Man and His Bodies #251708

At the outset Of our study it is necessary that the western reader should change the attitude in which he has been accustomed to regard himself, and that he should clearly distinguish between the man and the bodies in which the man dwells. We are too much in the habit of identifying ourselves with the outer garments that we wear, too apt to think of ourselves as though we were our bodies; and it is necessary, if we are to grasp a true conception of our subject, that we shall leave this point of view and shall cease to identify ourselves with casings that we put on for a time and again cast Off, to put on fresh ones when we are again in need Of such vestures. To identify ourselves with these bodies that have only a passing existence is really as foolish and as unreasonable as it would be to identify ourselves with our clothes; we are not dependent on them — their value is in proportion to their utility. The blunder so constantly made of identifying the consciousness, which is our Self, with the vehicles in which that consciousness is for the moment functioning, can only be excused by the fact that the waking consciousness, and to some extent the dream consciousness also, do live and work in the body and are not known apart from it to the ordinary man; yet an intellectual understanding of the realconditions may be gained, and we may train ourselves to regard our Self as the owner of his vehicles; and after a time this will by experience become for us a definite fact, when we learn to separate our Self from his bodies, to step out of the vehicle and to know that we exist in a far fuller consciousness outside it than within it, and that we are'in no sense dependent upon it; when that is once achieved, any further identi fication Of our Self with our bodies is Of course impossible, and we can never again make the blunder of supposing that we are what we wear. The clear intellectual understanding at least is within the grasp of all of us, and we may train ourselves in the habitual distinguishment between the Self — the man — and his bodies; even to do this is to step out of the illusion in which the majority are wrapped, and changes our whole attitude towards life and towards the world, lifting us into a sterner region above the changes and chances of this mortal life, placing us above the daily petty troubles which loom so largely to em bodied consciousness, showing us the true proportion between the everchanging and the relatively permanent, and making us feel the difference between the drown ing man tossed and bufieted by the waves that smother him, and the man whose feet are on a rock while the surges break harmlessly at its base.