Friday, May 06, 2005

More on spirits and bodies

The relationship of spirit and body is a complex one, and I can say that my own understanding just seems to get more complicated as I go along! There are many, as we mentioned above, who in principle simply do not have a place for spirit in their model of the person. The person, for such folks, is basically a fancy machine, the main computer of which is the brain, which through various chemical processes, genetic protein signatures and electromagnetic considerations generates a personality. This personality can itself in turn be modified, enhanced, controlled or subdued, by the introduction of various substances and influences much the same as car performance can be enhanced or diminished with fuel, additives, etc.

The reduction of the person to the sum of the machine parts is found wanting on numerous counts, some of which I have already mentioned in earlier posts. The problem is, this machine seems to have a mind of its own! Furthermore, there are some fine examples in the medical literature which certainly put the brain in its place, as it were. My favorite is an article called, “Is Your Brain Really Necessary?” (World Medicine, May 3, 1980, p.2 and 22-24, No. 15, Vol. 13--or 15--...can’t tell for sure from the handwriting). I thank Tom Myer’s for turning me on to that one. In it, some British researchers exploring issues of hydrocephalus and adults with larger-than-average heads find to their utter surprise and shock, through brain imaging technology, that a number of people, fully functional folks, who participated in their study, didn’t have brains inside their heads, to put it bluntly. One fellow, a master’s degree holder from down the hall, in fact had a mere milimeter or two of cortex lining his braincase, with a whole lot of fluid sloshing around inside his head instead, and didn’t seem the worse for wear. While some may say that the exception proves the point, in an instance such as this, the exception busts the model, in my opinion. Not to say that if you had a brain and took it away, you wouldn’t miss it, but if you didn’t start out with one, well, what you ain’t got, you don’t miss. Perhaps the brain is really just a crutch. It may be the water that makes us tick at a physical level, and the meaty stuff is all just artifact of the flow.

I also look to the dead to bolster my case for the existence and primacy of spirit, in contrast to those who hold that the person is basically comprised of meat-as-machine. Having spent ten years or so popping in and out of cadaver laboratories teaching workshops and exploring the wonders of human form with my fellow somanauts, it’s safe to say that the dead have taught me a few things, in addition to the living. When you spend a bit of time engaged in the study of human form in the model of the cadaver, or even if you have simply gone to a family wake and viewed the “remains” of the deceased friend or relative, you are invariably impressed by how lifeless the dead are. Something big is missing there, as compared with the living. What is missing? What is life? What is spirit? Who am I? What is my body? What is the relationship between my body and my consciousness when you are alive, and what change takes place when your body is dead?

I may not attempt to answer all of these questions in the following post --they are the stuff of lifetimes of consideration. Let’s just say that if the body is merely a machine, and my personality and consciousness even are merely functions of the machine, well, there shouldn’t be much difference between the living and the dead. But there is a difference. A big difference! You are, I am, we are, brilliantly, shiningly, thrillingly alive! Life is the deus ex machina of the mechanists model of the body/person: without it, they’ve got nothing but a rotting corpse. Yet the model has virtually nothing to say about the nature of life itself. On and on it will go about mechanisms, processes, and “active ingredients,” but as for life itself, that gooey stuff is left to the philosophy and religion departments to quibble about. You’ll notice, however, that the grant money isn’t flowing to those corners of the campus! The mechanists desparately need life, but they’ve pulled the wool over there own eyes and refused to open them to the truth of life in their midst. Life is that spiritual dimension that makes meat come alive. When the spirit blows out of the form, the physical materials resolve to different levels of order and existence, to be taken up at the whim and will of spirit once again.

When I see the human form in the cadaver, I see a mirror in which I am reflected, and I also see the stunning and stark contrast of the living and the dead. I feel my vitality within myself and notice the lack of it there on the table. I compare myself favorably on that count! Life in a body is a rich and potent gift, however fleeting. What is missing from the cadaver is the particular spirit of the soul which animated that form and contributed to its shape and qualities through their intent and their experiences. It’s not that the body is broken so there is no more personality being generated there. Cadavers have personalities of their own, to be sure. Rather, Elvis has left the building! The animating element has blown elsewhere, and left the shell behind, like a runner who has kicked off hi/r shoes, or a hermit crab moved on to larger quarters. I’m going to go spend some time with Karen, and will come back to this in the next post! Nighty night!

