is simple and does not require much technics. It consists of formally applying a duplicator to itself. Imagine D is a duplicator. Imagine D is such that when aggregated to some entity x, it duplicates it by aggregating that entity x to itself. So Dx gives xx.

In particular, D can be applied to itself, and we see that DD gives DD. DD self-

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duplicates in some sense.

That solution is not entirely satisfying because DD will not stop on itself, and the procedure will never halt. That can be useful in some context, but to get a genuine selfduplication, we need to distinguish the objects, like D, and their description, written like ‘D’. We also need that the output is a body or third person description.

So we can build a new type of duplicator D, such that Dx gives ‘x’x’’, in general. In that case, D’D’ will give ‘D’D’’, and stops. To be sure an expression like ‘x’x’’ is still slightly ambiguous, but I do not want to give all the details here (see Marchal 1992, Marchal 2015a).

Such construction can be generalized to build a program capable of printing itself or computing anything computable on itself.

It also solves conceptually and technically the apparent paradox of Embryogenesis, and it refutes Driesche argument against Mechanism. Note that the “self” described here can be used as a control structure in computer science application, and is, for example, a built-in procedure in the language Smalltalk.

Now, we do not need to use this technic to define properly the third person self of a machine or a formal theory, considered as a system of mechanically enumerable (rational) beliefs. If the language used is rich enough, we can do it explicitly by hands--so to speak. For example, we can define or program a universal Lisp interpreter in the language Lisp, and similarly, Gödel defined his “Principia Mathematica” formal apparatus in the language of his Principia mathematica. He used his famous technic of Gödel numbering to that effect. Today, Gödel’s incompleteness theorem is proved about simpler theory like Peano Arithmetic PA. For example we can represent specific logical and non logical symbols (like &, v, ->, and s, 0, +, *) by numbers (like s(0), s(s(0)), etc.) and represent sequence of symbols by

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using the Chinese lemma of Number Theory, or with exponentiation. This leads to a definition *in* the arithmetical language of the provability predicate of PA. We might say that there are three incompleteness theorems: II-1) PA (and its consistent extensions) is (are) undecidable (there is a true arithmetical proposition not provable by PA, which is assumed consistent).

II-2) If PA is consistent, then PA cannot prove its consistency.

What many people seem to ignore, notably when using Gödel’s incompleteness *against* Mechanism, like Lucas and Penrose, is that Gödel discovered (without proving it) that PA already knew (in the theaetetus sense) Gödel’s theorem.

II-3) (which is the major thing) PA proves 2 above. That is: PA proves (~beweisbar(‚f‘) -> ~beweisbar(‚~beweisbar(‚f‘)‘).

That will be proven in all details by Hilbert and Bernays, and embellished by Löb contribution, on which I will come back below. I call II-3 sometimes the GödelHilbert-Bernays-Löb theorem (Löb, 1955).

Obviously the arithmetical predicate *beweisbar* behaves like a modality, and II-3 can be translated in modal logic: ~[]f -> ~[](~[]f) or, using the modal Aristotelian duality between [] and <>, where the diamond <> can be defined by ~[]~. And of course t is for ~f. <>t -> ~[]<>t. <>t can be read as “PA is consistent”.

Solovay theorem makes precise the relation between the logic of self (third person self) reference and modal logic.

The reader can consult a textbook or my papers for all details (Boolos 1993, Marchal 1994, 2015a). Basically, if p represents an arbitrary arithmetical proposition, the provability/consistency logic of PA and of its

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sound mechanical (recursively enumerable) extensions is given by the logic G, as far as what the machine itself is able to prove, and is provided by G* for the whole (modal propositional) truth. This gives a logic of the true but unprovable propositions: G* \G, and amazingly that logic is decidable at the propositional level. To be sure, like Boolos explains in all details in his 1993 book: the first-order extension of G and G*, qG and qG*, are as undecidable as they can logically be (qG is PI_2 complete, and G* is PI_1 complete *in* the oracle of the arithmetical truth).

Now, we will limit us, by decision, to an arithmetically correct simple machine having representational (third person describable) consistent beliefs about themselves, and we assume that they believe in enough induction axioms. In that case, hey obey, like PA, ZF, ... to the modal logic of selfreference G and G*. The theorem of Solovay makes that logic entirely axiomatized by a normal modal logical system (redefined below) with the main axiom []([]p -> p) -> []p The reader who knows enough logic to see that p -> f has the same truth table than ~p, will be able to see that Gödel-HilbertBernays-Löb theorem is the Löb formula in the case p is the constant boolean “false” (f).

I recall that a modal normal system is a modal (propositional) logic which obeys classical logic and [](p -> q) -> ([]p -> []q), and is close to the inference rule of necessitation: you can deduce []p from a proof of p.

II. The first person self, or 1-self

Now, this Gödel-Löbian notion of self is only a third person, the representational notion of self, and has a priori few relation with the first person notion of self, which is the (conscious) knower of the private subjective experience. This one is far more

troubling and has been a constant puzzle in theology and philosophy of mind. It is also the base of some enlightenment technic, like with the koan “Who Am I?” of Ramana Maharshi (Mahadevan 1977). I will come back to this later.

If we accept the idea that the soul is the first person knower (the one who know its private truth), we can model (at least) the *soul* by the knower.

To define knowledge, or knowledgeability, might appear as much difficult as the soul, at first sight, but great ideas have been proposed, and the most known, which is even called standard by some author (Gerson 2009), consists in the proposal made by Theaetetus when answering Socrates’ question on how to define “knowledge”.

Theatetetus gave many definitions/ theories, all refuted by Socrates. Yet, the standard one, which consists in defining “I know p” by “I believe p and p is true” works very well, in the sense that it assures the truth of the main axiom generally accepted for the notion of knowledge or knowledgeability. Those axioms are the modal formula schemes of a theory known as T: []A -> A (knowing A implies A true--by definition), for each propositions A expressible in the language of the entities we are concerned with. [](A ->B) -> ([]A -> []B) (rational knowledge in Plato Heaven, no time limitations, the K formula), Those axioms are taken together with the necessitation inference rules A / []A, and the usual modus ponens rule A, A -> B / B. We can add the scheme of axioms of a system known as S4: []A -> [][]A (the famous “4” formula. S4 = KT4) to get a form of richer introspective

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notion of (human-like) knowledge: knowing A implies the knowing of knowing A. A. Incompleteness saves the soul of the

rational machine

Can we use Theaetetus’ definition of knowledge in the Mechanist frame?

At first sight this seems impossible.

Gödel already noticed this in his 1933 paper on Intuitionist logic. Indeed he noticed the fact that the logic of the third person self (my terming) lacks the reflexion rules []p -> p. Provability by a machine behaves like a believability notion; where []p does not necessarily makes p true. The Löb formula is highly astonishing and counterintuitive []([]p -> p) -> []p It means that if a machine proves []k -> k, for some proposition k, then the machine will soon or later prove k. So if you succeed in convincing a machine to believe that if she ever believes that “If she believe in Santa Klaus existence then Santa Klaus will exist”, then the machine will believe in Santa Klaus!

It looks like such machine are subjected to a sort of placebo phenomenon.

B. Where does Löb’s formula come from?

Gödel’s incompleteness theorem comes from a formalization of Epimenides paradox. Löb’s formula originates in a similar formalization of the a paradoxical proof of the existence of Santa Klaus, which is a sort of Epimenides without negation.

Consider the following self-referential sentence S S = “if S is true then Santa Klaus exists” Let me prove that S is true. Indeed, let us assume S. So we have, by the assumption that if S is true, Santa Klaus exists”. But by assuming S, we can now derive that Santa Klaus exists, by modus ponens. So we have derived the existence of Santa Klaus from the assumption of S. But then we can say, by Session 4. All in Dialogue

the deduction rule, that S is true, whatever assumption we make.

Now, applying the modus ponens again on S is true, proved above, and from: S implies that Santa Klaus exists, we can derive, without assumption, that Santa Klaus exists!

Obviously, a mistake has been done somewhere. We might think that the mistake comes from self-reference, but this is excluded in the world of machine, where Gödel and Kleene and others have shown that such a self-reference makes sense, and is unavoidable. Indeed that is how we have defined the 3-self above. I will refer to this as Gödel’s diagonal lemma, or simply “diagonalization”.

In fact the error, at least in the frame of Mechanism, is in the invocation of “truth.”

The argument cannot be translated in arithmetic because it would need a definition of “arithmetical truth” in arithmetic, which is impossible as Tarski has shown. Tarski use the fact that we can build self-referential sentence asserting anything definable on themselves, and this, if truth (and false) was definable, would entail the existence of a sentence asserting its own falsity, leading to the Epimenides contradiction: such sentence would be true *and* false.

Similarly, knowledge is not definable (Kaplan, Montague 1960), by a very similar argument: there would be a sentence asserting its own non-knowledgeability for any machine, and such machine would know something unknowable.

But replacing “truth” by “provability”, which *is* definable in arithmetic, leads to the Löb formula.

Take a sentence asserting “If I am provable then Santa Klaus exists”, or more generally a sentence q saying q <-> ([]q -> p).

By the diagonal lemma, there is, for any p (like ‘Santa Klaus exists’) such a proposition q that the machine can prove.

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So M proves q <-> ([]q -> p) (1) and so M proves [](q <-> ([]q -> p)) by necessitation, so by the K axiom and modus ponens, M proves []q -> []([]q -> p), which entails similarly M proves []q -> ([][]q -> []p) But M proves []q -> [][]q , by “4”, so M proves []q -> []p Let us now assume that M proves []p -> p, for that specific p (*) Then M proves []q -> p, but we have that M proves q <-> ([]q -> p) (by (1)), so M proves q, but then, by necessitation, M proves []q, and as by assumption (*), and the fact that M proves []q -> p, we have that M proves p. QED. That reasoning can be translated in the language of the machine, if she has enough induction ability so as to prove []p -> [][]p (for any arithmetical p), we get that M proves []([]p ->p) -> []p the Löb formula.

Raymond Smullyan wrote a nice recreative book on the modal logic G and Löb’s theorem: “Forever Undecided” which I invite the reader to buy if he wants to skip the diagonal lemma and technical details.

We cannot have simultaneously consistency (the non-provability of f), the reflexion axiom ([]A -> A), the necessitation rule (p/[]p), and the Löb formula, as shown in the following derivation, with f being the constant false.

