Are you a body with a mind or a mind with a body? - Maryam Alimardani

What do you think? Are you a body with a mind or a mind with a body? Also, we hope you noticed the book rec at the end of the vid. You can download an audio version of the book for free at www.audible.com/teded. And for even more book recs from our team, visit ed.ted.com/books.

I came here with a question and now I'm leaving with three.

Me: Brain is the best organ.... Wait why am I saying this, Brain : oh, sometimes I become selfish

This made me emotional. There is beauty in humanity trying to understand itself.

"You don't have a soul. You are a soul, you have a body."

oh hello existential crisis nice to see you again

I've an exam literally 2 hours from now... And I'm here dealing with existential crisis

When I felt more like a body with a mind I used to spend more time indulging on desirable things to please my senses. Now that I feel more like a mind in control of a body I do more things to progress in life. I think perception of this can play a big part in how people choose to live because of what they view, consciously and subconsciously, as being a priority and worth spending time on.

At first, right after watching this video, I was quite terrified because I didn’t get a thing. However, after digging into the topic for a while, I’ve worked out something important. Something I’d like to share with the viewers, as it really comes in handy for understanding the concept. In my view, the idea is that a person is neither a body with a mind nor a mind with a body. A person is a system, where both a mind and a body perform different, but equally significant, functions. Here is why. Imagine a human as a computer. Speaking computer science (hope you are familiar with a computer structure), our brain is a processor and the body is information input / output means. In other words, your mind is undoubtedly in charge of processing information, which is what we do every day and what we live for (in a way). To be precise, by information I mean our sensations, of course, that we gain from our sense organs. That is the point where our physical bodies play their crucial role. We gain knowledge about everything around us (including ourselves, actually) by listening, watching, touching, sniffing and tasting. Therefore, if not for the sense organs, there would be no information for the brain to work on and no outcoming conclusions made and no knowledge gained and no picture of the world created, no perception and no ourselves, as we know it, after all. Concluding, a mind does control a body, but it (a mind) wouldn’t be so almighty, if not for a body.

The music, animation style and the content of this video resulted in me having a massive existential crisis😧

Processing... Processing... brain.exe has stopped responding

if we close our eyes in a silent room long enough, the feeling of having a body can definitely go away once you get out of the habit of imagining and projecting it in your own mind. This is called meditation. It brings your perceptions closer to your actual experience of reality, decluttering your discursive thoughts and imagination.

"If we close our eyes in a silent room, the feeling of having a body isn't something we can just imagine away." It seems like this is quite untrue. You can meditate and let go of the feeling of having a body. You can also daydream/dream the feeling away. Does anybody else have thoughts on this?

I think about this all the time, oh my goodness. Am I a brain with a conscience or a conscience with a brain? Am I a soul with a physical body or a physical body with a soul? Am I a hotel? Trivago.

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide No escape from reality

Me after reading the title: Got my mind on your body and your body on my mind

The wonderful thing about getting older is that this kind of inquiry makes you feel lighter and more free or at least in my case it does. I'm enjoying my 38 years old self. Thank you TED

Nods silently

"A circle has no beginning." -Luna Lovegood

the vedanta describes the mind as an abstract concept, different from brain which is the physical organ of our body as of 4 levels. 1. buddhi(intellect) 2. manas(memory) 3. ahamkara(identity or the sense of one-ness) 4. chitta(conciousness)