Mystery of the Human Body

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Excerpt:

“The subject is the mystery of the human body. It is very obvious to us that there is a body. We even say we have a body without stopping to ask our self what this means. Whether a body is a possession that we have somehow acquired, what the word have means in this connection we probably don’t ask ourselves. But there is this body, and our experience, our mode of existence is linked in some way with this body, but when we say we, and by we do not mean this body; we are referring to something else. And certainly, if we say we have a body we are dividing between the we who has and the body that’s possessed, even if we have no idea what this means. But let’s accept something to start with that there are in man at least two quite distinct components, two distinct natures; one this bodily nature and the other a spiritual nature. Let’s go further and accept that this spiritual nature didn’t arise out of the body and since we have visual evidence that the body arises from the materials of this earth, we also can’t say that in any literal sense this body arose out of our spiritual nature. So, let us say that this spiritual nature and this body of ours had two different arisings. One arising through this earth, through the life process of this earth, through the life process of sex and generation. Let us say that this spiritual nature of ours had a different origin and a different arising. The first mystery of the body is how these come together. How is it that we have this squaring of the circle? This square body and this circular spirit? Really quite different in nature from one another and yet as we find ourselves they are linked, tied together. We speak about this arising of this two natured being as incarnation of the spirit entering into flesh. When we speak about this can we say anything more that makes sense? When I’m speaking like this, I am not trying to demonstrate anything to you but merely introduce ideas. I don’t have to prove or argue anything and you can take or leave just what you like in what I say, but let us suppose that we can also say that the spiritual nature is not conditioned, is not limited. Whereas the body evidently is conditioned, limited, and that in some mysterious way an unconditioned, unlimited something has come to be associated with a conditioned and limited something. That is why I compared it with squaring the circle, which will always leave something over that doesn’t fit. But if we look at it this way then we shouldn’t be saying that we have a body. We should rather be saying something like we have had a body imposed on us. We have been fitted with a body. “