1) []f -> f reflexion instance (with A = f) 2) []([]f -> f) use of necessitation 3) []([]f -> f) -> []f Löb’s formula (with A = f) 4) []f Modus Ponens on 2 and 3 5) f Modus Ponens on 1 and 4 Now, and that is the key point, given

that G cannot prove the reflexion formula, it makes sense to follow Theaetetus and propose to define the knowledge of the correct machine by []p & p. It is an easy exercise to prove that this will obey to the modal logic of knowability, and a rather more challenging exercise to show that the logic S4Grz (S4 + Grz) is sound and complete for that “provability and truth” interpretation of the modal box. That is made precise in the literature and some of my papers (and theses).

Grz is for Grzegorczyk, more precisely for his formula []([](p -> []p) -> p) -> p.

That formula (or an equivalent slightly more complex) appears in a paper by Grzegorczyk on using topological space to provide semantics for intuitionist logic and finding the corresponding modal representation (Grzegorczyk 1967). It adds an anti-symmetrical accessibility relations on the finite Kripke semantics. A kripke semantics is available for the normal modal logics. G, S4Grz are normal system, but G* is not.

Note the tryptic: - S4Grz has both the reflexion formula and the necessitation rule, but lacks the Löb formula, - G* has both the reflexion and the Löb formulae, but lacks the necessitation rule, - G has both the Löb formula and the necessitation rule, but lacks the reflexion formula.

Here are some reasons to assess that S4Grz is a very apt candidate for the soul’s theory proposed y the machine: - It formalizes an intuitionist logic, already good candidate for the solipsist knower, like the first person self. This has been shown by Goldblatt and Boolos. See Marchal 1994 for all details and references.

- It can be shown non definable

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by any third person representation: no Gödel number, no name, no description, no machine, nor brain can define it, and the machine first person self-knows that (Kaplan, Montague, 1960, Marchal 1994). I think that this corresponds closely to what Ramana Maharshi tried to convey through its koan “Who am I?”.

- It gives something about the soul well argued by Brouwer and Bergson: it has a temporal nature. Indeed, by the Grzegorczyk formula, and its relation with antisymmetry, the logic S4, which is a logic of knowledge or knowability becomes a temporal logic S4Grz. This associates consciousness with duration.

- An apparent weakness of Theaetetus definition of knowable is that we might know something for bad reason, in the case of inconsistency. You might take a plane, fall asleep, and believe that you are flying through a dream where you are flying.

Alternatively, you might prove a correct theorem in mathematics through an invalid argument. Then, it looks like you know something through a falsity used by the box/ believability notion. This is only an apparent weakness, as it justifies the dream argument, and explains why we do know some falsities subjectively, like in dreams. This relates the incompleteness with the possibility of dreams. In Marchal 1994, this is used to show that Malcolm argument against Mechanism is equivalent with his argument that dreams do not exist (Malcolm 1959). It is also well in line with Roger Caillois “L’incertitude qui vient du rêve” (Caillois, 1956).

- Similarly, this theory of soul and subjectivity, extracted from the mathematical theory of self-reference, can be used to formalize the misuse of incompleteness to claim that we are not a machine. Indeed, Lucas and Penrose assumes that their own scientist’s believability notion obeys the reflexion formula, at the outset, and then use the fact

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that they know that the machine is correct, and conclude by showing that the machine cannot are aware of their own correctness.

However, this would be only valid if they were able to prove their own correctness.

Without doing this, the machine, as Emil Post knew already in 1921 (!), will be able to do the same reasoning as Penrose or Lucas (Penrose 1989, 1990, 1994, Lucas 1960). See all details in Marchal 1994.

C. Summary

The following diagram sums up the 3 arithmetical primary hypostases: p/truth/One/God/no-logic []p (proofs/believes/logic: G) []p (proofs/believes/logic: G*) []p & p (knowledge/universal-Soul/( a meta-logic only: S4Grz) I have shown that we recover also the definition/theory of Matter given by Aristotle and corrected by Plotinus who recast it in a Parmenidian-Platonist context.

It takes the form of two more hypostases, which split in two by inheriting the splitting between G and G*: []p & <>t (intelligible matter/Z) []p & <>t (intelligible matter/Z*) []p & <>t & p (sensible matter/X) [] p & <>t & p (sensible matter/X*) This is needed to test empirically this classical version of Mechanism. If we are willing to accept Quantum Mechanics (without the meaningless collapse of the wave), we can say that up to now, nature confirms Mechanism. This plays some role below when we look at the immortality/ after-life problem.

III. Can a soul die?

There is an inflation of immortality types with the Mechanist hypothesis. Some are close to some Platonists theory, some

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are different. But we might need to ask a question first. How is consciousness related to the soul? Both are undoubtable and unjustifiable, but that does not say much.

The question of that relation raises a very complex problem: is consciousness produced by the brain, or is it filtered by the brain. Consciousness can be defined by the belief in at least one ‘reality” satisfying at least one proposition, and so is close to consistency, by Gödel’s completeness theorem: PA (and RE consistent extensions) are consistent if and only if they have a model (reality/semantic).

There is a Galois sort of connetion between theories and models, like between varieties and equations. The less axioms you have in a theory or is believed by a machine, the more models can satisfy those beliefs. That defines first person fluxes in arithmetic, differentiating consciousness on different path, some with growing partial control and decreasing sense, some with decreasing control and gaining sense, with large zone of equilibrium in between chaos and trivialness.

Immortality by absence of time: all lives/ dreams are already implemented in infinities of exemplars in the true arithmetical relations which are out of time and space (out of the physical realm). A glimpse of that immortality is often quasi-experienced when we understand a non-go, or impossibility result in mathematics.

How can finite beings grasp the infinite, which is needed to understand some finite statement on finite entities like number.

How can we understand a concept like the notion of Natural Number? How can we make sense of the “...” in the mundane definition of the set of natural number: N = {0, s(0), s(s(0)), ...}? That is the root of Pythagorism and Platonism. The mathematical reality is a “rational” immaterial reality, which obeys laws all by itself, and kicks back against

any attempts to oversimplify it. Logicism and conventionalism is practically dead, even if many uneducated materialists can still often dismiss arithmetical realism for trolling purpose or for mundane personal defense of prejudices. Is it not the case that the experience of being convinced in a finite time, by finite means, on something non trivial and infinite, out of time and space, deeply immaterial, not related to an ability of the soul to grasp a part of the “eternal realm” like Gödel seem to have thought, or even to live already partly there, like salvia and many mystics suggests? Are we the unique universal person (described by the 8 hypostases) only deluded into the idea that we are many and different, so that we can’t go there because we are there, like when playing a multi-user video game, like the quantum logic of the material hypostases suggest?

Plato would add that, for a soul to grasp that non physical reality, it needs to have a counterpart in the Noùs (the realm of eternal ideas). Of course, this follows already from computationalism: what programs can do is independent of the implementations. All the relative computations are fixed already in the roots of just one degree four polynomial diophantine equation, by a famous theorem of Matiyazevic, which is a bit of the scope of the present paper.

Could this be used to related the Mechanist theory of mind and soul with the mystical insight we can get, perhaps with the salvia experience? More on this below.

Immortality by amnesia: this form is closely related to the preceding one. By losing our brain, little by little, we do not experience dying, but we do experience amnesia. Eventually, we might survive by identifying ourself with the universal soul, which is out of time and space, and which initiates the first person view differentiating on all computations. The question if that could be experienced, in

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some rememberable sense, is the object of the next section. Our immortal continuation can be in the form of a backtracking in our current life, or a new incarnation of the universal soul, in the arithmetical sense.

Immortality without amnesia: this is probably the most frightening form of immortality. It takes into account the fact that our soul, or our consciousness is not attached to one body or one body representation in arithmetic, but to an infinity of them. For any possible death, there are computational continuations on which we survive (indeed that is used in the theory of matter, by adding the diamond expressing consistency <>t to provability of knowability). In the Kripke semantics of G, this is a way to prevent cul-de-sac Kripke worlds where <>t is always false and where all provability formula (shape []#) comes true. In a cul-de-sac world, everything is necessary, and nothing is possible, if we allow to use the alethic vocabulary in this context. In G we have the contrary: we “die” or “can die” at each instant (<>t -> <>[]f, with []f always true in the cul-de-sac worlds).

We have the same conclusion in Everett quantum mechanics (quantum mechanics without collapse). When we die, We survive (in that case) in the computations the less inconsistent with our current beliefs, that is, in the world the most normal with respect to the present (dying) situation. This can lead to backtrack and amnesia, but also to slightly aberrant continuations which might then take the form of an unending agony.

Let us hope that there are some jumps, like we can expect through computer science and machine’s theology.

Immortality by relative technology. That is divinely vain, dangerous, but unavoidable in the long run, the key could be some quantum cryptography to level down the danger. It is a way to stay in the Samsara and procrastinate the Nirvana, and it is also a way travel to the future (cryogenisation).

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It is better, in my opinion, to use this only in thought experiments, but we will get at it, not for being immortal, but to live enough time to see the next football cup, and then the next one, or to see the grandgrandchildren growing, etc.

Conclusion: as far as we can believe in computationalism we might not count too much on the possibility of first person mortality.

IV. Can a soul experience immortality,

can a soul go “there” and come back?

There are numerous reports of mystical experiences which points on a realm, like Heaven, Hell or another imposing realm, that is on some possible afterlife, prelife, parallel life or lives, in some possible realm or ways.

For example, there are many so-called NearDeath Experience in which some people after a cardiac arrest during some duration will describe a feeling of going out of their body (OBE), and will engage themselves into a tunnel leading to a light that they feel like being divine or blissful. In some case, when they undergo the OBE, some claim to have been able to see or hear the surgeon doing some task that they should not have been aware of, but I have not yet find clearcut evidences of this and so I will not dig on that issue. What can be reasonably inferred is that such experiences are common, and let a deep imprint on those claiming to have live one. In some case, the experience can be negative, like a bad trip, which can also be described with religious term, like going to Hell.

In my opinion, the third theorem of incompleteness is already a sort or arithmetical satori, as the machine get the keys that there if there is some reality it cannot prove it: <>t -> ~[]<>t. Now, I would not claim this could explain what happens when we undergo such experience, but I do think those are related.

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“There” is out of time and space, and we can get a glimpse by believing in some eternal truth, like, perhaps (assuredly when betting on computationalism) the laws of addition and multiplication. I mentioned that above. However, consciousness seems to remain quite attached to time, and that seems not to be able to be experienced without it. That is reflected in the Grzegorczyk formula, which appears to assess the Bergson-Brouwer’s idea that consciousness requires some subjective time to be lived. Yet, mystical experience refers sometimes to an ability of “knowing one’s immortality”. How could that be possible? Could it be a hallucination? Could we hallucinate an ultimate awakening, an out of universe and time experience?

