The physique is coming again into sight as a web site for experimentation and as a goal for a sort of quasi-transcendence. Inside the inverted world of the lesser actuality, the bodily physique has all the time been acknowledged because the car by way of which life is skilled. In different phrases, it’s our avatar while on this realm. As such, it has all the time been a web site of contestation.
In some spiritual circles, the physique is seen as a fabric distraction from the Divine and its affect was seen as needing to be repressed and subjugated (which can embody sure bodily deprivations, together with self-harm). Varied religio-spiritual views have regarded the bodily physique as an impediment, a barrier, to a way of the sacred. The opposite excessive is that the physique is thought to be the perfect car for experiencing the sensual and sensuous – it’s a vessel for indulgence and decadent expertise. Nonetheless, there was no consensus reached over how one can regard the car of the human bodily physique.
In my earlier e-book – Hijacking Actuality – I famous how latest narratives are attempting to position the human physique as a web site of weak spot. That’s, the physique is open and weak to illness and an infection; it succumbs to growing old and exhaustion; it disallows the human being from the total vary of experiences. On this mild, narratives of transhumanism try to realize floor as a method of providing a substitute for the ‘weak physique.’ These, as I had mentioned, are makes an attempt to drive the human expertise deeper into materialism and a technocratic agenda for a digital-hybridization program inside our societies.
The Inversion is steering ever ahead into deeper and deeper realms of materialism. It’s using a story of quasi-transcendence by way of embedding deeper into the parable of technological salvation. The strains should not a lot being drawn however being blurred. American author Philip Ok. Dick, well-known for his science fiction books that query the character and validity of actuality, spoke concerning the blurring of boundaries between physique and surroundings in his 1972 speech “The Android and the Human” –
“Our surroundings, and I imply our man-made world of machines, synthetic constructs, computer systems, digital methods, interlinking homeostatic elements—all of that is in truth starting increasingly to own what the earnest psychologists worry the primitive sees in his surroundings: animation. In a really actual sense our surroundings is turning into alive, or at the very least quasi-alive, and in methods particularly and basically analogous to ourselves.1″
This quasi-aliveness of the surroundings that Dick speaks about is the animating stage the place relations between the human physique and the fabric world start to blur (and merge). A lot of Western spiritual-mystical apply is interpreted as a somatically-felt expertise. The physique is the instrument that receives and grounds the expertise, whether or not or not it’s by way of the ‘nice flash,’ ‘illuminating mild,’ or the ‘bodily rush.’ The physique is the human instrument for receiving, remodeling, and generally transferring, energies. There are various ‘our bodies’ in spiritual-mystic traditions, together with the etheric, the astral, the ecstatic, the refined, the upper, and others; the bodily, materials physique is acknowledged because the densest of all of them. Additionally, it’s the ‘simple goal’ because it resides totally throughout the materials world and is open to social engineering and affect.
The physique in historical past has all the time been a web site of focus. It has helped outline the expertise of self/different and the outer/inside and has been thought to be the fabric vessel for the religious impulse. Maybe for that reason, many societies all over the world have, at one time or one other, tried to suppress the ability and expression of the human physique. It could possibly be that the controlling companies throughout the inverted world regard the balanced, accurately functioning human physique as a portal for appropriately navigating the perceptive wavelengths of actuality. Lots of the mystical traditions positioned a robust emphasis on the purification of the human physique; on it being free from toxins and corruptive influences. On this method, the bodily vessel was stated to obtain the ‘illuminations,’ or the ‘mercy’ of the sacred, divine impulse.
The physique acts as an antenna for the nourishing inspirations/energies for the soul. What higher approach to block these illuminations than to deprave the physique’s purity by way of a polluting surroundings – socially, psychologically, and biologically. As such, the physique has all the time been a web site for the convergence of energy and management. This body-power relationship has been a serious theme within the work of French thinker Michel Foucault. Foucault has deconstructed, in his important historical past of modernity, how the physique has been fought over as a web site of energy. The bodily physique can also be thought to be a location of resistance in opposition to the institution powers. It’s a mounted place the place a person will be situated, discovered, and held accountable. And now that our bodily actions are regularly tracked by way of the digital infosphere, there may be even much less likelihood to flee the attention of authoritative surveillance. If we can’t escape from our our bodies then, it could seem, we’re eternally throughout the system.
The human physique has all the time been accepted as a unit throughout the social matrix. This has additionally been expanded to outline our bodies by way of social establishments: now we have the physique politic, the social physique, the scientific physique, the medical physique, the physique of a company, and so on. The as soon as sacred web site of the physique, which was the vessel for somatic religious experiences, has been adopted, or co-opted, right into a social building of our bodies that belong below management and subjugation of exterior authorities. In Gnostic phrases, the physique’s web site of energy has been known as these of the ‘sleepers’ and the ‘wakers.’ Sleepers are these whose inside self has but to interrupt by way of the layers of the physique’s social conditioning.
