Toward the Sunny Shore: A Guide to Living Joyfully by Norbert F. Čapek—Chapter 2: Hidden Intelligence

To read about why I’ve begun this ongoing translation project, please lick THIS link. Corrections/alternative suggestions to the translated text from Czech readers/speakers will be most welcomed. Either add them in the comments section below or be in touch with me via the contact form on this blog. I need all the help I can get!

Please remember that this book was written between 1925-1939 when attitudes and ideas about all kinds of things were different to many of those we hold today. Also, recall that our own understandings of how the human body and mind works has undergone many changes since 1939. Consequently, although I have little doubt that we will find in Čapek’s book much that is useful, highly relevant and positive, we’ll also likely find a few things that jar with us, along with some things that seem simply to be wrong. But this is, of course, always the case whenever we are exploring a text written in a different age to our own.

With that caveat made, I hope you enjoy and find interesting and helpful the first-draft translations that appear here, and in subsequent posts over the coming months.

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Source Czech language PDF for this post can be found here.

Norbert F. Čapek
K slunnému brehu
Prúvodce do radostného Zivota

Toward the Sunny Shore

A Guide to Living Joyfully

Nakladatel Edv. Fastr, Praha (1939)

 

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2 — Hidden Intelligence

Comenius’ advice. – How humanity has been discovering and shaping itself for thousands of years. – The discovery of hidden intelligence and its activity within the human body. – The life of cells, glands, the autonomic nervous system, and their influence on mood. – How the subconscious was discovered. – Examples of mastered subconscious. – A summary of findings on the subconscious.

Comenius taught that “it is necessary for a person first and foremost to know themselves, to govern themselves, and to draw benefit from themselves.” He also said, “One finds oneself best within oneself, nowhere else, for then one also easily finds God and everything within oneself.”

If a person succeeds in looking more deeply into their own inner being and discovers at least part of the immense powers of their spirit, they become more capable of drawing benefit from themselves.

In the realm of our being, where we normally do not interfere with reason and will, we discover an intelligence that possesses perfect knowledge of all sciences (chemistry, biology, psychology, mechanics, etc.)—a knowledge to which no human being has consciously attained to date.

It gives the impression that, on a cosmic scale, something happened to humanity similar to what a certain mayor experienced years ago. He was respected, wealthy, and highly educated. While traveling somewhere, he lost consciousness and all memory of who he was and what he was. He disappeared from his family and his hometown, and in the place where this happened, he became a stranger both to himself and to everyone around him.

He had to start everything from scratch. He only knew what he had learned from the time the change happened to him. Although he had a university education, he couldn’t read. He was a skilled technician, but he didn’t understand technology. Instead, he worked as a menial labourer. After four years, under extraordinary circumstances, his memory returned, and he resumed his previous position within his family, his town, and among his acquaintances.

We are drawn to consider that phase when he was unaware of himself, when all his bodily functions worked normally, but the mental content of his previous life was entirely unknown to him. At birth, we are like this man who forgot his past and his identity. We possess immense intelligence with extensive knowledge, yet we consciously begin “with nothing.”

To describe everything that humanity has discovered about itself so far would require many large volumes. Humanity will continue to invent ways to control force and matter, even though its subconscious intelligence has been engaged in this long before.

Let us consider at least some of these matters. When humanity, with great acclaim, invented the photographic lens and camera, it was only a tiny fragment of the knowledge once used in developing eyesight. Long before inventing the telephone and radio receivers, everything was much more perfectly designed within the human body itself, as the entire body is interwoven with the most ingenious system of telegraphy, telephony, and radio. Through ultra-fine connections, countless messages constantly travel from the brain to all parts of the body and back.

Humans might have developed the ability to run as fast as an antelope, fly like a bird, or swim underwater like a fish, but that would have been impractical. Instead, they invented machines. These extend their bodies. They can use them and put them aside. Humanity created ships, airplanes, submarines, devices for seeing across great distances—and we do not know what else they will create.

I was informed by a Czech builder about how the human skeleton is an extraordinarily perfect, light, purposeful, and highly efficient structure and mechanism that also repairs and maintains itself. Alongside countless ingenious mechanisms, the human spirit has created a central repair station, where the necessary parts for renewing the body are delivered and dispatched. It has created a complex sewage system that removes harmful substances from the body, a combustion system akin to a type of crematorium, and, in general, everything necessary for maintaining the body.

What immense intelligence is revealed further in the circulatory system and how it all connects to moods! For example, if someone is in a bad mood and has the necessary instruments, they could measure how the volume of their limbs, particularly the shoulders, decreases, while the volume of their abdomen increases. A similar redistribution of blood to the intestines has been observed in people experiencing fear before surgery.