In this respect the Salvia divinorum plant is quite intriguingly interesting. It almost act like a diagonal, making the dismissing of its meaning by claiming it is an hallucination, convincingly refuted by the experience itself, and of course during that experience.

Drug experiences, like Mystical experiences, are usually easily discarded by materialist through the statement that “it is just a hallucination”.

Yet, a bit like with Epimenides paradox, salvia agrees and “develop” that very idea at the extreme. It illustrates it by a quite strange “diagonal” hallucination: you (hallucinate that you) wake up, at last, and understand that basically everything is all but an hallucination. You seem to dissociate yourself from all what you thought and eventually, that seems to include time and space, ... yet you are still conscious, without *remaining* conscious, not because you would loose consciousness, but because you did loose any notion related to ‘remaining’ or time. Some interpret that state as being dead. And some describes that experience as the most blissful “event” ever experienced in their life but other feels it as the most terrifying experience ever.

It is a dream argument with a revenge: you hallucinate never have been as much awake and clean. That might be related with the fact that salvia is dysphoric: it diminishes the dopamine concentration in the brain, and has indeed some application in curing addictions, and compulsive behaviors.

Somehow, when the experience is blissful, it seems like a remembering of what we know since eternity and that can be accompanied with a feeling of coming at last back home.

All this indicates that we might be able to go there. But does salvia answers the question about being able to come back here after, in one lifetime?

Salvia *seems* to answer that question, and the answer seems to be *no*. We can’t go there and come back. Apparently we die for good, above some dosage. But from there, some spirit, some arithmetical truth out of time and space, yet conscious, reincarnate your body, and resume your life. The one who come back is for while like some “higher self” just pleased by being deluded again. “You” might have done some sort of ‘incognito suicide’. Nobody will know.

Of course this is a theory. It is an attempt to interpret a very strange experience. It concerns an episode reported by many people. For example Turner relates in his little book on salvinorin (the psychoactive molecule of the Salvia divinorum plant): “It felt that when I smoked the salvinorin I had remembered who I was.

I remembered I was consciousness. Not a body, and as consciousness I had access to unlimited realms. Another perception of what took place is that the “I” that smoked the salvinorin dissolved into infinity, and a different but similar entity jumped out of infinity into the body that was lying on the bed. This seemed to be an explanation for my body’s fear. My body knew it was going to be losing the “spirit” which had been inhabiting it, and was going to have a new

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spirit come inside” Note that it seems “we” can come from there here. What we cannot do is both going there and coming back. The one who comes back *seems* to be another “person” or “spirit”, making the experience very disturbing. Some beliefs, when they go back to the Salvia experience, that they have smoked something “there”, and that the salvia hallucination *is* the coming back and the life after. They believe, for awhile, that their entire life is the salvia hallucination.

Note also that “there”, we remember that we are always “there”, and that we never leave that place, a bit like if “going on the terrestrial plane” was like playing a video game, except that the game entails some amnesia of our “true nature”. Why do we have to forget the experience? Moreover, how could such a plant be possible? Does the salvinorin A or divinorin (another name of the same molecule) molecule imitate an endo-molecule used by the brain when we are dying, or when we are above some stress or pain threshold? I don’t know.

Plotinus asks similar question with respect to the spiritual experience.

I have done myself the salvia experience a great number of times (4976 exactly, all described in 20 diaries, and, to be clear, long after I got the results about computationalism), but I still have no clue how to answer this. Then my opinion here is of no public value, as I am biased by the study and research which preceded it. Salvia seems only to add complex information, and might makes the mind-body problem even more difficult, but that is also what is interesting in that experience.

I do remain a bit skeptical about that time/consciousness possible dissociation suggested by Salvia though, despite it might look like we can hallucinate the experience of that dissociation: going not just out of the body, but out of time and space, out of the entire realm of the physical reality/realities.

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The rest is only partially mathematical, but then again, only by assuming Mechanism.

An explanation would be that when we consume salvia, we dissociate our universal soul from its local, relatively material (in the sense of the Mechanist theory) incarnation or implementation (with respect to the statistical normal histories) up to the point of recognizing our true arithmetical nature, the universal first-person, which is timeless and spaceless. That raise the question of the existence of a “land of the death”.

About this I suggest the reading of the little book by James Arthur, especially for those who prefer to not try such experience by themselves, which can be blissful as much as terrifying, especially for people unconscious of their metaphysical prejudices.

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[2] Benacerraf, P., “God, the Devil, and Gödel”.

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[3] Boolos, George, The logic of provability, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

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[10] Kaplan, D. and Montague, R., “A Paradox Regained”. Journal of Formal Logic, 1960/1 [1]

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:79–90.

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[15] Marchal, B., Conscience et Mécanisme., Brussels University: Technical Report TR/ IRIDIA/94, 1994.

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[24]

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Two Interlocked Triads in Pat Kinevane’s Recent Plays: Self-Soul-Conscousness and Birth-Death-Rebirth Nicoleta Stanca, PhD Ovidius University Constanța, Romania

ARTICLE INFO

ABSTRACT

Article history: Received 23 January 2017 Received in revised form 20 April Accepted 5 May 2017 Available online 30 May 2017 doi: 10.18638/dialogo.2017.3.2.19

Everyting conceivable, all that has ever been imagined, can be included in our minds and souls. As psyche means “breath”, “soul” and “mind”, it points to the relevance of psychology as a study of mental, emotional and spiritual processes involved in our identity make-up. One of the main organizers of our self and psychological experiences is our relationhip with death: our fear of abandonement and of being alone when conceiving our own death, the fear of the loss of the others, leading to the fear of attachment and emotional death. Pat Kinevane, a contemporary Irish playright, deals, in his 2005 play, Forgotten, with the idea of family and social abandonment of old people in nursing homes. The interconnected stories of Dora, Eucharia, Flor and Gustus, the characters in the play, aged 80-100 years old, living in separate retirement and care facilities around Ireland, reveal these fears. Mental illness in the current explosion of anxiety is also crucial to our identity. Another play by Kinevane, Silent (2010), ends with the word silent, which indicates the insanity, invisibility and ultimately the death of the protagonist, Tino McGoldring, a homeless man tormented by the suicide of his brother. His self after the loss of his brother, wife, family, job, mind is constructed in relation to the past and the imaginary world of the Italian-American icon of the film industry of the 1920s, Rudolph Valentino. © 2014 RCDST. All rights reserved.

Keywords: death; birth; fear; soul; self; silence; old age; insanity; homelessness; Pat Kinevane; Forgotten; Silent; Electroencephalography; lesions;

I. INTRODUCTION: Pat Kinevane and

the popular theatre

Pat Kinevane is born in Cobh, Co. Cork, Ireland. He has worked as an actor in theatre, film, TV and radio. His first play as a writer, The Nun’s Wood (1997) was granted a BBC Stewart Parker Trust Award and was produced by Fishamble theatrical

company. He claims that there are no theatre connections in his family but he felt it like the place to allow self-expression, not the property of the elite or of the academia for deconstruction: “It should be available to all, speak to all, mirror all” (Kinevane, Preface to Forgotten, Silent).

Pat Kinevane started working on

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Forgotten since 2005 and in 2006 there was a showcase performance at the Irish Theatre Institute; the source of inspiration was two personal events coinciding in 2000: the birth of his son and the slow death in a retirement home of an aunt of his. He wrote the play and toured this solo piece across Ireland, Europe (including Romania) and both coasts of the US. Pat Kinevane has been working with the Fishamble: The New Play Company since 1998. The company has been extremely active over the past 25 years, producing over 130 new plays, touring them throughout the world, offering an extensive program of Training, Development and Mentoring schemes and supporting around 60% of the writes of the new plays in Ireland (fishamble. com).

In 2008, after a visit to New York City, Kinevane confessed that he was alarmed by the dispossession of men and women who had turned the street into their home. When he returned to Dublin, the actor became more aware of the growing amount of homeless people and he was determined to explore, in a new play, Silent, what he considered the shameful legacy of capitalism – “this epidemic that has left so many gorgeous hearts behind, left them empty and without shelter and alone” (Kinevane, Preface to Forgotten, Silent).

II. First triad: self-soul-consciousness

The main problems faced by the Western cultures, as indentified by theoreticians and illustrated by Pat Kinevane’s two recent plays to be discussed in this article, are related to various sources of psychological distress, such as: our relations with the others (e.g. isolation, failure, aggression), our sense of meaninglessness (leading to alienation, depression, suicide), our addictions (to drugs, sex, etc.) and our mental health (e.g. real epidemics of anxiety, depression and

alcoholism) (Barker 141).

In the present bombardment of anxiety, mental illness appears as a complex system, influenced by social and cultural factors affecting our selves: high expectations of success, increased work stress and performance demands, breakdown of community support networks, disintegration of family and the loss of a meaningful belief system (Barker 147).

Confronted with feelings of fury, low selfesteem, powerlessness, as a result of the traumatic moment of his brother’s death, which the main protagonist of Kinevane’s play Silent has not managed to come to terms with, Tino lives his present caught in the emotional intricate net of the past.

Like Tino, the four old people in retirement homes in Ireland, appearing in the play Forgotten, are witnessed during a process of recovery of their souls and selves, so that a complete feeling of abandonment does not overwhelm them.

But what does the struggle of these characters consist of? How do they want to re-create the sense of a unified self? If we take into account studies by Lacan, Foucault and Freud, and their views on self-soul-consciousness, our conclusion is that language and culture, identification with others, social discourses and practices enable us to conceive a unitary self narrative of an otherwise shifting, multiple, fragmented, contradictory and decentred identity (Hall in Barker 224).

According to Lacan, the subject’s entry into language is a condition for the perception of the other; language does not express a pre-existent self but brings this self into being. It is through language that we assume identities and words are both a means of expression and repression (in Pope 92-93). This continues ideas of the Freudian self on the conscious and the unconscious; there are three ways in which meanings tend to be hidden in our unconscious: through

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condensation, displacement and symbolism (Pope 94).1 In Silent, Tino’s thoughts revolve around his brother’s suicide and he tries to see the causes and the period before the tragic event; in Forgotten, the four characters share different stories but fight the same feeling of fear of loneliness and death. Repression organizes our existence and until we solve our conflicted feelings about the painful events in our lives, we hang on to them in “disguised, distorted and self defeating ways” (Toyson 15). Selective memory and perception, denial, avoidance, displacement and projection are revealed as essential to the present existence of the characters in Kinevane’s plays; when such defences break down, such as in Tino’s case, for instance, fear and insecurities take the upper floor.