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

What is a whole person, anyway?

I articulated above a “three bodies (+ three etherics)” model of the form of the whole person. But a whole person is more than that! A whole person must be understood to include spirit as well: a person is body (broadly understood to include these several bodies and etherics) and spirit. Spirit is the undying aspect of the self. These bodies can and do pass away, but our spirit is everlasting. The bodies pass away in the sense that they can be shed like the layers of an onion, but at the core of the onion is light. The frequency of that light/spirit is modulated or “flavored” by the layers which have accumulated around it, and the light retains those nuances even after the layers have been peeled. The light shines the brightest and truest when the layers are shed, and at the same time the flavoring/frequency modulation arrived at throught the experience of the human forms is valued and in fact intended by the source of all. To the extent that the spirit retains the frequency modulation obtained through the experience of the form, you might say that the body forms of the person, or the “personality,” lives on. However, I will resist overating the personality here!

The personality, as we generate it and generally experience it, is one of the most overated aspects of the whole person going in our culture! Commonly understood in humanistic atheistic scientistic public culture today, the body is a machine, the personality is a function of the brain, and the spirit is a myth attributed to the first two by ignorant religionists. It’s safe to assume I am wanting to develop a somewhat different train of thought and experience here! I have already given some attention in an earlier post to the fallacy of attributing truth to a model once its functionality has been demonstrated. I discussed this in terms of the mechanical model of the body subscribed to somewhat dogmatically by establishment scientific and medical culture. Viewing the body through the lense of the mechanistic model does not legitimize the conclusion that the body is a machine any more than viewing the world through purple sunglasses permits the conclusion that the world is in fact purple, and nothing but.

That the personality is commonly believed to be a function of the brain you can readily conclude by flipping through the psychology department listings in a university course catalogue, or reviewing the dissertation topics of a recent crop of psychology Ph.D. candidates. It is true that personality can be modified through injury to the brain or by tinkering with the brain's pharmacopia with psychoactive drugs or exogenous electromagnetic frequencies. It is also true that one can correllate certain thoughts and activities and emotional experiences with localized and mappable neuronal firing. It is not fair to conclude from these injuries or tinkerings or mappings, however, that the personality is therefore merely a function of the physical brain, or conversely and also erroneously, that the personality as a function of the magnificently wonderous human brain is therefore implicitly deserving of exceedingly high regard and esteem.

If a car has a flat tire or throws a fan belt, or if someone tosses a monkey wrench into the works, pours water in the oil reservoir, gas in the radiator and oil in the wiper washer fluid container, the vehicle performance will be substantially altered. We cannot conclude from this that the driver is a bad driver or that the driver no longer exists in virtue of the car’s total breakdown (though we may suggest the driver hire a new mechanic!). In fact, it's quite possible for the car to be totalled and the driver to walk away without a scratch. Likewise, if a surgeon in an emergency needs to perform an operation with a Swiss army knife, cloth bandages from a ripped shirt, a straight needle and thread from a sewing travel kit, a pen and a pocket lighter, hi/r skills may not reach the height of their expression under the circumstances. The surgeon may enjoy the challenge, however, as a test of skill under duress, and take pride in the accomplishment of the surgery performed, even while the execution was limited by the material circumstances. In the same way, the vehicle of the brain can distort the soul’s expression through a personality according to the limits of its material condition, and the instrument of a particular physical brain may represent a rudimentary tool for an advanced personality or mature spirit, yet these are the kinds of challenges spirits incarnating frequently choose to face as a test of skill, a learning opportunity, or a means to achieve balance relative to other experiences previously generated.

The error of the “scientific” community’s reduction of the personality to brain function is like mistaking the rider for the horse, or more accurately, the rider’s costume for the horse--a more ridiculous error still. That’s because the personality itself, like a costume for the spirit, represents an accumulation of thought forms and experiences, a “totality of elementals,” some of which are handsome and others in bad taste, in which the spirit/soul has outfitted itself. The personality is a work in progress, and will be differentially mature, dependent upon the level of mastery you have achieved. The personality will also be channelled and expressed relative to the particular endowment of the given physical body (brain and all!). That’s quite a bunch of variables. And should the physical body (the horse) expire, the psychical body and the noetical body continue to represent more costuming particular to the rider characteristic of hi/r choice in clothing, as it were.

