Mind: its characteristics

It is impossible to study the mind in a direct way because its characteristics are negative ones.

1. Its duality does not involve two existent things. We can never lay hold of what it is in us that isolates our own thoughts and makes judgements about them.

2. Perfection, infinity.

The first thing that we know about ourselves is our imperfection.

This is what Descartes meant when he said: ‘I know God before I know myself.’

The only mark of God in us is that we feel that we are not God. We feel that we should not be imperfect and limited; if it were perfectly right and proper to be so, then we would not think ourselves imperfect; we feel that this imperfection is alien to us.

3. Necessity points to mind well enough, but what we grasp is the necessity of things. There would be no necessity if the mind did not bring it to the surface. The world appears as an obstacle to the mind.

So, if we ever think that we have got hold of mind, it is an illusion.

The study of the mind is not a study which can appeal to any kind of introspection, and a fortiori, to observation.

The study of mind can only proceed by looking beyond the thoughts that we express for signs of doubt, perfection, order (necessity).