The somatic religious expertise has been seen as a menace to hierarchical societies as a result of it exists past their bounds of energy. That is one motive why ecstatic experiences, whether or not by way of religious or different means, have been suppressed, outlawed, and discredited by orthodox religions and mainstream establishments alike. Ecstatic experiences that may break down the pondering patterns and conditioning buildings of the Inversion are alarming for establishments of socio-political energy. How are you going to management, regulate, and self-discipline a physique, power, or expertise that has no bodily location? Such intangible forces, akin to the ability of baraka, are positively infectious and past bounds.[i] As cultural historian Morris Berman notes:
“The aim of the Church (any church) is to acquire a monopoly on this vibratory expertise, to channel it into its personal image system, when the reality is that the somatic response just isn’t the unique property of any given spiritual chief or specific set of symbols. 2″
In latest instances, there was an growing deal with what’s termed the innate consciousness of the physique, and which has been revealed by way of such strategies as muscle testing. It’s innate as a result of it’s inborn (born in and of the physique), and it’s instinctual. Somatic consciousness then is one other phrase for our intuitive intelligence. It’s an intelligence that may be communicated by way of the physique, and it’s this which threatens people who search to manage the dreaming thoughts of humanity. Nonetheless, the matrix of actuality just isn’t a clean-cut realm.
We exist in an anthropological surroundings the place nature and tradition can’t be neatly divided. The bodily realm is a fusion of the actual/imagined, and the place topic/object is blurred. But now, this hybridity is being additional enforced and coalesced by way of genetic engineering, implants, augmented actuality, and the sciences of nanotechnology, biotechnology, and data know-how (together with synthetic intelligence). The Inversion is making an attempt to realize our prepared compliance by way of providing a type of transcendence that goes past the physique and the bodily senses.
The Galactic Gaze
The dreaming thoughts has all the time been tempted and awed by the celebrities past. There’s maybe no dwelling one that has not gazed up into the night time firmament and questioned concerning the cosmos on the market. And maybe, there have been these individuals who upon gazing up questioned whether or not they weren’t dwelling inside some type of bubble. The dreamer’s world has usually been depicted as a bubble actuality, most notably by the Renaissance alchemists, as on this well-known engraving:
The Thinker’s Stone lies exterior of the realm of the Inversion; it may solely be grasped by one who has exited from the dreamer’s actuality bubble (or perceptual jail). For most individuals, the spiralling star tapestry of the cosmos is step one of the past. Purpose sufficient, then, for this to have develop into the brand new vacation spot for the fashionable pioneers throughout the lesser actuality.
The break from the physique begins at an early age by way of social conditioning. To some extent, all people need to relinquish among the contact they’ve with the innate intelligence of the physique (together with the physique of the pure world) by being integrated into the ‘social physique.’ And because the social physique turns into more and more enmeshed throughout the digitized panorama, this alienation from the physique will solely likewise improve. Trendy tradition’s love affair with decadence, and the rise of sexualization and drug indulgence, all contribute to a desensitization of the physique – even when the physique is the medium of expertise, akin to in sexual experiences. As famous, this can be a focusing on of the ‘pure physique’ in order to deprave its potential for deciphering deeper layers throughout the Inversion. The body-medium for the life expertise can also be considered by transhumanists as a hindrance upon the evolutionary journey towards an ‘immortal society’ that’s destined for the celebrities.
This view is extra keenly taken by principally western and ‘elite’ varieties who’ve begun to feed themselves upon a contemporary cosmic-religious mythic consciousness. That is what Jasun Horsley refers to as a ‘Galactic faith,’ which seeks transcendence/ascension by leaving the planet and colonizing others. It’s a ‘wealthy geek’ faith primarily based on accelerating applied sciences and pushed by the most important tech-titan firms. As Horsley notes, quite than ascension, it’s the reverse: ‘It has to do with dissociation, the try of the traumatized psyche to separate off from the physique and float off into fantasy land, past the attain of actuality and all of the ache it entails. Our bodies frozen on ice, souls misplaced in area, free, free from the horrible travails of the physique.’3 In such contexts as these, and extra, there’s a trauma being skilled by way of the bodily physique. Trauma will be associated to dysfunctional power being trapped throughout the physique, inflicting discomfort and illness. In an try to flee the physique of the planet we’re being pressured to ‘techno-transcend’ the restrictions of the organic human physique.
