What are we? Ah, there's an ageless question. Matter? Energy? Mind? Spirit? Soul? A combination?
As noted in a post from a few years back, "Feeling the spirit... via body or soul?," I used to believe that our true nature was non-material soul-consciousness. After I died, or maybe before if my meditation bore fruit, I'd soar into a spiritual realm of existence and enjoy a soulful (literally) existence.
Yet where is the evidence for this? Nowhere. Except in the minds of people who believe this sort of stuff -- which seemingly includes the majority of the world's population, given how popular supernatural religiosity is.
(Though traditional Christianity taught that resurrection of the faithful was a bodily affair, I've seen surveys that indicate most Christians today think their soul will go to heaven after death and spend quality time with God, Jesus, departed relatives, and other souls who won the Salvation Lottery.)
One reason I've switched to embracing my bodily nature a lot more enthusiastically than I did in my churched days is this:
For me, living in my head, surrounded by abstract conceptions, isn't anywhere near as satisfying as dwelling in the physical world -- immersed in real live sensations and perceptions. This was the theme of a recent post, "To be 'spiritual,' get physical."
In other words, all our notions about divinity, spirituality, the supernatural, soul, spirit, angels, and such derive from our experience as physical beings in a physical world.
If someone has a vision of God, that vision was processed through a physical brain and body. If someone writes a holy book, that writing was produced by a physical brain and body. If someone speaks about what lies beyond the material world, their speaking came from a physical brain and body.
Religious people are physical beings pretending to have a spiritual experience. Wisdom lies in seeing through this pretension. Genuine "spirituality" is achieved by being honestly physical.
Strangely, though, fairly often I'm accused by blog post commenters of being an intellectual who spends his days thinking about what life is all about instead of directly living it like god-seeking religious people supposedly do.
Actually, the neuroscientific truth is that anyone who says this has got the situation backwards.
Most of us have heard about the differences between the left and right portions of the human brain. Iain McGilchrist discusses this at length in his fascinating book, "The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World."
Here's some passages from a section called The Body that makes clear how left-brained a disdain for the body is. People who downplay the body are the ones living in a mental, logical, conceptual, abstracted world that's divorced from here-and-now reality.
The body has become a thing, a thing we possess, a mechanism, even if a mechanism for fun, a bit like a sports car with a smart sound system... The body has become an object in the world like objects, as Merleau-Ponty feared.
The left hemisphere's world is ultimately narcissistic, in the sense that it sees the world 'out there' as no more than a reflection of itself: the body becomes just the first thing we see out there, and we feel impelled to shape it to our sense of how it 'should' be.
...Everything about the body, which in neuropsychological terms is more closely related to and mediated by the right hemisphere than the left, makes it a natural enemy of the left hemisphere, the hemisphere of ideal re-presentation rather than embodied fact, of rationalism rather than intuition, of explicitness rather than the implicit, of what is static rather than what is moving, of what is fixed rather than what is changing.
The left hemisphere prefers what it has itself made, and the ultimate rebuff to that is the body. It is the ultimate demonstration of the recalcitrance of reality, of its not being subject to our control. The left hemisphere's optimism is at odds with recognising the inevitable transience of the body, and its message that we are mortal.
The body is messy, imprecise, limited -- an object of scorn, therefore, to the fastidiously abstracted left hemisphere, with its fantasies of human omnipotence.
Nicely said, Iain McGilchrist.
At my age, 64, or for that matter any age, we should be living our lives in as lively a manner as possible. Not abstracted from the world, which naturally includes human bodies. Fully engaged with the world.
We are the world. We are body. Some believe we also are more than that.
Fine, be body. And more, if such is possible. Don't shun what is indisputably real in a vain attempt to grasp a hypothesized abstract supernatural reality.
Brian, it's not unconstructive (I hope) to sometimes play devil's advocate. I've always found it useful to have my ideas challenged anyway, even when it sometimes feels like an inquisition!
I absolutely endorse your interest in actualities rather than abstractions. But, playing devil's advocate again, I'm always aware that the mind is programmed to allow abstractions in by the back door, upon which they rapidly take over proceedings.