Whenever we are expressing a personality with a physical body, the thought forms, whether emotion-thoughts, or thought-emotions, which accumulate to us, and which we generate willy nilly or conscientiously, must be dealt with on the terms of the particular physical endowment. The physical form serves as a lense with which to focus and interpret a personality on the part of an incarnating spirit. The spirit can no more be reduced to the terms of the body than can the personality be reduced to the terms of the body, and the spirit likewise cannot be reduced to the terms of the personality. This is about ordering perceptions. You cannot look at a person’s physical body alone and conclude something definitively about their spirit, and you cannot look at a person’s personality and conclude something definitively about their spirit either, any more than you can conclude definitively about the heart of the rider by analyzing their horse or outfit. Clothes really don't "make the man," at least in this case.

For those who can grasp that the body is a gift, and that expressing through one is a bit of performance art for a spirit dressing in the outfits of personality, accumulated in the wardrobe of life experience, this all makes a lot of sense! On these terms, the spirit in union with the human forms (physical/etheric, psychical/etheric and noetical/etheric) consititute a whole person incarnate. The personality of the whole person, we encounter as the accumulation of the thought forms and experiences of that spirit interpreted through the endowment of those particular forms. Where a body is “broken,” limit cycles of an additional order are placed upon the interpretation.

As for the spirit itself being nothing more than a bit of fluff and fancy sprinkled upon the passing “meat” of reality, well, everybody is entitled to their delusion, I guess! All I can say is that the atheistic humanistic scientistic materialists of our popular and public culture are in for a pleasant surprise upon the death of their physical bodies! Such belief systems are sometimes necessitated by an otherwise tentative commitment to the incarnational process. For many, the challenges of life would seem overwhelming if they could readily remember how sweet life can be without a body, and they might attempt to escape the opportunities of their own spiritual design if they dared to entertain such an option. Temporary forgetting is actually a highly functional choice, and should be respected by others. It is less important that everyone grasp the ins and outs of the incarnational processes than that they develop for themselves a compelling rationalle for embarking upon a path of self mastery and service!

Monday, May 02, 2005

Introduction to the body-model of the whole person

Ah, it's nice to be back at my desk in NJ, without the pressure of an internet kiosk waiting for another buck, clicking off seconds while my post is loading, possibly kicking me off line and disappearing an hours worth of writing! Whew!

I have, in the last bunch of posts, introduced a whole bunch of language in a sort of casual manner and without much explanation, knowing that I would have to come back to the terms and explain something of what I mean by them. Sometimes that's a choice I have to make in order to continue a strand of thought without running off on explanatory tangents, and now is a good time to double back and make more sense of the references. I have used three categories in particular, namely the physical, the psychical, and the noetical, to reference levels of the person.

I have already gone on a bit regarding models as such, as well as described a model for the path of self mastery, namely the six pointed star. In the first chapter of my other online book,
  • Integral Anatomy
  • , I explain these levels of the person using the language and model of the body, adapting the terms and categories of Daskolos to my own understandings. So I footnote Daskalos, aka Stylianos Ateshlis, as well as the works of Kyriacos Markides here, and acknowledge that I am not always exactly clear what they mean by these terms, but I have borrowed them, and I know what I mean by them! Perhaps we mean the same thing, and I have borrowed the meaning as well, in which case I'm happy to credit them for that as well, but if I've got it all wrong relative to their meanings, I am more than happy to take responsibility for the meanings I have layered into their terms. Got that?!

    So rather than reinventing the wheel here, I am going to paste in slightly modified sections from Chapter One of Integral Anatomy where I outline a model of the whole person based on a three-body perspective, those being the physical body (which I am committed to explore at length in the subsequent chapters of Integral Anatomy), the psychical body and the noetical body, the details of the latter two being more carefully explored in The Heart of Service.

