The connection back from Bergson, if not Boethius, might be facilitated by 
this, "On the Soul and Its Origins," as relevant to what we can call the 
"empirical" evidence of a mind-body disconnect, or the feeling that 
consciousness or mentation or cogitation defies temporal/spatial boundaries 
or limitations:

We often assume that we shall retain a thing in our memory; and so thinking, 
we do not write it down.  But afterwards, when we wish to recall it, it 
refuses to come to mind; and we are then sorry that we thought it would 
return to memory, or that we did not secure in writing so as to prevent its 
escape; and lo, on a sudden, without our seeking it, it occurs to us.  Then 
does it follow that we were not ourselves when we thought this?  And that we 
cease to be the same thing that we were, when we are no longer able to think 
it?  Now how does it happen that I know not how we are abstracted from, and 
denied to, ourselves; and similarly am ignorant of how we are restored and 
returned to ourselves?  As if were are other persons, and elsewhere, when we 
seek, but fail to find, what we deposited in our memory; and are ourselves 
incapable of returning to ourselves, as if were were situated somewhere 
else; but afterwards return again, on finding ourselves out.  For where do 
we make our quest, except in our own selves?  And what is it we search for, 
except our own selves?  As if we were not actually at home in our persons, 
but had gone somewhither.
                                     -- Augustine, On the Soul and Its 
Origins, ch. 10 (NPNF trans.)
Or else:

... that celesitall power, to whom the care
Of life, and generation of all
That liues, pertains in charge particulare,
Who wondrous things concerning our welfare,
And straunge phantomes doth let vs oft forsee,
And oft of secret ill bids vs beware:
That is our Selfe,...                                  (FQ II.xii.47)



On Fri, 18 May 2007 11:19:50 -0400
  "James C. Nohrnberg" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>   
> The mind is the wings of the body, but if the earthbound body is a prison, 
>because it cannot itself grow wings, then it is the soul or mind that takes 
>those flights we read about in Dante's third canticle and An Hymne of 
>Heavenly Beavtie.  The poet of the latter summons his mind to its own 
>rapturous transcendence of the visible cosmos, starting from this:  "Thence 
>gathering plumes of perfect speculation, / To impe the wings of thy high 
>flying mynd, / Mount up aloft through heauenly contemplation, / For this 
>darke world, whose damps the soule do blynd, / And like the natiue brood of 
>Eagles kynd, / On that bright Sunne of glorie fixe thine eyes, / Clear'd 
>from  grosse mists of fraile infirmities."  The common element here is 
>NeoPlatonic because it is Boethian:  Boethius is found in Dante's heavens, 
>and Spenser's precursor Chaucer and his sovereign Elizabeth had both 
>rendered him into English.  To quote the relevant passages from more recent 
>versions:
> 
> "But if the mind [anima] stays conscious when it is freed from the earthly 
>prison and seeks out heaven in freedom, surely it will despise every 
>earthly affair.  In the experience of heaven it will rejoice in its 
>delivery from earthly things.  (II.vii, tr. V.E. Watts; or; "But if the 
>soul, in full awareness of its virtue, is feeed from this earthly prison 
>and goes to heaven, does it not disregard all earthly concerns and, in the 
>enjoyment of heaven, find its satisfaction in being separated from earthly 
>things?" [tr. Richard Green])
> 
> I [Philosophy] will give your mind wings on which to lift itself; all 
>disquiet shall be driven away and you will be able to return savely to your 
>homeland.  I will be your guide, your path and your conveyance.  'For I 
>have swift and speedy wings / With which to mount the lofty skies, / And 
>when thy mind has put them on / The earth below it will despise: / It 
>mounts the air sublunary / And far behind the clouds it leaves; / It passes 
>through the sphere of fire / Which from the ether heat receives, / Unitl it 
>rises to the stars, / With Phoebus there to join its ways, / Or Saturn cold 
>accompany / As soldier of his shining rays.  /  Wherever night is spangled 
>bright / The orbit of a star it takes, / And when the orbit's path is done 
>/ The furthest heaven it forsakes. ...  If there the pathway brings you 
>back -- /  The path you lost and seek anew -- /  Then, "I remember," you 
>will say, / "My home , my source, my ending too."  /  And if you choose to 
>seek again / The lightless earth which you have left, / Dictators whom the 
>people fear,  / Will outcasts seem of home bereft."  (IV.i) (Trans. V.E. 
>Watts).
> 
> Dealing with the powers of the mind as recollective, Bergson says: "In 
>amnesias of the first type, which are nearly always the result of a violent 
>shock, I incline to think that the memories which are apparently destroyed 
>are really present, and not only present but acting.  To take an example 
>frequently borrowed from Forbes Winslow, that of a patient who had 
>forgotten the letter F, and the letter F only, I wonder how it is possible 
>to subtract a given letter wherever met with,--to detach it, that is, from 
>the spoken or written words in which it occurs,--if it were not first 
>implicitly recognized.  In another case cited by the same author, the 
>patient had forgotten languages he had learnt and poems he had written. 
> Having begun to write again, he reproduced nearly the same lines." 
> (_Matter and Memory_) But the Plato who begins from the Meno might have a 
>different or more 
> ultimate explanation of inverse amnesia, as the recovery not of the 
>earthly past, but of the unearthly one.
> 
> -- Jim N.
> 
> On Fri, 18 May 2007 09:46:40 +0100
>  Penny McCarthy <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> Thank you for the discussion. I’m very drawn to Henri Bergson’s account of
>> things – ‘Matter and Memory’ (‘Matière et mèmoire’, as translated by N.M.
>> Paul and W.S. Palmer, Zone Books, 1991.) I’m still struggling through it,
>> trying to unhook myself from my dualist education. And Michael Frayn’s 
>>‘The
>> Human Touch’ is a good antidote to all befuddlement.
>> 
>> Penny.
>> 
> 
> [log in to unmask]
> James Nohrnberg
> Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
> Univ. of Virginia
> P.O Box 400121
> Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121

[log in to unmask]
James Nohrnberg
Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
Univ. of Virginia
P.O Box 400121
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121