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©2008 Mark B. Anstendig
The following is the beginning argument of the paper “The Body As Machine”. While it is first presented in summary form and later fully explained, the summary is enough for the willing to understand.
It is the most important group of concepts that anyone wanting to do the Path or just improve himself or just longing for higher experience has to comprehend. It follows:
THE BODY AS MACHINE
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WHY WE ARE AFFECTED BY VIBRATIONAL INFLUENCES
Argument/Summary:
The human body is a machine.
We are vibrating machines living in an environment, every part of which is vibrating.
Even things that seem to be still are vibrating.
Vibrating things affect each other.
Our bodies are affected by the vibrating of our environment.
Consciousness is inextricably linked to the body.
We experience only the vibrating of our own bodies.
We do not experience anything outside of our bodies.
WHAT IS PERCEIVED AS THE EXTERNAL WORLD IS IN REALITY THE EXPERIENCE OF OUR OWN BODIES STIMULATED BY VIBRATIONS FROM EXTERNAL VIBRATIONAL SOURCES.
Everything external that we see, hear, taste, touch, or feel is the vibrating of our own bodies.
The quality of the vibrating of our own bodies determines the quality of our sensory perceptions and emotional experiences (i.e., their delicacy, refinement, degree of exquisiteness, etc.) as well as our ability to delineate those perceptions and experiences.
All the actions of our lives are controlled in their speed, rhythm, timing, and quality by the surrounding vibrational influences of our immediate environment.
It is the nature of human beings to want to refine their personal experiences.
Whether in sports, the arts, or the experiences of our daily lives, we crave greater refinement, intensity and beauty in our experiences.
Refinement of experience is not possible without refinement of the body.
End of quote
It follows that anyone seeking the experience of God in any kind of dependable, replicable way has to refine himself, body and mind. But, as said above, it is the refinement of the vibrating of the body that determines the possible refinement and quality of all sensory experience, which is what all human experience is: the product of all five senses and nothing more.
That is the reality of our existence. And at very least deep down somewhere, all human beings crave higher sensory experience. Most are, however, mired in much lower level experience than even they know is possible, because everyone at some moment(s) in their life has flashes or short moments of, to them, overwhelming, but fleeting experience. So they know there are possibilities beyond their meager life’s possibilities. And they forever seek to get back to those more intense, more overwhelming possibilities. It is very much like sex: sexually, most everyone has one or two overwhelmingly intense, meaningful, but fleeting sexual moments. And the rest of their lives are spent trying to get back to them, with less to no success.
It is the aim of the Path, besides furthering health and well-being, to get to a level of self-development in which one can dependably live in the finer experiences of God, art, and human endeavor. That is achieved by refining the body and mind and learning to control both.