It has been established that during anxiety and fear, blood shifts not only from the surface of the body to the internal organs but also from the brain. This is why, during a sudden fright, a person faints and ceases to feel pain. In a bad mood, blood accumulates in the internal organs, and if this happens repeatedly, pathological conditions develop. In a good mood, blood moves from the internal organs to the surface, increasing the volume of the shoulders and causing a quicker pulse. This is why, when someone complains that they are often afraid, I ask if they regularly have cold feet. They usually respond that not only their feet but also their hands are cold.

It is remarkable how the body’s organs adapt to habits. What they have been doing for an extended period, they wish to continue doing indefinitely. When someone’s poor mood has caused a pathological condition, the body tries to maintain it, creating a predisposition to bad moods. A bad mood causes further blood congestion in certain organs and insufficient blood flow in others, resulting in irregular blood circulation, so that one part of the body feels cold while another feels hot and sweats. This irregularity further supports bad moods, creating a vicious cycle.

The great yet hidden intelligence of the human spirit is also evident in how perfectly it can process, break down, and decompose food, transforming it into something completely different (flour into blood) while distributing everything proportionally and supplying different organs with the components they need. The spirit takes all the material it receives, subdues it, animates it, and breathes its life and intelligence into every cell of the body.

Within a single body, the human spirit animates and governs more cells than there are people in the world. Each cell is a complete organism. It takes in nourishment, has its own digestion, excretion, and reproduction, and as the famous physiologist Virchow stated, it also has its own “little soul” and an extraordinary ability to adapt to its surroundings, both in form and function.

We might say that every cell, in miniature, represents the entire body, and perhaps even the human being represents the entire universe (a microcosm within the macrocosm).

Cells perform the most diverse duties in the body, both individually and in groups. Some act as reserves, while others produce fluids required by various parts of the body. Some have fixed positions, while others are in constant motion. Some work as messengers, others as cleaners, and still others resemble the police or the army. There are cells that, in cases of injury or when poisonous microbes invade the blood, rush to sacrifice their lives to save the body.

The nerve cells carry messages from parts of the brain and back again. Red blood cells are the body’s common messengers, floating in the arteries and veins, picking up oxygen from the lungs and carrying it to various tissues of the body to revive and strengthen them. On the return journey through the veins, they transport waste from the body, like trading ships carrying one cargo on the way out and another on the way back. Other cells force their way through the walls of arteries, veins, and tissues to take the shortest route to places where repairs are needed.

At every moment, some cells are being born, while others are dying. Every part of the body is constantly changing, and its tissue is being renewed. Skin, bones, hair, and muscles are continually being repaired or rebuilt. If the body is injured, the wound bleeds and hurts. The nerves report this to the brain’s central command and urgently call for help. The subconscious intelligence immediately summons workers, who rush to the site of the pain. Meanwhile, blood flows from the wound, washing away foreign substances that entered the body and could cause poisoning. On contact with air, the blood coagulates and forms a patch. Millions of blood cells hurry to repair the damage and reconnect the disrupted tissue. Cells on both sides of the wound begin multiplying into millions and move from all directions to meet in the center of the wound. It may appear chaotic, but in a short time, it becomes evident that everything was directed toward a specific goal. Once the necessary internal work is complete, the blood vessels, nerves, and tissue fully repaired, the skin cells begin finishing the magnificent task, creating new skin, and soon it is impossible to tell where the wound had been.

Let us also note the activity of the endocrine glands (glands with internal secretion) and the autonomic nervous system. These glands are tiny bodies. As recently as the last century, scholars believed they were useless in the body. However, their influence is unbelievably great. The thyroid gland, for example, produces a tiny amount of a chemical substance called thyroxine. If the body receives too little thyroxine, hair falls out, the skin dries and hardens, the entire body weakens, and the mind dulls. However, if there is even slightly more thyroxine than normal, a person becomes irritable, nervous, fearful, has difficulty breathing, an increased appetite, yet remains undernourished.

Similarly, other glands also have a tremendous impact on the body. A variety of mental and physical states are caused by them. It is especially remarkable that these glands can be noticeably influenced by mental changes. Every deep emotion affects one of them. In other words, the chemistry of the entire body can be fundamentally altered by various mental states.

Just as these glands affect mood, so too does mood affect them. Therefore, some argue that moods arise solely from physical states, while others believe they stem entirely from mental causes. The truth is that mental states influence the body, and likewise, the body influences mental life. Additionally, both physical and mental (psychic) states can be influenced by the spirit.

