The body as part of our total self

Friday, March 4, 2022

6 a.m. Looking for a poem on the computer and not finding it – which is disturbing – leads me to go though my three-ring binders of poetry, and leads to my spending a couple of hours putting into alphabetical order those that I haven’t already gathered into collections: The Marsh; An Unsuspected Life; Alien Terrain; Death and Resurrection. At some point I ought to see how to share them, as part of this new transparency thing.

Very well, gentlemen, keeping in mind that we want to let the total self drive, does that mean we want to move beyond you as non-3D extensions of this local reporter? Setting switches to maximize focus, receptivity, clarity, presence.

It is a balancing act, always. For you, for us, for what you are calling the larger being, for what we call a Sam, for layers of organized being at various levels, including – it may surprise you to realize – levels of organization lower than yourself. That is, the cells and organism of the body are part of your total self in a way similar to how they are part o your 3D-level mind.

Hard to imagine how that functions.

It’s the old Cather heresy within you, thinking the soul good and the body evil.

I wasn’t thinking of it like that.

No, of course not, but thinking that non-3D organizes upwards indefinitely and 3D does not is a different form of that same error, you see.

Well, I hadn’t seen. I’m not much up on old heresies, nor on theological interpretation of our human situation.

Al contrario, that’s exactly what you are into, whenever you look into the meaning of life and the world. You may wish to think of it as theology without its having been privatized by churches. It is the most basic of inquiries, and there would be great use in someone summarizing past inquiries for examination in a context that did not presume that only one way of seeing things is implied.

But could such inquiry ever come to a conclusion?

Of course it could; to many conclusions. But they would not be the kind of conclusions that said, or implied, “Believe anything other than this at your peril.” They would set out the way something was seen by this or that group, and why they came to see things that way. (We do not mean the “how” of it, the circumstances that led them to their conclusions, but the “why” of it, the elements of perception and logic that persuaded them.) Then, the objections to that view.

You are describing a scientific approach to theology, sort of.

We are saying that theology – or rather, the subjects theology concentrates on – can only be studied in the same way as other things are studied. To put it too high is to distort everything you look at, and ultimately it is to cause it to be discarded entirely.

As we were writing that, I was thinking of Guy Playfair’s book The Indefinite Boundary, that I am reading with a mixture of interest and impatience. That’s the approach he was taking to the subject of what was called the paranormal.

Well, as you know, investigation of anything beyond consensus models based on materialism was hampered by fears of inadvertently winding up in some form of theological morass. That’s what happens, when you try to make any line of inquire above criticism.

Hmm, and I hear, “science.” What do you mean?

In your time there is a widespread reverence for what is thought of as science, and a growing suspicion of the same complex of thought and inquiry and activity.

Because in effect “science” has become a religion, its theology subject to investigation only through mathematics? That is, because it is seen as a belief-system served by a specially trained priesthood?

You’ve said this yourself, many times, over many years.

Yes, but it is the kind of generalization that is only somewhat true.

Name us a generalization that isn’t only somewhat true.

“This too shall pass”?

Can it be more than only somewhat true, in a reality that is only somewhat real?  Generalizations serve to organize thought, as a sort of shorthand, only don’t let them become strait-jackets.

Which is what happened to theology, I guess. So – looking back – I see that I diverted us by wondering how it could be that our material components could be part of our total self. And I guess a part of my mind must have continued mulling this over, because now I see that yes, I was considering matter as if it were something other than mind-stuff. So of course I’d be surprised that it participated in my larger self, and of course that’s a silly error, obvious once I got to putting together two things I know from different contexts.

Not a “silly” error; there’s plenty of reason for it. But an error, yes.

And you want to talk about our 3D components as they affect our non-3D strivings toward greater awareness?

Yes. And once you remember that your body is sentient intelligence organized in various systems, isn’t it obvious that in disregarding it, you have been hitting on four cylinders out of eight, or three out of six, or whatever?

It is obvious, at any rate, that we aren’t talking to the Tappet Brothers. [I e., Tom and Ray – Click and Clack – from the radio show “Car Talk.”]

Whose analogies are we confined to, after all? Okay, a mutual smile at that. But you see our point.

I do. All this time, I have been regarding the body as something that operates as a drag on the enterprise, an obstacle to be overcome or circumvented or, say, bamboozled into staying out of the way.

Yes, you have. And how has that worked out for you?

Very funny. But it’s even more than not an obstacle, isn’t it? It is a complicated, sophisticated system of awareness that is also oriented in the same way.

Well, let’s say that it can be. It can also be – well, wait.

[Pause]

Consider the body as a part of your awareness performing several specialized functions and in no way operating “on its own,” or for its own reasons. That is, think of your body as the part of your mind that:

• Holds you in one time and place;
• Interacts most closely with the shared subjectivity in its “external” aspects;
• Holds in itself markers to other aspects of your extended self, and interacts with those aspects;
• Has its own needs and preferences, more oriented toward what you would think of as mundane requirements;
• Continually acts to integrate, in the here and now, elements of you that you otherwise might experience only separately, only occasionally.

I have read somewhere that the body may fear death even when the mind does not.

You are actually remembering an experience you had, sailing in a storm.

So I was. That was a long time ago, sometime between 1971 and 1973. It’s true, I commented later that I had seen a split within me. Mentally I didn’t care [if I lived through the experience or not]; physically something very much did care. At least, that’s how I interpreted it at the time.

If you will spell it out for others, it will clarify for yourself, as usual.

And this is worth our time?

Just please do it.

Bob Serina and I went out for a sail from Tampa down Hillsborough Bay and Tampa Bay down toward Sarasota, as I remember. Bob was an experienced sailor. My experience consisted of having read Hornblower novels. But, for a small boat, one experienced hand was enough, right? And, of course, it was his boat, a single-mast sailboat maybe 18 feet long. I’d have to look at my journal from that time, for details. We didn’t have an outboard, I remember.

I can’t remember at the moment how it came about that I wound up at the helm steering through a storm while Bob slept, but that’s what happened. It was nighttime, as I remember, and the only light was the little binnacle  light. I had to keep the sail  looking a certain way – I can’t remember now, but it had something to do with how the sail was, relative to the wind. The word “luff” comes to mind, but not yet connected to anything. Anyway, the storm came up suddenly – it was summertime – and it got wild, quickly. I had to do all these unfamiliar things, coordinating my actions with the elements as experienced, and I really didn’t have the background for that.

Over my mental horizon, I remember, there was a wild, unreasoning panic, and I had to firmly shut the door against that, or we would have been lost. I think (but I may easily be wrong) that was when I observed the split between my mind that was sort of interested in the problem and my body that was saying, “Get me OUT of here!”

You might find it interesting to reread that entry, if only to remember what you didn’t notice at the time, the emotional and other observations you didn’t pay attention to then, that were nonetheless noted and will surface if invited.

But that’s our hour, unless you think we should continue here.

No, this is enough for the moment, Mr. Hornblower. Call it, perhaps, “Bodily awareness.”

That doesn’t seem descriptive enough, nor for that matter allusive enough. How about “The body as part of our total self”?

That would work. It’s up to you.

Our thanks, then, and see you next time.