Moreover, Foucault denies the myth of the interior and claims that subjectivity is connected to discursive production; discourse enables individuals to come into existence by assuming a subject position.

Power is productive of the self; disciplinary technologies produce “docile bodies” that could be “subjected, used, transformed and improved” (Foucault in Barker 230).

For example, the disciplinary power of the asylum repressed Tino’s subjectivity, whereas that of the retirement homes breaks the selfhood of the four elderly characters, Dora, Eucharia, Gustus and Flor.

Thus, an articulation of the self-soulconsciousness triad becomes possible in the context of the individual’s awareness of the organizers of their psychological make-up and the working of the defence and power mechanisms. Once one grasps the duality of our psychological structure, agency and 1 Condensation: two or more meanings come to bear on the same word, image, figure.

Displacement: one item stands in for another with which it has some perceived connection.

Symbolism: some word, image, object is conventionally identified with a certain meaning, function (Pope 94).

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determination (Barker 235), the fact that we build our project but our projects are also culturally and socially constructed, we stand a chance of re-articulation.

III. Second triad: birth-death-rebirth Flor Gustus

...

Twas To look at me now ...

Ye’d never think I was once ...

Eucharia Seventeen ...

Flor See you in three.

Dora Twenty-one ...

Gustus Eighteen.

Eucharia Sixteen ...

Gustus Golden ...

Dora With my whole life ...

Flor Spread in front of me Eucharia Like ... like Gustus A beauteous meal ...

Dora But now ...

Flor Now! Eucharia Most of the time ...

Gustus These days ...

Dora I feel. I’m feeling ...

Gustus Forgotten ... An I’m not even ...

All Gone.

A baby cries. The door slams shut.

Darkness. (Kinevane, Forgotten 53-54)

This is how Pat Kinevane’s play Forgotten circularly starts and ends. Birth, death and rebirth are inextricably linked; once the first cry of the baby is heard, the process of aging leading to physical death, followed by heavenly life, starts. Birth in general terms is conceived physically and spiritually; it is related to the workings of the whole

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universe, to the “stars, from which feeling of relationship we grow away more and more as we grow older” (de Vries 49).

Sometimes a tree is planted when a child is born and the life of the child will remain related to it as an external soul motif. In the Christian tradition, the baptism of the baby symbolizes the spiritual birth of the newly born child; it cleans the original sin, representing a rebirth of the human being.

Conversely, death is sometimes seen as the one it touches. The death of the soul equals eternal damnation. Death symbolizes the end of an age, sacrifice, an escape from tension in self-destruction, a means to gain immortality. In the Christian tradition and in folklore, there are many rituals and gestures associated with the death of someone: the last Holy Communion, the candle in the hand, the wake (to chase the evil spirits), the meal of the mourners after the burial, the clocks stopped and the mirrors veiled in the house where the dead body lies, the striking of the church bells, the cross, the icon, the candles, the prayers of the mourners, the funeral and burial service. Interestingly, the cult of the dead speaks volumes of our desire to maintain the connection with the spirit of the one who departed, our fear of abandoning them and the need to thinks they have not abandoned us.

Many of our psychological experiences are connected to death, which defines facets of our self. Death is seen as the ultimate form of abandonment; irrespective of having a family, close to us, being important in the community, neighbourhood, when the moment comes, we face it alone. The fear of abandonment guides us in our relationships to the others as well. We are afraid that we might lose the other, either through their leaving us or through death.

Hence, the reluctance to give our whole self to the loved one, for fear that we might not be able to bear the pain of loss.

If life ultimately ends in death, then to

suffer less, one must feel as little as possible, somehow remove oneself from life. “I will try to be emotionally dead to avoid being hurt by death. Taken to its logical extreme, this relationship to death will result in suicide. My intense fear of losing my life makes living so painful and frightening that my only escape is death” (Toyson 25). But what we realize is that this psychological death, the desire to isolate oneself in order to protect ourselves from pain, is worse.

The biggest comfort is provided by religious belief, according to which we are never alone, God is with us, here on earth and in the afterlife: “God the Father will be there for us and with us; our Heavenly Father will not abandon his children even when everyone else we know has done so” (Toyson 25).

IV. Forgotten and not even Gone?

In 2000, when Pat Kinevane’s son Kez was born, his elderly aunt Teresa was slowing going in a nursing home: She was so well cared for there – warm, fed, spotless. We chatted for about half hour and she eventually became sleepy and drifted off. I looked past her bed and saw – what appeared to me – was an endless row of others – just lying there. I wondered if they had received many visitors, or if some of them had been perhaps, forgotten. It hurt me to think of that – the reality of being no longer thought of, no longer touched, no longer cherished like we are when we first arrive on Earth.

(Kinevane, Preface to Forgotten, Silent)

These thoughts inspired his solo piece Forgotten, which reveals the interconnecting life journeys of fours elderly characters, Dora, Eucharia, Flor and Gustus, aged from 80 to 100 years old, living in separate retirement homes and care facilities in Ireland. The writer, Pat Kinevane, also performs each of the four parts in his play and the unfolding drama of each character, whose destinies

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remain linked in a delicate gossamer. The action symbolically takes place NOW, as this is a direct invitation for the audience to place themselves in the shoes of those old people.

Flor’s obsessions revolve around his generation having built the country, but then in old age the system is ungrateful and the lack of decency, manners, patience and grace shocks him. Though he longs for cleaning, he wants to keep his dignity refusing to be bathed by the nurses: “Please give me a bit of privacy and let no one in” (Kinevane, Forgotten 41). In spite of the physical decay, Flor has managed to preserve a sense of irony, exemplified through the references to the consequences of Alzheimer disease, so frequently affecting elderly people: So if you want to join the support group for the Alzheimers Association you have to learn the slogan and r’payt after me.

What do we want?

We don’t know?

When do we want it?

Who? (Kinevane, Forgotten 42)

Flor evokes birth and what he calls the fuss about it and the baby; neighbours and relatives pay their homage to the child; presents are brought: “Ye little precious little novelty” (Kinevane, Forgotten 50). Left alone in the nursing home, he invokes the help of Virgin Mary, remembering parts of the Catholic litanies. Ultimately, Flor fears loneliness: “A body should never grow old alone. A body should have a mate” (Kinevane, Forgotten 53) and waste: Did ou ever taste the waste? The wasting? Not the coirp, but this, up here turned to sludge. Seeping thru the skull to the upper nose and down the tonsil. [...] It hauls ya down, thru the thistles, the layer of grass, on thru the pebbles, the rocks,

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past the kingdom of millipedes and beetles, to the empire of husks. The Land of over. The wasting is ferocious. (Kinevane, Forgotten 53)

Dora’s mind is full of her unfulfilled loves (“So Much Love” Forgotten 31) and feelings of guilt. When she was nineteen in her parents’ house she fell in love with Flor.

Typical female behaviour is depicted through her memories: smiles, the preparation for a date with Floor, the smell of cologne, spending hours on doing her hair according to a picture in Harper’s Bazaar, musing about the kisses. Dora had lied to her mother about going to the movies with Flor; her mother was bitten by a rat when alone and died probably poisoned. Her maid Eucharia became ill and left her for a while; Dora’s father was so utterly devastated that within a year he also died. The fright of being alone pushes Dora at twenty-one in the arms of a married man, Jonathan Hanville, with whom she plans to elope to Paris, but the man dies in his sleep on the night before their leaving after having made all the preparations.

Gustus suffered a stroke three years before and his adopted daughter, after rehab, could not take care of him. On that day he celebrated his 94 birthday and she sent him a cake, instead of coming to see him and although she lived close by, in his house.

What haunts his mind is the scandalous behaviour of his daughter (drinking, drugs, parties, no school), missing his wife and the references to the Japanese culture he is in love with: “The Japanese. Treat their elder lemons with the utmost respect. See it as their duty” (Kinevane, Forgotten 46).

Eucharia, 89, Dora’s former maid, is constantly placed in front of the mirror, putting on make-up. Her preoccupation is with beauty, fashion and appearance; on Saturdays she takes time off the nursing home and visits the cosmetics shops in Dublin: “I was always like that growing up – only the best for Eucharia’s skin – tis no wonder I look farty and not my eighty-

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nine!” (Kinevane, Forgotten 39). After the cosmetics ritual, comes another liberating or empowering rite, sitting in a cafe with coffee and confectionary watching passersby. Like her mistress, Dora, Eucharia also experiences guilt over giving her child away when she was twenty-seven and poor and alone. She found her in shoe shop, but never confessed who she was; it seems like the biological father was Flor and the adoptive one is Gustus.

Eucharia witnessed the end of some fellows in the retirement home, Nelly Dentures, in the morning and Hannah Roche, due to die any day, both demented, tormented, not coping with old age and the end. Eucharia has a nephew who wants her furniture and this thought leads to the one of family disputes over wills and possessing the deceased one’s fortune: “Some folk think of nothing else. Over eighty and all they want is your belongings, slap ya in a box, snottin over your grave” (Kinevane, Forgotten 49); “Sure her family were all here within the hour, riflin through her wardrobe over there. Near scalpin each other claiming her stuff – a few trinkets” (Kinevane, Forgotten 49).

The most interesting parts of Eucharia’s soliloquy are the ones describing her imagining the moment of leaving in such a way to avoid the absolute dread of death: I do fear dyin ... I do. Biggest fear? That there’d be no one around to say goodbye – more for their sakes – and the kids ... it’s important to know what a corpse looks like. I hope it happens in my sleep though. [...] I’d like to see tunnels and beams of promise. I want Technicolor, the lot, big strappin Gabriels takin me by the hand, a Thora Hird chairlift through the clouds to spare my hips, and at the top, someone like, I dunno, Mae West!

