The Body and I

Dr. Rajesh Bhola
India
Jun 06, 2014

 Whenever we say ‘I’, we tend to refer to the body. We know that as long as we remain alive, that sense of self-hood will continue. On the other hand, all meditative practices tell us to detach our thoughts of ego or self-hood from the body – to gradually discover the ‘self’ that we have been seeking all through our journey. We will then be able to appreciate the ‘self’ in the same way that a music lover appreciates the subtlest of notes or a nature lover is enthralled by the beautiful swirling waters of a river, or a painter contemplates a beautiful landscape. All of them, in those moments, are able to forget themselves for a while and detach themselves from their obsession of self-hood. We should establish a similar relationship with our body. We can learn to withdraw our mind from our body, and realise that it is not ‘I’. The body is no more than an outer shell, a thin surface level of who we are. The body is not us, it is but one of our possessions; it is ‘my body’ - like ‘my car’ or ‘my house’. ‘I’ is also the mind and soul – both being subtle and separable from the body. While we sleep the mind withdraws from the body - which lives on; when we die, the soul and the mind withdraw from the body. Hence ‘I’ is not a permanent part of the body; it is for certain that both will separate one day. Keeping this truth in mind, if we constantly practise such withdrawals and take a less familiar and detached attitude, we will see where our body really stands in relation to our true self and what and who we are.     

The story of Pam Reynolds shows us how consciousness, or mind and soul, are separate from the body. As per her account, she underwent a rare operation to remove a giant basilar artery aneurysm in her brain, which had seriously threatened her life. A surgical procedure, known as hypothermic cardiac arrest (or ‘standstill’), was performed. Pam's body temperature was lowered to 60 degrees, her heartbeat and breathing were stopped, her brain waves were flattened and all the blood was drained from her head. For all practical purposes she was ‘put to death’. After removing the aneurysm she was ‘restored to life’. But, during the time that Pam was in ‘standstill’, she underwent a profound experience. Her remarkably detailed ‘out-of-body’ observations on her surgery were later verified to be very accurate. Pam's case is considered to be one of the strongest evidences of ‘authentic perception’. She was able to describe the unique surgical instruments and procedures in detail, at a time when she was clinically ‘brain-dead’. In her own words: "But then I got to the end of it and saw the thing, my body. I didn't want to get into it ... it looked terrible, like a train wreck. It looked like what it was: dead. I believe it was covered. It scared me and I didn't want to look at it. It was communicated to me that it was like jumping into a swimming pool. ‘No problem, just jump right into the swimming pool’. I didn't want to, but I guess I was late or something because he [the uncle] pushed me. I felt a definite repelling, and at the same time a pulling, from the body. The body was pulling and the tunnel was pushing ... it was like diving into a pool of ice water ... it hurt! I mentioned later to Dr. Brown that that (action) was incredibly insensitive and he told me that I needed to sleep more." It has been scientifically proven that the mind can function outside of the body. Consciousness transcends our physical body…and possibly even death. There are some who have had the uncanny knowledge that death was just ahead of them. They began to mourn the loss of everything they had known: the Earth, their home, and their friends - all that they had been aware of, all that they loved. They ‘saw’ that everything they had believed to be true and lasting was slipping away from them. They had been ‘face to face’ with death, face to face with the unknown. We are connected to a universal consciousness and we must be ready to accept the possibility that there is a limitless range of awareness for which we now have no words; that awareness can expand beyond the range of our ego, our self, our familiar identity, beyond everything we have learned, beyond our notions of space and time, and beyond the differences that usually separate people from each other and from the world around them. The great transcendentalist English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge said about the ‘out-of-body’ experiences: "What if you slept, and what if in your sleep you dreamed, and what if in your dream you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower, and what if when you awoke you had the flower in your hand? Ah! What then?" 

There is another unique facet of the human body. Every time we look at our ‘magnified’ face in a special mirror we see things that are not visible normally. Seen closely, our skin looks like the surface of a strange planet. There are ridges and canyons on our chin and lips; forests of tiny hair grow from our ear lobes; unnoticed pimples rise from the nose like volcanoes; and a sheen of oil coats the landscape. We may half-expect to see alien creatures living in the minute settlements within our dimples or roving the great plains of our cheeks. If we could look through higher magnifications, we may just see exactly that. Whatever comes from inside the body is like a foul messenger from the underworld, whom we fear to encounter. We have a body - but we are a mind. My body and I have an intimate but awkward relationship - like foreign roommates who share a bedroom but not a language. As the thinker of the pair, I contemplate my body with curiosity, as a scientist might observe a primitive species. My mind is a solitary wanderer in this universe of bodies. Though I identify with the mind, the mind itself is matter. I remember dissecting a fetal pig’s brain in high school. As I sliced layers of cerebellum and cerebrum, I imagined someone likewise cutting my own brain from my skull and examining the weird intersection of my mind and body. There I would lie in the dissection dish, the whole mystery of my being made visible, the deep complexities of consciousness, thought and personality reduced to a three-pound mass of squiggly pink tissue - the vaporous soul separated from the body. However, it is not entirely fair to criticise the body as transitory and the mind as the real matter. The human body, in keeping itself alive, does a vastly better job than any conscious effort could. How long would we last if we were put at the controls of our physical existence? Fumbling uncertainly with hundreds of thousands of levers, we would go blue in the face from forgetting to breathe. Faced with the endless critical and absurdly complicated tasks of circulating blood, digesting food, interpreting retinal images and fighting bacteria, how would we ever find time to repair sunburned skin cells, grow hair or process the occasional nerve signal from our toes? Doctors attain specialisations at ages that are well beyond 30, to learn just a fraction of the great manual of life that an infant’s body knows at birth inherently. The child is born with the most complex sub-systems working in a well-synchronised manner -  with all parts of the body working as one unit.

Although we have made huge discoveries that have totally changed the way we live, it seems that we still know less about ourselves than the previous generations. While our ancestors did not have all the modern conveniences, they had a peace and strength that eludes most of us today. As our knowledge of our natural world has increased, our knowledge of the spiritual has decreased. Man’s arrogance blindly believes that all of life’s problems can be solved by him and everything is done by the capital ‘I’. But there can be no peace without if there is not peace within. Modern Man, in all his wisdom, is yet ignorant of the world of the spirit. And I am not just talking about the spiritual realm outside of us but also the spiritual being inside of every person. We are spirit beings. Our true identity is the part of ‘I’ that can see beyond our own hunger and feel the hunger of others; can divert it away from our own needs and focus on the needs of those around us. That is the real purpose of the soul that is manifest in the human body. In the interplay of the body and the soul, let us learn to care for our body so that it can serve as a vehicle of goodness to achieve the object that our soul was sent to this world to fulfill. 

Dr. Rajesh Bhola is President of Spastic Society of Gurgaon and is working for the cause of children with Autism, Cerebral Palsy, mental retardation and multiple disabilities for more than 25 years. He can be contacted at rabhola@yahoo.com