For example 'neuroscience' - is that something real in the most lively sense, or is it actually a large body of the less lively stuff?
And when you talk about the physical brain and body, are those entities directly involved in your liveliest experiences, or are they less lively ideas that occur to you when you try to relay your experiences?
The sense of observing is the source of liveliness. It seems to me the liveliness behind observation stands alone, out of reach of the support of less lively principles. What feels supported is not true liveliness! The greater isn't supported by the lesser, though it does incorporate it. The lesser can become fuel for the greater, but it does not contain the spark.
I'm aware I may sound like a nitpicker or a dolt. And my words could be interpreted as an attempt to imagine a soul. But such an abstraction would not be lively. So, no, that's not what I'm doing! This is just an attempt at spill-over, to convey what cannot be said, Chuang Tzu style.
Posted by: Tom | May 02, 2013 at 06:26 AM
"The body has become a thing, a thing we possess"
quote
WHO possesses the body ?
Or, does the body possess us ?
Or, is Something Else involved ?
Is not consciousness an effect ?
Are we not etherial .. at the will
of the wind ?
Posted by: Mike Williams | May 02, 2013 at 04:48 PM
The falling leaf is not responsible
for where the wind blows it.
It can only feel regretful should it
land on a tiny ant.
Posted by: Mike Williams | May 02, 2013 at 04:56 PM
"...my words could be interpreted as an attempt to imagine a soul. But such an abstraction would not be lively. So, no, that's not what I'm doing!"
What you're doing is using exclamation points to show how "lively" you are.
Posted by: cc | May 03, 2013 at 02:56 PM
I just found out I have made a very big
philosophical mistake.
I always thought if a person had an
extremely high I.Q., they could overwhelm
the scam of Radhasoami, by sheer intelligence.
It now appears insanity does indeed overwhelm
even those with extremely high
I.Q.'s
This is quite distressing.
Posted by: Mike Williams | May 04, 2013 at 09:12 PM
cc, thanks for the suggestion, but I don't agree.
Posted by: Tom | May 06, 2013 at 05:06 AM
I didn't suggest anything, Tom. But what is it you disagree with?
Posted by: cc | May 06, 2013 at 02:33 PM
Well, I *thought* I was using the exclamation mark to emphasize that I don't pose an abstract soul as the source of 'liveliness'.
I do identify with liveliness, but as the living reality of it, not as a personal attribute. The 'person' having the attribute would be abstract and not lively.
I'm aware there are claims to rarefied higher states that sound a bit like this. Is that what you're driving at? If so, it would explain your huge reluctance to really talk about any of this in any depth.
I keep forgetting a lot of people here have been traumatised by their association with weird religious sects. Still, there's something to be gained from every experience. There's pain involved whether it's through disillusionment with the sect or disillusionment as the very path itself (Krishnamurti.)
For me, enlightenment has to be a ubiquitous possibility, not something limited to a few rare beings.
Anyway, just a few 'suggestions' to fire back at you.
Posted by: Tom | May 07, 2013 at 02:19 AM
"For me, enlightenment has to be a ubiquitous possibility, not something limited to a few rare beings."
For me, "enlightenment" is no big deal...just the realization, discovery, reality check, if you will, that happens quite frequently to minds that are open to new information and not pinioned on some wished for "possibility".
Those who talk about Enlightenment refer to something radical, transformative, depersonalizing, and all kinds of wonderful, fantastical stuff. It's not unlike belief in God, the afterlife, etc.
The only enlightenment there is, Tom, is the realization that you are an information processor programmed to seek omniscience.
Posted by: cc | May 07, 2013 at 12:02 PM
The only enlightenment there is, Tom, is the realization that you are an information processor programmed to seek omniscience.
See, this is where I disagree. To be honest I don't really know what you're talking about but it sounds to me like a belief.
I have no expectations in terms of acquiring information. The one thing I am interested in is knowing 'this' intimately - connecting up again moment-by-moment with the ground I sprang from, continue to spring from and will one day return to. And do you know, that's the root meaning of the word 'religion'?
Posted by: Tom | May 07, 2013 at 03:26 PM