Cool as breeze in a Kimolo, with a Babycham, maybe a few Consulate, a welcome bit of a chat, get a map and a starter pack for paradise. Yes, a stylish cross-over, luxury ... yeah ...beams, beams, beams. (Kinevane, Forgotten 49)

Darkness would scare me alright. That’s why I pray for a bit of illumination, on me way. [...] The Man upstairs? I imagine him ... Middle-eastern like-swarthy, loads of languages, and a degree in mental nursing to deal with all the nutters the earth is returning up to him these days! (Kinevane, Forgotten 51)

I look forward to the bird’s eye view though. Well, I presume I’ll qualify for it ... we’ll see. A gift to be able to look down from Eternity and see all the living continue, all their private moments, read their thoughts and know their secrets. All the secrets we keep from our friends, and only the dead can see ... with wonder. Hope my headstone is padded so I can sit up and read in the middle of the night! (Kinevane, Forgotten 51)

Though the images are imbued with the luxury images in women’s magazines and popular culture representations, the Christian layer, with the promise of light, paradise, angels, eternity, life-after-death and more important, communion, is also reassuringly present.

V. The broken self and the silence of suicide, insanity, homelessness and death

Tino McGoldrig, the protagonist of Silent, is placed in Cobh, Co. Cork, Kinevane’s native place and the sets include a coin box he keeps rattling, bottles and a blanket he is covered with at the beginning and end of the play. By looking at the name and obsessions, anxieties and fears of the character, we understand how Tino’s self is constructed in relation to the loss of his soul and the images tormenting his consciousness.

The origin of Tino’s name lies in his father’s preference for the Italian-American actor Rudolph Valentino (1895-1926), an iconic figure of the twenties in American popular culture. However, Tino rejects the identification with the Latin lover as the only trait in common with him is the dancing skills. Remembering his father’s obsession,

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Tino plays the exotic sheik, the Latin lover and tango dancer, which were the favourite parts of the Irish-American. The silent movie star was very poor before rising to fame; he also slept on a bench in the park. Tino’s journey in the play is reversed, from having it all to losing everything.

Tino’s brother, Pearse, who is handsome and more like Valentino, has been baptized after Pearse (1879-1916), the Irish rebel nationalist teacher and poet executed in the aftermath of Easter Rising 1916: “Imagine a gorgeous version of me one year older, shorter nose and face, slanty eyes, curly jetblack locks and the lips of Marlon Brando” (Kinevane, Silent 4). Pearse is a homosexual and after several attempts, in the context of the mockery of a small community, he commits suicide, as if murdered by giggles and sneers: Then the Bastard pigs spread the gossip like wildfire and that was the start of the torture for Pearse and it spiralled and grew to tornado and very quickly, our Pearse – he really and truly, lost the will to live in the town of Cobh. (Kinevane, Silent 4)

Tino was unable to cope with the suffering; he blamed himself for not supporting his brother enough; he blamed their pompous, infatuated mother and then he gradually lost his wife Judy, his child, his job, his home and his sanity. The hospitalization in a mental institution in Dublin broke his identity, leading to his sense of abandonment and invisibility through the silence of homelessness: “coward, destroyer of lives, shit husband, shit father, shit person, useless homeless loser, hopeless” (Kinevane, Silent 18). Tino’s shiny skin and blanket is less frightening than the glitter in his eyes.

In spite of the mental disorder, which leads to a fractured self, the relation between Tino’s soul and his consciousness is depicted as more truthful than in the case

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of hypocritical sane individuals. Thus, he is not afraid to admit insanity, the need of medication, hospitalization: Please don’t censor your thoughts! What is your honest response? The images and feelings you have when I say the following words ... Are you ready? Here’s the words ... ‘AntiDepressants!’ Responses? Anyone prepared to put their hand up and say that they are now or have in the past been on them?

Why the fear to admit that? You know why? In case people think you are somehow unhinged, unpredictable, nuts ... A bit less dependable as a friend, a worker, a parent or son or daughter, or maybe even ... A lover? And that makes you ‘weak’ and this ‘weakness’ will be forever recorded on yer permanent record as a patient, citizen and a person. Forever recorded.

Recorded. (Kinevane, Silent, 10)

And he is not afraid to mention the word suicide, which is completely prohibited in the tradition of the Catholic Church, the nuns and the monks in the churches he is acquainted with, forbidding the uttering of the word. Tino is also harsh on what he sees as empty talk of the minister to look after oneself; taking the minister’s advice would be untrue to his consciousness: “Am, ah sorry about his now Minister but, ah, how can I? I’m gone way beyond the Cuckoo’s nest so I don’t know how to care for meself?” (Kinevane, Silent 13).

At the end of the play, Tino sees himself dead from a distance; he sees people attending the funeral and his own body buried near his brother: So they took me back to Cork in a hearse. Rita was there, frail – No sign of Judy and the Rattlesnake, or the youngfella. But, Morty and Molly Mackey made up for them all-bawlin over me plot as I was shovelled under – beside Pearse. Near him all the time now – and everything is finally glorious – and – Silent.

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(Winks.)

Music. He dances with the blanket. It covers him on the floor.

Blackout. (Kinevane, Silent, 23)

The same professional funeral attendants, Morty and Molly Mackey, were there when Pearse died, crying buckets on demand, lamenting on the awful life, never going on holiday in case they missed a funeral. The evocation of these characters subverts the meaning of the mourning ritual in the Christian tradition, which includes gestures and behaviour meant to assuage the terror of death for those who remained and ensure the connection with the one who departed.

VI. Conclusion

Silent makes us grateful that we are safe and sane by the Grace of God and aware that we could change places with Tino any moment: It could be me lying against a posh restaurant door. It could be me under a blanket outside a bank. It could be me hassling you for cash beside an ATM. It could be you whose own mind torments itself. It could be us ... at the toss of a coin. (Kinevane, Preface to Forgotten, Silent)

In such a way, we might think twice when we avoid the homeless, fail to extend our sympathy to broken selves and souls, if mended with pills and alcohol, or at least we should try to diminish our contribution to their demise to the pavement. In order to draw our attention to the problem, Kinevane, playing Tino, asks audience in the front row during the show to tell their names and he is checking their attention: “Tino doesn’t just demand their attention, he commands it” (Brantley, “Acting It Out, Like Valentino”).

In his struggle towards re-articulation of the self, Tino fails to find responses, yet

the whole journey through his meandering thoughts, humorously captured in the play, makes us wonder about the limits between “sanity” and “insanity”, “normality” and “abnormality”, “sense” and “nonsense” and become more flexible and reluctant to attach labels.

Kinevane’s questions raised in the other play, Forgotten: does human value diminish with each passing second of our lives?, do we value newness more than age? are directly addressed to the audience. His own answers tackle the dignity and honour of each of the characters in Forgotten in spite of the terror of death. Modern life in Japan, as a traditional society, presupposes, according to Kinevane, three generational households or houses in which the extended family lives, the elderly being nursed there and the younger generations taking advantage of the former’s wisdom. The sense of duty or responsibility of the children guarantees that these old people are not abandoned or forgotten, which seems to be one of our main reasons for distress and dismay.

The four characters go through a similar process of coming to terms with the past, to avoid fear of abandonment; this is “autobiographical memory” (Erll 85) and life stories and retrospective teleology; as a result of the extreme emotional intensity of some of their experiences, these cannot be sufficiently or properly worked through, so various mechanisms are triggered (suppression, dissociation, involuntary and compulsive reproduction of fragments of memory): In configuring a story of a life episode, narratives often omit details and condense parts (“flattening”), elaborate and exaggerate other parts (“sharpening”) and make pasts more compact and consistent (“rationalization”) to produce a coherent and understandable exploration. (Polinghorne qtd. in Erll 90)

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Dora, Eucharia, Gustus and Flor are saved by two clusters of images focused on in the play: one is the Japanese items invoked by Gustus in his determination that there is a model society which successfully copes with old people’s abandonment and the other one is the humorous yet profoundly Christian picture of heaven and of the last journey of our soul in view of our re-birth, imagined by Eucharia.

References [1]Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. London: Sage, 2005.

[2]Brantley, Ben. “Acting It Out, Like Valentino.

Silent by Pat Kinevane, at Irish Arts Center”. Sept 9, 2012 http://www.nytimes. com/2012/09/10/theater/reviews/silentby-pat-kinevane-at-irish-arts-center.html/ accessed January 4, 2017.

[3] De Vries, Ad. Dictionary of Symbols and Imagery.

Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 2nd revised edition 1976.

[4] Erll, Astrid. Memory in Culture. Trans. by Sara B. Young. London and New York: Macmillan, Palgrave, 2011.

[5] Kinevane, Pat. Forgotten. Silent. Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2011.

[6] Pope, Rob. English Studies Book. London and New York: Routledge, 1998.

[7] Toyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: A UserFriendly Guide. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1999.

[7] http://bloomsbury.com/author/pat-kinevane/ accessed January 4, 2017.

[8] http://fishamble.com/about-us/aboutfishamble/ accessed January 5, 2017.

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Biography Nicoleta Stanca has been teaching at Ovidius University Constanta since 2003.

She has published three book-length studies Mapping Ireland (Essays on Space and Place in Contemporary Irish Poetry), (2014), The Harp and the Pen (Tradition and Novelty in Modern Irish Writing) (2013), Duality of Vision in Seamus Heaney’s Writings (2009), articles in academic journals and book chapters. She has been a coeditor of conference volumes, the most recent being: Im)Migration Patterns: Displacement and Relocation in Contemporary America (2016). She is a member of the Romanian Association for American Studies, the Romanian Society for English and American Studies and of the IrelandRomania Network.

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The Ecotheological Consciousness in Environmental Studies 1. Cristiana Oprea, PhD

Frank Laboratory for Neutron Physics, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research 141980 Dubna, Russia

2. Fr. Lecturer Cosmin Tudor Ciocan, Ph.D. The Faculty of Theology, Ovidius University of Constanta Romania

3. Alexandru Oprea, PhD

Frank Laboratory for Neutron Physics, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research 141980 Dubna, Russia

ARTICLE INFO

ABSTRACT

Article history: Received 24 April 2017 Received in revised form 2 May Accepted 5 May 2017 Available online 30 May 2017 doi: 10.18638/dialogo.2017.3.2.20

The ecotheological consciousness involves respect and care for the community of life in the three well-living dimensions as theological spirituality, understanding and appreciated the horizontal sacred and environmental protection actions.

We conducted this research to highlight the impacts related to environmental studies from social and ecotheological points of view. Concerning the analytical approaches and human awareness, it is argued that concerning the relationships between human beings and nature leading to impacts affecting the precarious environmental balance by their own decisions, actions, and notions, a multivariate and behavior-oriented definition of environmental responsibility and consciousness was established. An ecotheological method to obtain summary measures of environmental consciousness have to be applied to different contexts of our nowadays society. The environmental databases obtained from previous surveys on environmental ecosystems conducted during the last 20 years by one of the authors were used as target objects for the defined analytical proposal.