To journey into the celebrities, we’re instructed, requires us to add our consciousness into machinic units and/or ethereal cloudscapes. In a bid to flee the confines of a depleting ‘jail planet’ we’re being requested to place our religion – and our consciousness – into a brand new techno-prison. But who shall be the brand new guards? This might entail the trauma of a brand new beginning – re-enacting the prongs of the organic beginning passage but by way of entry into one more realm of the Inversion. There appears to be no real exit of the dreaming thoughts by way of consciousness add – solely a leap into one other programmable maze, but this time maybe with much less benevolent programmers.
Within the western psyche there seems to be an ongoing splintering between ‘inside area’ exploration and ‘outer area’ exploration. The techno-dream of area colonization is the brand new favoured development while the inside area analysis of the psyche is promoted as a harmful and trickster panorama. Outer area is the brand new undiscovered realm that gives hope in opposition to the twilight of the physique (together with the physique of the earth). And but such ‘Galactic pioneers’ appear pushed much less by a unified notion and extra by forces arising inside their splintered psyches that they’ve did not combine. These are the unconscious forces that grasp at survival, at any value, and would willingly stroll over the our bodies of others to safe their very own survival. Leaving the planetary physique is just for the ‘fortunate’ few, while the remaining should stay grounded – or with their minds in cloudscape orbit. The trick of the Inversion is that there are limitless doorways to maintain strolling by way of, but no exit to awaken out of. By strolling out of 1 dreamworld into one other we might imagine we’re free, but we stay imprisoned throughout the dream nonetheless. Or worse, we unknowingly develop into our very personal jail guards.
No rockets will ever create sufficient thrust to take us the place we really must go, for awakening from the gravity of the Inversion is an inner-space journey. It’s the colonizing of the quiet form – of ourselves. By striving to achieve the orbital Overview Impact we’re lacking the actual level, which is the ‘Internal view’ from inside ourselves.
The Physique because the Holy Host
The Inversion – our inverted world actuality assemble – is uncertain what to make of the human bodily physique. Is it our saviour – our holy host? – or a hazard to our personal progress and a menace to the agenda of others? As I’ve written beforehand,[ii] the narratives of a brand new biopower have delivered to the fore a medical-political institution inside lots of our societies worldwide. The biology of management is now a serious participant throughout the present realm of lived expertise. There’s now a noticeable rush to realize a political-corporate management over the entry, use, and sovereignty of the human physique. In a really actual sense, it’s the particular person’s final line of bodily defence. Every particular person is a acutely aware entity (a religious essence) that’s working inside this materials realm by way of the car of the bodily physique. As such, we’re uniting with a organic associate. We’re a merged being: as it’s stated, a union of flesh and spirit. While the spirit – the important being – is immortal, it has to abide in its bodily incarnation by the organic limitations of the bodily host. Due to this important truth, exterior management agendas are decided to not solely acquire energy over the outer facets of the physique (it’s freedoms, utility, mobility, and so on.,) but in addition, by way of interventions, to have management over its inner functioning (DNA code, intra-communication, and extra).
The human physique features upon many assorted ranges and acts as many issues – together with as a receiver, filter, and transmitter of energies and data. It is just the false, manipulated narrative that posits the human physique as a ‘biohazard.’ Through the use of this designation, exterior companies of authority can search to additional comprise and management the motion of the physique in addition to gaining inner entry by way of chemical and pharmaceutical interventions. These prospects had been foreseen by many, not least by the social thinker and creator Aldous Huxley. Even way back to the Fifties, Huxley envisaged the encroachment of scientism to realize growing intervention into the human physique:
In the meantime pharmacology, biochemistry and neurology are on the march, and we will be fairly sure that, in the midst of the subsequent few years, new and higher chemical strategies for growing suggestibility and reducing psychological resistance might be found. Like all the pieces else, these discoveries could also be used nicely or badly. They could assist the psychiatrist in his battle in opposition to psychological sickness, or they might assist the dictator in his battle in opposition to freedom.4
And but, that is nonetheless a viewpoint primarily based on the fabric and bodily sciences. It doesn’t characterize a deeper, religious perspective. This was to be offered by the Austrian thinker and proponent of religious science, Rudolf Steiner. In talks given throughout September-October 1917, Steiner had the presence of imaginative and prescient to debate the later potential interventions and affect over the human physique. He stated that: ‘Taking a “sound perspective,” individuals will invent a vaccine to affect the organism as early as potential, ideally as quickly as it’s born, in order that this human physique by no means even will get the concept that there’s a soul and a spirit.’5
Clearly, this exhibits that the human bodily physique is a web site of goal in an try to curb or block reception of religious forces. By what might seem like a ‘sound perspective,’ a variety of socio-cultural narratives might be created and propagated, in accordance with Steiner, that may push an agenda of elevated medical intervention. And these medically backed concepts have the intention ‘to discover a vaccine that may drive all inclination in the direction of spirituality out of individuals’s souls when they’re nonetheless very younger, and this can occur in a roundabout method by way of the dwelling physique.’6 Humanity has arrived at the moment now, if we observe present occasions and their associated penalties. We are actually at a time throughout the 21st century the place we’re witnessing the transmutation of dwelling beings – and our bodies. The human being has arrived at a threshold beforehand unknown to it, and there are forces compelling the human to step over and thru it. It’s a threshold that may recode environments and our bodies. The edge is the purpose the place a genetic deterritorialization course of can start, and from which we might witness the emergence of a brand new organism totally different from the present one. It’s a threshold of recombination and recodification; a brand new assemblage that represents one more section throughout the Inversion. From right here on, we’re biologically weak to an encroaching machinic impulse that, by its very nature, will morph bodily combos into machinic connections.