    The model of the body implicit in the concept of the whole person includes several specific bodies, and together they constitute the human body fully understood. The physical body, the psychical body, and the noetical body together make up the whole human body. As noted above, I borrow freely from esoteric traditions here as well as studies in psychodynamics, because I find the categories provide useful leverage points for opening up that pandora’s box which is the human form. One point common to many esoteric traditions is that the physical form of the human body coexists with an etheric form, sometimes called the "etheric body" or the "etheric double." Physical death involves not only the dissolution of the physical form but the etheric form of the physical body as well. In these traditions the etheric form is usually understood to be an energetic pattern or matrix within which the physical form itself is built up. The etheric double of the physical body does not represent “the soul,” but rather simply a mold. On this view, the physical form corresponds exactly to and is very much the artifact of the etheric double of the physical body. Certainly any scientist who may be reading here must shudder at the resurrection of a term so seemingly archaic and politically discredited as “etheric.” I would say that it is no more preposterous a notion than that of “the vacuum of space,” that deus ex machina of physics computations, and that it is highly serviceable for modelling human form! The etheric double when posited renders certain realities explicable (to be discussed later --later in Integral Anatomy, that is-- eg. ageing, nerve function, phantom pain, self anaesthesia, etc.) which might otherwise escape explanation. Consider it for now as a place-holder in the realm of the “commonly unknown,” but not unknowable.

    The psychical body proper, which like the physical body also has its corresponding etheric counterpart, is also a real human body (it’s not a dog or cow, after all!). It has form. It is composed of those emotional patterns and dispositions which constitute the emotional life of a person. It helps here to be able to extend one’s general concept of form to include aspects of our common reality like emotions and thought which are outside of the range of what we generally refer to as physical. The very tenuous and spacious nature of matter as energy revealed by modern physics should at the very least stimulate the imagination as to the possibility that emotion and thought could also have form, even if of a more spacious quality than physical matter per se. Something need not be “physical” to have form. A form only becomes “physical” when it has slowed to a certain rate of vibration and in so doing accumulated/congealed “material/energy/etheric substance” to an extent that it begins to reflect physical light and have other properties that we commonly associate with physical “stuff,” like tri-dimensionality and relative bump-into-ability. The psychical body “outlives” the physical body as it is not subject to deterioration in the manner that the physical body is. The implication here would be that our accomplishments with regards to emotional development, the disciplines and maturity whereby our emotional life is rendered more and more coherent, organized and clear, are "heavenly treasures" which, unlike physical riches, can indeed accompany us beyond physical death. On the “down side,” the emotional turmoil produced by an untutored and reactive emotional life can generate burdens and liabilities which will require balancing beyond the temporally structured terms of a given physical life. During physical life, there is an intimate relationship between the physical and psychical bodies, each built up within its respective etheric counterpart. The characteristics of that relationship are unique to each individual and make for a fascinating exploration. What is the relationship between my physical and emotional life? How do my responsibilities as regards my physical and emotional life differ? What is the relationship between my emotional life and my physical shape and genetic expression? These and other similar questions are fair game for the common discourse of integral anatomy, as well as conversations revolving around the path of self mastery and service. The study of physical anatomy can function as a lever to understanding our psychical form. Likewise, the integration of the body of our emotions can transform our experience of our physical body.

    The noetical body and its etheric counterpart constitute the body of ideas, concepts and principles which both precede and “outlive” even the psychical body. The noetical body itself is a function of pure thought. It affords definition and direction and purpose to the specific project of a spirit incarnating. I have already made some reference to Machael Small Wright and her Co-Creative Science in an earlier post, and apply her concepts here to help explain the qualities and character of the noetical body. With respect to our human body, its noetical form is made up of the definitions of movement or digestion or the principles of sensation or immune responsiveness, which are antecedant requirements to subsequent psychical and physical movement, sensation, etc. As a matter of fact, the noetical body as compared to the physical or even the emotional body is decidedly abstract by its very nature. Fortunately, there are two related "leverage points" for filling in the entailments of the noetical body as part of the model of the whole human form. They can help us “get a grip” on the noetical body.

    First, the capacity to provide "definition and direction and purpose" is the particular endowment of human intelligence, as compared to the intelligences of nature under the auspices of which the "matter, means and action" are organized to fulfill such purposes. (do put Co-Creative Science on your reading list!) If the whole human form is a garden and spirit is the gardener, the noetical body would be the set of plans defining what kind of a garden the specific body is to be, its general purpose, and the more particular purposes of the varied elements out of which it is composed. The capacity to generate the definitions and purposes whereby a form so spectacular as a physical human body might come into existence seem far, far beyond our typical endowment of human intelligence. Such capacity humans generally regard as divine, and the prerogative of a creator. I should say they regard it as divine in enlightened moments only. From my confessedly esoteric religious perspective, there is little more utterly ridiculous than to assume that the phenomena of life which fill our planet, including the miracle of our own bodies, are the fruit of accidents of lightning strikes on primordial soup and subsequent natural selection and survival of the fittest. Left to its own devices, the primordial soup would, I guarantee, be inedible!