Multivariate comparisons and classifications of the various variables of environmental consciousness were performed and the statistical factors and factor scores were used to predict the main features concerning the evolution of different ecological profiles in the done approach.

The resulting ecotheological measures are then used to identify and characterize the environmental changes and health threats from a global perspective that integrates the overall condition of our planet, or how healthy it is. Š 2014 RCDST. All rights reserved.

Keywords: self; self-reference; Theaetetus; knowledge; true opinion; soul; mystic; theology; immortality; salvia divinorum;

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eISSN: 2393-1744, cdISSN: 2392-9928 printISSN: 2457-9297, ISSN-L 2392-9928 ISBN 978-80-554-1338-9

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I. INTRODUCTION

Daily we are confronted with cumulative environmental risk posed to ecosystem health and in the broader media in terms of multiple chemical and other stressors (such as biological, radiological, physical, working life, psychological, lifestyle, etc.) by signs of environmental degradation.

In particular, there are evidences from many frameworks and risk metrics that Romanians are concerned about and expect to be increasingly in the future. However, there is also evidence about the ambiguity in measuring this concern which is not backed by enough knowledge from a global perspective including both theoretical and analytical aspects. Environmentally responsible behavior of individual and local-level community is increasing, but the improving effects of assessment application are modest. Generally, there has been a lack of political evolving methods and advanced risk initiatives to put the country on a sustainable environmental development. Then it is expected that many environmentalists have sought that the next generation will develop an overview that will allow them to live with greater appreciation of the limits of nature and the risks concern. A brief review of nowadays literature indicates that there is widespread environmental consciousness interest in all the sectors of public sectors [1, 2].

The research reported here, while acknowledging the need to address these broader issues, seeks to examine the role that practical ecotheology has in guiding church parishioners to become consciously of the deterioration of local ecosystem as well as earth’s environment. The literature findings [3] have suggested that demographic variables (especially parental education) have a major influence on environmental consciousness, knowledge and behaviour.

This indicates that environmental contamination and its preservation are Session 4. All in Dialogue

largely applicative and not of marginal theoretical concern. Understanding that the causes of environmental damage and their reversal potential are closely linked to population growth, prosperity, technology and resources, they need to be analyzed through multidisciplinary approaches to identifying the emission sources.

An ecotheological method developed as an analytical method has to be applied in order to obtain featured measures of environmental consciousness. The analysis includes multivariate statistical methods applied to a list of variables collected in previous environmental surveys [47]. Specifically, the finite measures of ecotheological consciousness relate some of the indicators included in our project.

II. THE ECOTHEOLOGICAL METHOD

The ecotheological consciousness involves respect and care for the community of life in the three well-living dimensions as theological spirituality, understanding and appreciating the horizontal sacred and environmental protection actions1.

The ideological approach of ecotheological consciousness in contemporary context is based on some issues such as: A. Religious ecospirituality; B. Etics, ecology and religion; C. Horizontal evolution and interrelationships taking place in the consciousness of humanity – nature; D. Environmental monitoring and protection.

In the followings we’ll briefly draw some ideas characterizing each of them.

1 Genesis 1:26-27: Humanity is created in the image of God

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A. The ecotheological spirituality

The religious environmental thinking has the privilege to bring together religious and moral voices from everywhere in safeguarding the environment.

Historically, ecotheology does not belong to a single culture or religion. It is a social and spiritual movement emerging in the last two centuries which generated several ecothological projects all over the world. The adepts, along with several ecotheological mentors as Gandhi, Lao Tzu, Rachel Carsonand Pope Francis, Tagore, and others, believe that there are enough resources on the Earth to satisfy everyone’s needs, but not by continuously increasing economic growth2. Their shared ideea is that we should resist the temptation to use the planet without any discernment.

For example, unlikely we can control major global events as earthquakes, volcanos or tsunamis and partially climate change, but at least we should take care to not producing more wastes than necessary and further to pay attention to exclude them.

Environmental pollution leads to adverse effects on human health. They are responsible for diseases caused by environmental exposure to several physical, biological, chemical and radiochemical agents, UV irradiation, etc. Some exposures cause high intensity hazards and new threats are determined. In particular, the gene-environment interactions are believed to play a more important role in the origin of many diseases than previously thought.

Our micro-environment has various compounds made from microbes, heavy metals from the external environment and some essential chemicals interfering with the life systems, including vitamins such as vitamin D and vitamin B1 - B12. Several studies [8] have shown that the deficiency 2 Leviticus 25:23: “God said, ‘For the Land is mine.

You are but strangers and sojourners with Me’”

of one or more micro/nano components of living organism was one of the predisposing factors that led to serious illnesses.

With global industrial development, there is a global transport of exposures and other environmental hazards along to long-distance gradients. Global threats to environmental health include not only climate change but also ecosystem degradation, species loss, deforestation and desertification, sea level rise, stratospheric ozone depletion and even much more.

Specifically, our research seeks to integrate the most widespread issues of environmental concern from an ecotheological consciousness perspective taking into account the affective, cognitive, dispositional and active beliefs on the relationship between human beings and the environment.

B. Etics, ecology and religion

The last decade of XX century was characterized by fundamental qualitative political changing in the world followed at a short time by important economical and social ones. Many social - political profesionals considered the end of bipolar world (ruled by antagonistic confrontation of former USSR and Western Europe and USA) as the starting moment of post-history era where the Man and his necessities are in the center of liberal ideologies [9]. The End of the History period, according to Fukuyama3, are the times when under the influence of Liberal Democracy4 ideas, History ends 3 Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama (born 27 October 1952) – American Philosopher, Political Scientist and Economist, Specialist on International Relations, Writer of Japan origin, former Professor of John Hopkins University, Senior Researcher of Center for Democracy and Human Rights from Stanford University. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Fukuyama

4 Liberal Democracy represents a form of Democratic State based on Human Rights and Representative Democracy where the will of Majority and the capacity of Elected

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to be a series of wars and revolutions, in the name of different ideologies and becomes an Existential History with radical transformations in Arts and Philosophy.

Figure 1.

Francis Fukuyama5

The events of those years, the vanishing of ideological conflicts, the principles of Human Rights and Free Trade had lead to extraordinary developments of Sciences with wide applications for mankind, especially in medicines, electronics, informatics and technologies in general, as a directly response to the human necessities requests. A very good example is the Nuclear Science. In XX century the balance in nuclear weapons of Super Power States, in a paradoxical way, had maintained the peace (of course at the edge life extinction on the Earth), after the end of Second World War in 1945 until now6. Nowadays, for example, the applications of the same nuclear sciences in medicine and pharmacology led to awesome growth of 3 - 4 times recovery of oncology diseases7. All these and many other factors had demonstrated, even partially, the true of the ideology exposed in Fukuyama’s Representatives to exercise and realize the state power limited and complemented by the Minorities Rights the Freedom of Citizens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_democracy 5 Аutor: Fronteiras do Pensamento - Francis Fukuyama no Fronteiras do Pensamento São Paulo, CC BY-SA 2.0, https:// commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50628567 6 Nuclear Weapons Parity - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Containment 7 Nuclear Medicine - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_ medicine

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book.

In 2000 years new global challenges8, like international criminality and terrorism (weapons, drugs and human traffic), migrations, Islam rising, inner contradictions of capitalist society, climate changing and environment ecology, etc, showed that the Fukuyama theory’s and society model’s build on these ideas necessitates serious improvements [10]. The societies from USA and Western Europe are far from perfection of Fukuyama’s ideals of liberal democracy and it is too early to speak about the “End of History” considers Derrida9.

Global challenges and the critique of liberal – democracy ideology led to the new searching of principles of future society. Many authors, specialists or simple peoples see the solutions in the returning to traditionalist values of civilizations when the Man lived in symbiosis with Nature and had not tried to submit it according to the mechanical representations10 of World View induced by scientific successes of XIX and XX centuries. Many ways proposed to return to traditional cultures based on the models Pre Columbian American, Eastern Asian or European civilizations suppose to give up the results of science and technology in order to preserve the environment. The authors consider very clear that is not a solution even in a short range time perspective because this will mean to return very quickly to hunger, diseases and finally to new wars.

The ideological worries on these issues indicate a real worldwide interest of modern 8 Millenium Project – The 15 Global Challenges h t t p : / / w w w. n c p - i n c o n t a c t . e u / n k s w i k i / i n d e x . php?title=Millenium_Project_-_The_15_Global_Challenges 9 Jacques Derrida (15 June 1930, El Biar Algeria – 9 October 2004, Paris, France) – French Philosopher and Theorist of Literature, creator and founder of concept of Deconstruction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida 10 Mechanical Philosophy – Method of knowledge and understanding of the Universe reducing complex physical phenomena to Mechanics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_philosophy

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society on the Earth. Even Fukuyama, paying attention in the same time to the radical modification of modern societies and to the critiques of his works has revisited the ideology of the End of History [11, 12].

The well known tragic events of 9 September 2001 and the financial and economical crisis of 2008 years had demonstrated that the modern “classic” capitalism based on the self regulator property of the free market has reached its limits in the conditions of limited resources on the Earth. As observed at micro scale of the society now it is not enough that peoples look only “on own business” by not according attention to the neighbor and outside of his home and society. Only gain and income as main driving force of society earlier or later will lead to the polarization of society in rich and poor, to ecological and environmental problems, to different kind of global and local crisis and depressions.

The return to the traditional society doesn’t mean go back to theocracy11 and autocracy12.

The basis of the new society is the Triad Man – Society – Nature founded on the Unite Triad of traditional Christian Religious aspects like Logics (or True), Aesthetics (Beauty) and Ethics (Duty and Service) as manifestation of Principle of Life on the Earth and Wisdom of God [13].

11 Theocracy – Definition a) Religious: The system of governments and main social issues are decided by divine instructions, revelations and laws. b) Political: Religious personalities have the most important influence in the State politics. c) Legal – system of government are conducted by Religious institutions and clergy. https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Theocracy 12 Autocracy – Form of government when the unlimited and uncontrolled power is in the hand of one, unique Ruler. https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocracy

Figure 2.

Mircea Eliade13

These representations, characteristic to the most Cultures and Religions, must be the fundament of system of values of future civilizations, as a scale from micro to macro level of society, starting with the Man “created after His Image and Resemblances”, continuing with the People because “where are two or three meeting together on My Name, I am there between them” and State “as Kingdom of God” and finishing with Civilization as “New Heaven (Sky) and Earth on which the True is living”.