Our our bodies are reaching an exhaustion level. The crises we now face throughout the physique of the earth is from a collapse of the person, social, and psychological physique. Already, the social thoughts is in trauma, and the physique is exhibiting this sickness or dis-ease. The Inversion has made positive that the organic and psychological dimension has coalesced. The ripple of a bodily trauma is being felt throughout the planetary membrane as individuals are pressured to unnaturally detach from the bodily world round them. New bodily preparations of dislocation (lockdowns) and social avoidance have gotten established practices inside our societies. These unnatural ordinances are creating cognitive and bodily dissonance. Bio-traumas have arisen which are affecting our sensibilities. New bodily phobias have been set in movement. That is the newly inverted threshold – a threshold of deterritorialization that has enforced a altering notion of the physique. We’re sensing alterations in human bodily consciousness and receptivity. There’s a deprivation too. The physique is being pulled again from its pure natural terrain. It’s being made to retreat from bodily presence and away from the reassuring contact. It’s as if the physique is being reconfigured to devolve away from the sensual and into a brand new digitally articulated sensate. This bodily aliveness is being substituted by decomposition and the worry of decay and deterioration.
Within the trendy age, dying has changed intercourse as the fashionable taboo. The sanitized surroundings of the hospital has changed the house because the place for passing away. The expertise of dying and dying has develop into indifferent from neighborhood life with the impact that emotion and closeness has been changed by medical administration. The dying physique has develop into inverted right into a factor of disgust and embarrassment. Loss of life has now develop into one thing shameful – a forbidden course of. Loss of life is a contemporary scandal. Trendy life has internalized the rejection of dying, and we’re coded to cringe on the considered bodily deterioration. Loss of life is a loser. To die is to lose, to fail. There is no such thing as a room for failure throughout the deepening layers of machinic materialism and computational competitors. Loss of life will be changed by tech-assisted immortality within the new ‘posthuman future.’ Alternatively, the physique will be transcended by way of transhumanism in order that dying not haunts the halls of the bodily flesh. These are the brand new imaginings within the realm of machinic want. Humanity is on the brink of venturing into an Inversion of codified creativeness and upturned wishes. Want has overtaken pleasure, and it’s the social sphere throughout the Inversion that creates and sustains this desirous torment and torture of the unattainable. And throughout the unattainable, higher types of exterior management have to be endorsed to compensate. For this reasoning, present forces have begun to determine new pathways of management over life processes. And this, by intent and never coincidence, aligns with the rise of the machinic impulse. The query that now must be requested is whether or not the machine impulse is evolutionary or devolutionary by way of human life upon this planet.
Concerning the Writer
Kingsley L. Dennis is the creator of The Phoenix Era: A New Period of Connection, Compassion, and Consciousness, and The Sacred Revival: Magic, Thoughts & Which means in a Technological Age, out there at Amazon. Go to him on the net at http://www.kingsleydennis.com/.
References
1 Dick, Philip Ok. (1995) The Shifting Realities of Philip Ok. Dick: Chosen Literary and Philosophical Writings (ed. Lawrence Sutin). New York: Classic Books, p183
2 Berman, Morris (1990) Coming to Our Senses: Physique and Spirit within the Hidden Historical past of the West. New York: HarperCollins, 146.
3 Horsley, J. (2018). Prisoner of Infinity: UFOs, Social Engineering, and the Psychology of Fragmentation. London, Aeon Books, p189
4 Huxley, A. (1959). Courageous New World Revisited. London, Chatto & Windus, p107-8
5 Steiner, Rudolf (2008) The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness. Forest Row: Rudolf Steiner Press, p85
6 Steiner, Rudolf (2008) The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness. Forest Row: Rudolf Steiner Press, p199-200
[i] Baraka, a outstanding idea in Islamic mysticism, refers to a circulation of grace and religious energy that may be transmitted.
[ii] Hijacking Actuality: The Reprogramming & Reorganization of Human Life
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