Attempting to grasp what we human beings are has been a goal for many throughout the ages. However, the appreciation of our nature has not always been the same.
For example, in the Greek Civilization it was understood and accepted that the human being was spirit-life (in Greek: “pneuma”), soul (“psyche”) and form (“soma”). This concept promoted in those times the advancement of philosophy, mathematics, arts and sports as disciplines to develop and to learn to master each of those aspects of the human nature.
When Christianity appeared, the classic Greek triune constitution of the human being was slowly forgotten — spirit and soul eventually became interchangeable concepts and terms, and the physical body was relegated to the position of having an undesirable influence upon the spiritual progress of human beings.
Later, when Modern Science was born, scientific curiosity on the human anatomy and physiology brought along to the laboratory the psychic and spiritual aspects of the human being; this weakened the importance of the religious and philosophical ideas on these matters and eventually the nature of the human being was circumscribed to the findings of science. Thus, today’s accepted knowledge about the human constitution is mainly the one given by science, which focuses its attention upon the physical body (with the mind and the emotions and feelings classified as obscure by-products of biochemical reactions).
The predominant, accepted idea of the nature of the human being plays a very important role in the organization and the development of civilization and societies because it is around this concept that the different fields of human activity are structured.
Any sincere student of the human condition recognizes, for example, that today the well-being and the development of the individual and the society are focused on the physical and emotional aspects of the human nature, with very little attention to the cultivation of the mind itself. The present structures of politics, science, arts, religion, education, economics and all other areas of human activity draw their support from the view of the human being as a body with emotions.
Attempts have been made in the past to provide a wider view of the multidimensional nature and potential of human beings. These attempts were made by many outstanding Figures in our history through the demonstration in their lives of human powers and faculties, present in us all, that transcend the powers of the physical body and that involve the use of laws somewhat different from the known laws of the natural world. Unfortunately, their examples and teachings were misunderstood, and their followers distorted the truth that they were trying to convey.
There is no doubt that the discoveries of human science during the past five centuries have facilitated the physical living conditions of many human beings; however, present-day science suffers of a major limitation: a narrowness of vision. This has created boundaries in the perceptive capacities of human beings where they do not exist and has promoted fears among those members of the scientific community who dare to see beyond the established limits. Slowly, those illusory boundaries that limit human thinking will recede, and a better appreciation of Reality will unfold guided by the goodness of the proceedings of science. An area of research that will have a dramatic expansion is the one studying the constitution of the human being. The expansion will take place when research on the human nature will include in its studies the ideas on energy fields as studied by physics. This will balance the domination that biochemistry and genetics impose upon today's understanding of the human constitution.
The study of the various aspects of the human being as energies is also found in the Wisdom Teachings of many lands. This “knowledge of old ages” has taught that…
The human being is an aggregate or system of energies of different potencies and qualities at whose center there is a Spark or Unit of Life, a Spirit. From this central Spark emanate the livingness, the powers of will and love, the activities of consciousness, and the creative intelligence.
A study of the human being analogous to the terms proposed by the Wisdom Teachings is a worthy challenge for the present generations as the current advances of science provide elements for accepting this challenge.
In the following pages an introduction to the ideas of the Wisdom Teachings on the constitution of the human being is attempted. The ideas are presented not as a scientific thesis but as a plain and simple proposition that may serve the spiritual Seeker to follow the injunction, “Know Thyself”.