As with the glands, the autonomic nervous system also has a significant impact on the body’s health and mood. It controls the body’s internal organs—heart, intestines, and so on—and regulates muscles that are not under our voluntary control. When we want to raise an arm or cross a room, this decision is made by our will. In such a case, the brain signals the nerves and muscles of the arm and legs to carry out our intention. Nothing similar occurs with the autonomic nervous system. It does not act on impulses of our will, and if we attempt to focus on it clumsily, we can disrupt its activity.

The autonomic nervous system is extremely sensitive to mental states. Fear, agitation, and sadness have an extremely adverse effect on its functioning. Intense mental states, such as great fear or sudden anger, can even stop its activity altogether. In psychological laboratories, it has been experimentally demonstrated that strong emotions can halt digestion, which is governed by the autonomic nervous system.

Let us remember that it is not only the endocrine glands and the autonomic nervous system, but the entire body, with all its parts and functions, that is influenced by mental states.

Just as we distinguish between two nervous systems, we similarly differentiate between two aspects of the soul, to the extent that it gives the impression of two distinct mental agents. In reality, these are merely two poles of the same spirit: the conscious pole and the subconscious pole. Broadly speaking, the conscious pole encompasses rational activity, will and decision-making, control of the hands, legs, and various other bodily organs. Muscles controlled by the conscious pole differ in color and shape from those governed by the subconscious pole. This subconscious pole influences the internal organs, such as the complex processes involved in digestion, the functioning of the heart, breathing, the activities of the liver, kidneys, intestines, and so on.

We refer to all the activities of the subconscious pole of the soul simply as the subconscious. Let us recall what led psychologists to recognize the existence of the subconscious.

First: forgetting. Where has what we have forgotton gone, and where does it come from when we remember it again?

Second: all internal bodily processes, such as breathing, heartbeat, and so on, continue while we sleep or are unconscious. Sometimes people even solve difficult problems in their sleep and realize this upon waking.

Third: during a fever, people recount things of which they are unaware in their normal state of consciousness. A well-known case involves a girl who, while unconscious in hospital, recited long passages in Hebrew and Greek. When she recovered, she could not recall a single word in either language. It was discovered that she had worked for a clergyman who read aloud from these languages every morning for half an hour. His voice reached the kitchen where the girl worked. There was no trace of conscious learning or memory of these languages. In her fever, when her ordinary consciousness was suppressed and inactive, her subconscious released content it had absorbed unknowingly.

Fourth: similar cases are known among hypnotized individuals who, in a deep trance, speak of things they have no awareness of when conscious. Often, after waking, they refuse to believe what they said.

Fifth: another fact is post-hypnotic suggestion. A hypnotized person is told that an hour after waking from hypnosis, they will place a chair on a table. After waking, they have no memory of the instruction, yet an hour later, they will go and place the chair on the table.

Sixth: further evidence can be seen in the behaviour of people who have been put to sleep with chloroform or similar methods.

Based on these experiences, psychologists concluded that alongside ordinary consciousness, whose content is known to the individual, there exists a subconscious realm, whose content is unknown. And it is precisely this unknown content that often has significant importance for a person’s health and mood.

To summarize briefly and comprehensively, the subconscious domain includes the control centre for the autonomic nervous system and everything associated with the functioning of the heart, kidneys, liver, breathing, digestion, and so on. Additionally, everything we have ever forgotten is stored in our subconscious. We can take in new information because the subconscious stores what we do not currently need. There, like in an archive, everything remains until it is recalled by some suitable method.

In our subconscious are also events we wished to forget, either because they troubled us or because they were unpleasant. We do not want to remember them, and so through gradual suppression, they pass from consciousness into the subconscious.

In our subconscious, there may also be impressions of experiences that never entered our conscious awareness, as evidenced by the following fact: People who have been in accidents, such as car collisions, remember everything that happened to them before the accident, but they have no idea what occurred during the time they were unconscious. No matter how hard they try, they cannot recall it. However, if they are placed under hypnosis, it is possible to retrieve from their subconscious all the details of what happened to them and around them while they were unconscious.

Finally, the subconscious is a repository of biological memory. We carry within us the memory of all the generations with which we are physically connected. This memory relates to the evolutionary journey that a particular lineage has undergone. For instance, in some lineages, people are tall or short, light-skinned or dark-skinned, have broad or narrow faces, and so on. If a lineage has been shaped over time by a specific culture, the traits of that culture are evident in their physical appearance. This is biological memory. (At this point, I set aside pure psychological memory, which pertains to the mental development that occurs before birth.)