    Although I in no way regard myself as a “creationist” of the fundamentalist christian pole of the infamous debate, I do have sympathy for their scepticism regarding the brute stupidity out of which the cohorts of Darwin’s legacy purport the world to have evolved. Some like myself perceive the sheer counterentropic tendency of life and the magnitude of organization it represents to indicate an awesome and intelligent precedent. One need not align with an equally mindless biblical literalism or doggedly refuse to acknowledge the most basic discoveries of mechanistic science or the geological record to reverently and mindfully acknowledge the source of all, should the recognition of its loving omnipresence pleasingly dawn upon you!

    Further contemplation might even allow for the identification of that creative source within ourselves, should one permit a truly grand expansion of what one considers one’s “circle of possibilities.” I know there is company out there among intelligent, spiritually active people--think Mathew Fox or the legacy of Teilhard de Chardin--who refuse to succumb either to the dogmas of atheistic scientism or those of fundamentalist biblicalism! Speak up, wherever you are! The plans for our body come to us as a gift. Yet admitting the humble exersize of our own abilities, it is in the very image and likeness of the source of those “master plans” that we qualify and alter and individuate our general endowment with our own definitions, directions and purposes, which we generate throughout the whole course of our lifetime. In so doing, our noetical bodies assume form peculiar to the character of our own chosen purposes, and the impact “trickles down” to our psychical and physical structures. We define our very selves, and step, consciously or unconsciously, into the role of co-creators of our given lives. Thus our noetical bodies are comprised of the general set of principles and definitions which give rise to our psychical and physical bodies, as well as the particular set of purposes and directions supplied by our own selves for our lives.

    Now for the second point with which to fill in the entailments of the noetical body as part of the model of the whole human form: when I consciously generate freely chosen thought forms of specific and positive intent and support them with honest, heart felt emotion, I am aligned with a method for moving mountains and manifesting a new creation. I am freely exercising my endowment of human intelligence in a manner that develops my noetical body and rightly orders my psychical and physical bodies to align with my conscious intent. On the contrary, when I randomly react emotionally, generating charged but unconscious, undisciplined, and spurious emotion-thought forms, I set myself up for more distorted emotional experiences and inner turmoil which have ramifications for my physical health and well being. Thought as the lapdog of emotion is a formula for disaster! Further, when I play the victim to my physical impulses and subsume my free will and purposes to the peculiar qualities of my physical endowment, I abdicate my responsibility as co-creator of my life and subject myself to the undirected vagueries of a horse with an incompetent rider. If the rider does not direct the horse according to hi/r proper role in the mutually cooperative endeavor of a walkabout on planet earth, the horse will munch, romp, meander and mate, it is true. That’s about all that happens when destiny is left to the impulses of the horse, and the rider won’t get very far down the path.

    The capacity to supply definition, direction and purpose are talents to be developed. The proper domain of such talents is the noetical body. We are granted free will to excersize these talents and enjoy such freedom to the extent that we recognize and acknowledge and accept responsibility for our choices. Where we abdicate responsibility we simultaneously imprison ourselves as if we have been locked up without a choice. We allow the horse to drag us about, dominated by physical propensities, or we live a life of emotional reactivity, pointing errantly to our bodies or anyone else as the cause of all of our suffering. The victim consciousness is the bottom of the scale of integral development and self mastery, because by abdicating responsibility for life experience the possibility of the very freedom whereby we excercise choice over our direction is denied: denied to the self, by the self. The principles and definitions whereby one lives an embodied life serve a structuring function for the discipline of emotions and physical impulsivity. Healthy and vibrant emotional expressiveness defined by choice in turn manifest positive signatures in the physical form. The well-harmonized co-vibrancey of the noetical, psychical and physical bodies represent personal maturity and an integration of human form based upon which a whole new level of service can be undertaken. All the great teachers this planet has known came not for power over others but to serve, and they did so from a place of inner harmony, clarity of principle, and personal integrity, not as victims but as masters. Integral anatomy as a moral and spiritual science pursues self mastery with a view to service as a basic orienting goal. The physical, psychical and noetical bodies provide a model of human form coherent with this pursuit and rich enough to sustain a prolonged, rich and fruitful exploration.