The "Body"

Many materialists and naturalists hold the view, with variations, that we encounter some version of a physical, natural, or material world in perception and cognition. Once that metaphysical and epistemological view is in tact in the body-memory with its attendant feelings, the world is cast away from its dynamic and living source in a feeling-body. The mistake here is to believe in an encounter with the world. Being unaware "of" the always and already prior union of the body-world, the body-world union is concealed. By repetition, this embodied encounter belief regularly operates to render the union hidden. It glides unobtrusively into a background function that is subject and object (form khanda*) yielding.

Identities are manifest in relation to objectification. "I am in relation to my circumstances." Both selves and circumstances are generated in reciprocal relations. Circumstances incarnate forms, feelings, perceptions, and consciousnesses shaped by incarnate memories, the "cognitive unconscious" of the cognitive scientists. These derive from prior acts of body, speech, and mind. These prior acts form the intentional memory configurations that provide meaningful manifestations of selves and situations. We find ourselves, in all cases, on the manifest side of these memory configurations. Selves and situations are at the effect end of the evanescence of experience. We are not the agents of these acts that produce time as experience. We find ourselves already in identities and situations. Hence, there is no perception of creations or beginnings. This process of experience is without beginning.

At this point, a question may arise: "If this union of the body-world is prior to thought and perception, how is it known?" The answer, perhaps a seemingly elusive one is "We are it." It is held in the body. It is felt in the body, it is breathed in the body. The body, as mentioned in a previous blog post, lives in real time, experience time. The body holds the felt evanescence of time. Its manifestations are the manifestations of worlds, of experience.

Ever had the experience of noticing the halt of an air conditioning unit? Or, the silencing of a birdsong? Or the cessation of children's laughter as they play nearby? How is it that we do not notice the air conditioner, the birdsong, or the children's laughter when it was occurring? We seem to notice only the cessations. Well, we may say, I wasn't conscious of the sounds but I became conscious of them when they ceased. Are you sure you were not conscious of them? Perhaps a different type of knowledge was operative that held the sounds. Perhaps we were able to become conscious of the sounds because they were held in a different kind of knowing, one that we are not habituated to call "knowing."

More to follow...

 *Rosenberg, Alex. 2017. "THE STONE; A Foundation Of Science". Query.Nytimes.Com. Accessed August 18 2017. https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F00E7DF1F3CF93BA2575AC0A9679D8B63&rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fthe-stone&action=click&contentCollection=opin

**"Khandha Sutta: Aggregates". 2017. Accesstoinsight.Org. Accessed August 16, 2017. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn22/sn22.048.than.html.