What does this description of the subconscious realm of our soul reveal? Above all, that humans contain within themselves an immensely rich and complex world; that we are aware of only a tiny part of ourselves; and that the combined understanding of all scholars over thousands of years has uncovered only a small fraction of what occurs in the human mind and body.

Something magnificent and supremely intelligent is happening within us. Our reason and will generally do not contribute to it, and yet it is we who perform it—no one else. However, when we say “we,” it refers to a much broader domain than what we typically consider ourselves to be—it is vastly more than what we consciously do.

If we knew ourselves better and the vast realm of our intelligence, which is connected with the universal intelligence working throughout nature, how beautiful, agile, youthful, and healthy our bodies would remain, even into old age!

We could speak of the strange division within the human spirit, which is evident in the fact that our consciousness knows so little of the many things happening within us and to us, and learns only laboriously and imperfectly about what occurs in the realm of the subconscious.

Personal consciousness is merely a function, and the most recent achievement, of the human spirit. Humanity has been so dazzled by this new gift that it saw and recognized nothing else for a long time. And when it began to make discoveries, it did not realize it was simply discovering itself. 

This breadth of our spirit’s intelligence led to the assumption that it was the direct intervention of God Himself and not of our own doing. This is contradicted by the fact that this subconscious intelligence can be misled by errors in our reasoning and will, especially through the power of suggestion.

Among many examples, we will simply mention one instance of this confusion. The renowned doctor and scholar Karel Schleich, a student of the famous physiologist Virchow, recounts the following: A very wealthy businessman, who personally managed his office, came to me one day, pleading desperately for me to amputate his entire hand. He said he had pricked his finger with a pen and was certain he would die of blood poisoning. I would have laughed if the fear-stricken expression on his face had not stifled all mirth. He explained that he had already visited several leading surgeons, all of whom refused to amputate his hand. He begged me to take pity on him and remove his arm at the shoulder, claiming that it was already throbbing and aching. I had no choice but to send him home with the kindest and most reassuring words I could muster. 

That same evening, I visited him and found no signs of fever, swelling, or inflammation at the small wound, which I had thoroughly cleaned, drained, and dressed. Yet, he was highly agitated and exclaimed, “Why won’t you amputate my hand? I could still be saved.”

The next morning, he was dead. My colleague, Dr. Langerhans, performed an autopsy. There was no infection, no blood poisoning, not even the slightest cause of death. My diagnosis: death from hysteria.

“How are we to explain these things?” asks Dr. Schleich. He goes on to elaborate using further examples, explaining in detail how an idea can manifest itself and the tremendous capability of the human spirit. Were it not for the examples that clearly demonstrate the extensive potential of the human spirit, and also its significant errors, we might think that these occurrences were the work of a deity outside ourselves.

I mention these errors of the human spirit only to emphasize even more its great and untapped potential. This is our portion of divinity, and it depends on us how rightly and abundantly we utilize this gift.

The subconscious realm of our spirit sometimes resembles an unguarded castle. If its owner does not care for it, it can easily become a playground for unwanted forces, or even a storage room for discarded things. However, there are ways to prevent this, to control one’s subconscious and consciously create one’s moods. In this way, a person becomes the true master of their innermost home, even under the most challenging circumstances.

There are remarkable cases of the magnificent application of this principle. A certain professor returned from the war terribly broken and now lives with a series of prosthetics, yet as a literary historian he inspires others with his learning and poetic inspiration.

There is a well-known Czech historian who nearly lost his sight. For ten years, he did not read any books; his wife read aloud to him. In addition, he fell ill with a spinal disease and was forced to lie motionless for many months. He even had to be fed. Yet, during these ten years of physical helplessness, he became a prominent artistic figure known throughout Europe, bearing his fate with remarkable composure; he worked, read, thought, and dictated.

The American Helen Keller lost her sight and hearing at an early age. People communicated with her through signals tapped into her palm. However, she found an extraordinary teacher, Miss Sullivan, who devoted herself entirely to her and transformed this woman, living in perpetual darkness, into a person who could speak, understand languages, study, and even write. Helen married and, among other beautiful books, wrote one of particular value: “On Optimism.”

These champions of life can often serve as role models for those of us who are healthy. But I ask: must a person be cruelly afflicted with some physical disibility in order to access untapped realms of the spirit and apply their abilities to a greater extent than is customary?

Summarizing our current knowledge of the subconscious, we find:

1) Each of us possesses powers and intelligence akin to the might and wisdom of the Highest.

2) A person can either disrupt these abilities of their soul or use them to their benefit.

3) The better we understand these powers, the more capable we become of creating joyful moods and maintaining health, vitality, and flexibility well into old age.