The Ecotheology concepts are developing in the present and they are in a very good agreement with the principles of Triad Man – Society – Nature of future societies and civilizations. Religious institutions and associations have the moral authority of Education of the peoples in ecological issues in a high correlation with the State. The form of this education can be expressed in many ways. From general aspects as the Conscious understanding of ecological and environmental issues preached to the peoples, going to particular situation of a given community. Even, conscious participation in some local activity on environmental surveys or construction and creation of ecological objectives could be in the future of crucial importance because the Nature and the Earth are not only our Home but also the Home for many future generations after us.

An interesting example, of Ecotheology project, of the correlation between Religious and Laic Institutions having as goal the Environmental Protection enveloped in the increasing of the level of life of the citizens of the country, is Saudi Arabia. This country is one of the greatest oil exporter in the world with the corresponding extractive industry for electricity production based 13 Mircea Eliade (Bucharest, 13 March 1907 – Chicago, 22 April 1986) – Romanian Philosopher, Philosopher of Culture, worldwide specialist of Religion and History of Religion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mircea_Eliade

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on hydrocarbons, which creates serious problems on environments not only in the present but also in the future. Thinking in perspective, the decisional states and religion factors have planned to construct in the near future a set of nuclear electrical power stations in the low populated regions of Arabian Desert. These new electrical power factories for sure will reduce consistently the environmental problems not only in the local area but also in the country and at continent level.

New nuclear power facilities built in desert also require additional freshwater production facilities for reactor cooling systems. The fresh water produced in these plants will make possible the restoration of the lands and returning of them to agriculture, which is also of a major importance [14].

The ways of Ecotheological and of the Wisdom State concepts concerning the laic and religious aspects of Human Life are already open. The complex and difficult process of Ethical Conscious Awakening of the Mankind, started from the individual initiative of some enthusiasts of the last century, have reached some critical points because nowadays every person on the Earth understands that the Man and Society is a part of integer unit usually named “Nature” in all its aspects.

C. Horizontal evolution and

interrelationships taking place in the consciousness of humanity – nature

Another chalenge relates to ecotheological policy by taking into account the sustainable development of a nation.

Beside the religious ecoetics, it is intended to act in the direction of assuring a balance between the energy stewardship and the environment preservation until obtaining a sync between each other.

The Earth environment is an eco-

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communion of living subjects, not a collection of objects.

In particular, the eco-communities as sustainable built organizations are the villages, towns and nations that are in horizontal evolution and interrelationships as well as environmentally wise.

In this respect the ecotheological mission is to help the community and the each individual to find the best living path.

In terms of integral ecology14 in an ecocommunity the care for people, care for animals, and care for the earth is integrated.

However, ecotheological guidance can only influence the change towards environmental sustainability if there is an in-depth knowledge of the factors predisposing the community members to be concerned about the ecological awareness and to engage in environment conservation.

On the other hand, many ecotheologians not affiliated with any religion and identified as naturalists can help people live lightly on the earth and gently with one another15. This behavior is directed toward to neglect of social, historical, theological, and political constraints [15].

D. Environmental monitoring and

protection

Environmental pollution can be associated with the industrial era where energy has been used to a great extent for the benefit of human society. Previously deterioration of the environment has not been associated with ethical issues. Nowadays, the process remains with increased demands due to population growth and its needs as well as water scarcity. We can not forget the global destructive effect of wars or nuclear accidents. There is a need to develop global ethics i.e. to create a just and equitable environment everywhere. The answer can 14 Pope Francis’ definition of integral ecology 15 see the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology

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be done by the applied ecotheology. Briefly is to help God maintain justice and repair the Earth16.

Environmental monitoring and impact assessment is the stage of identifying, describing and evaluating the direct and indirect, synergic, cumulative, main and secondary effects of an economic objective on human health and the environmental components. This should to be an integral part of the process of functioning and development of any anthropogenic objective.

This evaluation investigates the following factors: 1. Human beings, fauna and flora; 2. Soil, water, air, climate and landscape; 3. Material goods and cultural heritage.

Then is foreseen their interaction as i) Multiple chemical and nonchemical factors; ii) Assesment of single and combined environmental toxicity risks; iii) Effects of stressors recepted on public health. with the aim of establishing prevention, reduction and, where possible, compensating for the significant adverse effects of the antropic objectives on the above-mentioned factors, including the planning of the effects on the environmental components in the first phases of the development project, in order to prevent or reduce the negative environmental impact of the expected economic activity.

For this purpose, the provisions of the Romanian normative acts in force [1,2,16], as well as the horizontal national legislation applicable to different aspects and 16 Deuteronomy 16:20: “Justice, justice you shall pursue”

environmental factors, are complied with in carrying out the environmental impact assessment.

III. ENVIRONMENTAL SURVEYS

During the last two decades we conducted several analytical ecological studies on the Southern part of the Romanian Territory, to monitor and estimate the environmental toxicity of the industrial trace heavy metals and other pollutants [4-7].

The atmospheric deposition of heavy metals and other elements was monitored by the biomonitoring technique of epiphytic mosses. The data set of 27 elemental concentrations were recorded in 52 moss samples collected from a study area of 11008 km2 based on an European monitoring network (Figure 1) [17].

Figure 3.

The sampling network: environmental surveys (1999-2008)

Toxicity of metals pollution accompanied by the other industrial emissions is widely recognized. The work done revealed that the main environmental problems at risk for the population resulted from the negative impact of water quantity and quality, air quality, soil contamination, degradation of biological resources and accumulation of waste.

Local sampling monitoring networks and environmental studies were developed around the urban industrial centers Ploieşti, Turnu Magurele and Tîrgoviste.

Pollution around the significant Petrochemical Center Ploiesti is characterized by the emission of specific heavy metals (such as As, Hg, Ni, Pb, Sb, Se and V) and organic pollutants into the air, contamination of soil, plants and groundwater caused by storage of oil industry residues in the vicinity of the industrial site and overflow of tailings discharges into neighboring river waters.

Airborne toxins accumulate in the biosphere,

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affecting public health by exposure to inhalation or ingestion of food [18].

The monitoring of the pollution caused by fertilizer industry in Turnu Magurele accompanied with the port commercial and shipping activities evidence for a local pollution gradient along the Danube River wind rose profile. The study established that cadmium, strontium and rare earths are the major elements as regards fertilizer input.

The Tirgoviste cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s industrial platform (including oil industry, oil-field-equipment works, metallurgy and mechanics, etc) emitting pollutants in the atmosphere, results in lower visibility, favoring the appearance of radons in the morning with clear sky, the nebulosity rising artificially due to pollution at least 1/10 compared to neighboring areas.

The results of these researches included objectives as: 1. Representation of concentrations found in regions with different levels of technical and economic development and determination of possible gradients; 2. Identification of sources of local and long-distance pollution; 3. To interpret maps of the distribution of inorganic atmospheric pollutants according to emissions of pollution sources; 4. To compare the levels found with those of similar European studies; 5. Identification of differences in pollution levels that may be due to contamination with specific elements or errors resulting from the systematic collection of some inappropriate samples for the monitoring of the examined territory or due to the analytical method, which may be inappropriate in the analysis of the collected samples. Exact diagnosis of heavy metal distribution is complex because these metals have an irregular distribution to the environment.

The nuclear and atomic experimental

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methods used in the research for determination of inorganic constituents in the samples were INAA/ENAA, IPAA, IBA, XRF, FAAS and others.

IV. MULTIVARIATE CLASSIFICATIONS

In order to verify causal relations (such as emission sources) that exist between different variables (e.g. environmental toxics) and subjects (e.g. locations) of ecological concern, a deeper understanding of operational measurements has been obtained through multivariate statistical methods which are approaching our method from the point of view of relationships between them. The advantage of using the above surveys is that it includes indicators of the main environmental issues considered in this study.

Based on the values of the elemental analytical concentrations obtained from the above studies, we use a method of R-mode factor analysis to develop a measure of the environmental situation that includes the different dimensions of this phenomenon [19, 20]. This multivariate statistical approach corresponds to the objectives of our study because it is a data reduction technique that allows a small number of independent components (summaries of ecological measures in our study) to represent most of the information found in the initial variables to be extracted from the original data set of orderly variables (indicators of various environmentally significant locations in our study). This method facilitates data interpretation by summing up information and allows multivariate comparisons and subsequent classifications.

Initial factors were subjected to orthogonal rotation by the varimax method to minimize average loaded elements in extracted factors and to maximize low and high element loads. Factor scores were used to remove excessive values and to identify

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single source samples in the data set and to draw the elemental GIS isoplets.

The tests run presented in this work allowed us to determine the type and number of loaded element that can be distinguished in each factor (as dimension of environmental measure) as well as the ecological indicators of each. In the first run, five factors are considered relevant because they contribute most of the variance explained. The eigenvalue and variance for each factor and cumulative variance are included. On the whole, model accounts for 81.4 % of the explained variance. For the frequencies of each factor, the expected absolute error of the survey results is + 1.5%, for a confidence level of 95 %. In addition, the results have allowed us to select the most relevant indicators of each factor following statistical criteria. More specifically, we selected the indicators that provide the most information, i.e. those that have a higher weight in the variance explained by each ecological awareness factor.

The first factor contains crustal elements such as Al, Sc, Fe and Th, and the others, such as Ni and V. It represents a mixed signal of the crustal source profile with contributions from oil burning. It summarizes 31.4% of the general information in the data set, while the second component does so for 18.6%.

However, the results also suggest that a second reduction should be considered on this factor as a second measure of environmental concern to separate the different mixed sources. Consequently a second-generation data set was achieved, with new components and variances. The soil and vegetation components were removed. Then the pollution source was obviously identified as mostly loaded with Ni, V, Co, Zn and Pb and can be assigned mainly to oil burning and less to coal burning.

These results indicate that environmental concern, as understood here, can also be represented in a partial or diffused manner

in certain multivariate contexts.

The second factor is most loaded with As, Cd, Zn, Sb, Cu and Hg and represents a general pollution signal. The third factor is most loaded with Br, I, Cl and U and represents a long-range marine transport from the Mediterranean Sea. The fourth factor is most loaded with Cr, Fe, Se, Co and Cu, suggesting a coal-burning signal released by industry - mainly of ferrous type, power plants and heating. The fifth factor is most loaded with Pb and small amount of Hg and can be attributed to internal combustion engines. This factor includes also a small negative component of Sr, Mn, Cs and Zn of vegetative origin. This weak correlation is not only the result of the lack of consistency between the values expressed and the actual behavior, but also because these values are not considered to be a necessary condition for achieving certain pro-ecological improvements.

