Meditations 6-senses

"For I knew by experience that these ideas came upon me utterly without my consent, to the extent that, which as I may, I could not sense any object unless it was present to a sense organ. Nor could I fail to sense it when it was present. And since the ideas perceived by sense were much more vivid and explicit and even, in their own way, more distinct than any of those that I deliberately and knowingly formed through meditation or that I found impressed on my memory, it seemed impossible that they came from myself. Thus the remaining alternative was that they came from other things. Since I had no knowledge of such things except from those same ideas themselves, I could not help entertaining the thought that they were similar to those ideas."

Here Descartes clearly realizes that mind and body (senses) are two separate things. He doesn't know how but he knows that he alone does not think of certain things that come into his head, and thats where the mind plays a role. They are different, but one needs the other to work. I don't think the mind could work without the body, and the body could work without the mind.