This multivariate classification also serves to explain the weaknesses of correlations between indicators of different sources of pollution and involvement in this type of behavior.

V. ECOTHEOLOGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

STRATEGIC PLAN OF PROENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNITY VALUES AND BELIEFS

An integrated ecological strategic system means that the environmental and community sustainability criteria are incorporated into the planning process.

Integration involves balancing tasks in community development, environmental conservation and ecotheological actions.

Pro-ecological measures and the desire to engage in social and personal behaviors that are consistent with them are influenced and can be modified by accesing true and good quality environmental information [21]. Considering the issue of risk in the full

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context of the environmental situation, using a larger perspective, the ecotheological community should recognize, integrate and balance the multiple dimensions of the risk and risk management process.

There are two main ecotheological directions of action: organizational - sustained and community – based. To detail our proposal to operationalize ecotheological consciousness; it should combine the approval of pro-ecological values and the perception of environmental conditions with the level of information, attitude towards action and involvement in pro-environmental behaviors.

The validation of the ecotheological consciousness concept imply the engagement in environmental behaviours as related to general beliefs, knowledge and a positive disposition towards environmentally policy measures and individual action.

Guiding principles are intended to be aspirational rather than prescriptive, given the importance of extra-psychological or situational factors, affective dimension, and based on ethical issues and values. Their application requires flexibility and practical judgment as a prerequisite for achieving certain pro-environmental results. And finally do more good than harm in terms of beneficence and nonmalificence by a natural justice process. This can be considered as an ultimate goal of equitable risk management from an ecotheological point of view.

VI. CONCLUSIONS

The practical knowledge gained during this study has been used to identify differences, communities, strengths and weaknesses between the different approaches and to recognize the elements that should be included in an effective, current and comprehensive analytical approach applicable to ecotheological

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practice and the human health and ecosystem risks. In addition, frameworks for local specific applications were investigated, including those for industrial contaminated sites, priority emissions, sustainable development, transbordary long – range transport, risk assessment and communition.

Five frames corresponding to the different sources of pollution were selected for a broader analysis based on the representation of human health, environmental, risk management needs, well-defined analytical approaches and good quality surveys.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT The first author would like to express his gratitude to the Organizing Committee of DIALOGO Conferences for invaluable help and support during the accomplishment of this particular research in the ecotheological project. We like to thank also for the honest and open communication between the Editors/Indexing Databasis and the authors.

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[4] Oprea, C. D., Mihul Al., “R-mode factor analysis applied to the exploration of air pollution in the South of Romania”, Romanian Reports in Physics, 55, 2, p. 91-110, 2003 [5] Oprea, C. D., 2005, “Mihul Al., Accumulation of specific pollutants in various media in the area affected by a petrochemical center”, Romanian Reports in Physics, 55, 2, p. 82-90,

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2003 [6] Oprea, C. D. 2005, “Eu. Pincovschi, The assessment of pollution in the area of Turnu Magurele affected by fertilizers plant”, Romanian Reports in Physics, 55, 2, p. 111115, 2003 [7] Oprea Cristiana, Nicolescu Carmen, Loghin Vasile, Gorghiu Gabriel, Hussain Aziz Saleh, Szalansky Pavel Jan, 2005. “Modeling the human health and environmental impacts status at Targoviste city area using neural network algorithms”. Conference Integration of the New EU Member Countries into the GMES Programme, 12-14 December 2005 – Warsaw, Poland, 10 p, publication on CD – ROM. [8] Oprea, C., Szalansky, P. J., Gustova, M. V., Oprea, I. A., Buzguta, V., “Trace element distribution in human teeth by X-ray fluorescence and multivariate analysis”, Romanian Reports in Physics, ISSN:12211451, PublisherRomanian Academy of Science, 67, 2, 452-459, 2015 [9] Francis Fukuyama, The End of the History and the Last Man, Moscow: ACT Edition House, Translated from Japanese by M.. B. Levin, 2004.

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[13] Mircea Eliade, Selected Works. Patterns in Comparative Religions, Moscow: Ladomir Publishing House, Translated from English

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[16] Order of the Ministry of Defense no. 863 on the approval of the methodological guidelines applicable to the phases of the environmental impact assessment framework procedure, 2002 [17] Ruehling, A., and Steinnes, E., “Atmospheric Heavy Metal Deposition in Europe 19951996.” (Nordic Council of Ministers), NORD 1998:15, Copenhagen, 67, 1998.

[18] Thomas, W., Ruhling, A and Simon, H. “Accumulation of Airborne Pollutants (PAN, Chlorinated Hydrocarbons, Heavy Metals) in Various Plant Species and Humus”, Environmental Pollution (Series A) 36, p.

295-310, 1984.

[19] Oprea, C., “Multivariate analysis of environmental data by SPSS”. Environment & Progress 3, p. 285-290, 2005.

[20] Oprea, C., Doctoral Thesis, Physics, 18.09.2002.

[21] Stern, P. C., “Toward a coherent theory onenvironmentally significant behaviour”, Journal of Social Issues 56, p. 407-424, 2000.

Biography Doctor of Physics, Project Leader, JINR Senior Experimentalist, Nuclear Physics Fundamental and Applicative Researches in Nuclear Phyisics and Interdisciplinary, Facitities Run, Upgrade and Start-Up, former leader and vice-leader of the Romanian national group in JINR, Co-organizer of XXXVII European Congress (ESNA), Co-organizer of NAMA Workshopat University of Bucharest, Faculty of Physics, Economical Contracts, Scientific Scientific Reviewer, Adviser of Master Degree Diploma and PhD Theses.

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Session 4. All in Dialogue

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DIALOGO

bi-annual

CONFERENCES & JOURNAL

G UIDE FO R AUTH O R S Description

As an international, multi-disciplinary, peer-refereed journal, Dialogo Conferences & Journal provides a platform for the publication of the most advanced scientific research in the areas of Sciences, Philosophy, and Theology - each of any kind and specificity, without a narrow selection of them. The journal welcomes original empirical investigations and research, but is especially interested in areas of research with a broad range of implications for scholars of theology/religion, or cross-disciplinary relevance. The papers may represent a variety of theoretical perspectives and different methodological approaches. They may refer to any age level, from infants to adults and to a diversity of learning and instructional settings, from laboratory experiments to field studies. The major criteria in the review and the selection process concern the significance of the contribution to the area of learning and instruction.

Benefits to authors

We also provide many author benefits, such as free PDFs, a liberal copyright policy, special discounts on Dialogo publications and much more. Please click here for more information on our author services.

The small, insignicative fee our attendees have to pay ensures a wide range of readers from many resources: Dialogo Open Archive along with the archives of all 14 Databases that have Dialogo Journal indexed and abstracting covered already. This contribution makes possible for us to freely make available to readers all published articles in such a short time after the conference is concluded.

Dialogo Journal is ever outside the market of selling intelectual property of our authors.

Contact

details for submission

Authors are requested to submit their papers electronically by using the Learning and Instruction online submission and review web site ( http://dialogo-conf.com/register-at-portal/), and not by email.

This site will guide authors stepwise through the submission process. Authors are requested to submit the text, tables, and artwork in electronic form to this address. Authors, who are unable to provide an electronic version or have other circumstances that prevent online submission, must contact the Editor prior to submission to discuss alternative options; email: reviewer@dialogo-conf.com. The Publisher and Editor regret that they are not able to consider submissions that do not follow these procedures.

Submission

checklist

You can use this list to carry out a final check of your submission before you send it to the journal for review. Please check the relevant section in this Guide for Authors for more details.

Ensure that the following items are present: One author has been designated as the corresponding author with contact details: • Authors’ names and affiliations • E-mail address • Full postal address All necessary files have been uploaded: Manuscript: • A title of no more than 20 words should be brief, specific, and informative • Abstract should be at least 150 words • Include keywords (6-12), separated by semicolon (;). They should not reuse words from the title!

• All figures (include relevant captions) • All tables (including titles, description, footnotes) • Ensure all figure and table citations in the text match the files provided • Indicate clearly if color should be used for any figures in print Graphical Abstracts / Highlights files (where applicable)

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GUIDE FOR AUTHORS

DIALOGO

3.2 (2017) 2017 May, 19 - 26 www.dialogo-conf.com The Virtual International Conference on CONFERENCES & JOURNAL GU ID E FOR AUTHOR S Further considerations • Manuscript has been ‘spell checked’ and ‘grammar checked’ • All references mentioned in the Reference List are cited in the text, and vice versa • All references and bibliography should conform to The Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition).

• Permission has been obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources (including the Internet) • Relevant declarations of interest have been made • Journal policies detailed in this guide have been reviewed • Referee suggestions and contact details provided, based on journal requirements For further information, visit our Support Center.

Reference

style

Text: Citations in the text should follow the referencing style used by the The Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition) Footnote: refers only to additional explanation from the text, and not for indications to bibliography Examples: Reference to a journal publication: Weinstein, Joshua I. “The Market in Plato’s Republic.” Classical Philology 104 (2009): 439–58.

Reference to an online journal publication: Kossinets, Gueorgi, and Duncan J. Watts. “Origins of Homophily in an Evolving Social Network.” American Journal of Sociology 115 (2009): 405–50. Accessed February 28, 2010. doi:10.1086/599247.

Reference to a book: Ward, Geoffrey C., and Ken Burns. The War: An Intimate History, 1941–1945. New York: Knopf, 2007.

Reference to a chapter in an edited book: Kelly, John D. “Seeing Red: Mao Fetishism, Pax Americana, and the Moral Economy of War.” In Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency, edited by John D. Kelly, Beatrice Jauregui, Sean T. Mitchell, and Jeremy Walton, 67–83. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.

Reference to a Book published electronically: Kurland, Philip B., and Ralph Lerner, eds. The Founders’ Constitution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Accessed February 28, 2010. http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/.

See more of the possible example in te original Book of Chicago Style, http://www.chicagomanualofstyle. org/tools_citationguide.html.

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GUIDE FOR AUTHORS

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DIALOGO JOURNAL eISSN: 2393-1744, cdISSN: 2392-9928, printISSN: 2457-9297

ISSN-L 2392 – 9928

Proceedings of the Conference on the Dialogue between Science and Theology Volume 3 Issue 2 Bridging Science and Religion Together: SELF, SOUL & CONSCIOUSNESS. Dialogo conf 2017 SSC ISBN 978-80-554-1338-9 May 19-26. 2017

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