A Podcast Featuring Sri Aurobindo Studies
Dec. 23, 2024

The Body Consciousness

The Body Consciousness
The Body Consciousness
Sri Aurobindo Studies
The Body Consciousness

reference: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter XVI Body, pp. 126-127 This episode is also available as a blog post at https://sriaurobindostudies.wordpress.com/2024/12/21/the-body-consciousness/

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More information about Sri Aurobindo can be found at www.aurobindo.net

The US editions and links to e-book editions of Sri Aurobindo’s writings can be found at Lotus Press www.lotuspress.com

0:01 We tend to take for granted the innate consciousness and capacities of the body. Much of what takes place in the body is done by systems that are far more complex and far more subtle than anything the mind can actively control. In fact, we find that frequently when the mind intervenes or the vital nature imposes itself, we tend to upset the natural harmony, balance and operation of the body. In its normal, healthy, energetic state, the body has a quite incredible consciousness. It can heal wounds and regenerate skin. It can identify and fight off diseases. It creates a memory of illnesses and uses that to Marshall its defenses quickly when it identifies a similar illness trying to enter.

0:54 It manages complex biochemistry that maintains homeostasis in the blood and adjusts numerous facts to maintain this balance. This is all in addition to the very fact that it can grow from a couple of cells, divide and differentiate the cells and organize them into organ systems, limbs, nervous and brain tissue, etcetera. It responds to various environmental conditions automatically. Scientists recognize that there are further capacities that are latent within the body, such as the power to regenerate limbs or regrow teeth. Biological researchers are identifying the mechanisms in the body which turn on or turn off these various capabilities and are experimenting with adjusting certain bioelectric currents or gene activity to provoke these advanced capacities which are known to exist and can be observed in certain fish, salamanders, etcetera. It is clear that through the mind's development and the vital nature's extremes that the body has been put to tremendous tests.

2:14 The impact of the mind and the vital on the body consciousness is also a major factor in the body either acknowledging its latent powers or simply failing to recognize them any longer and thus fall into degeneration, illness and eventual demise of the body. Some scientists now confidently predict that virtual immortality is possible for the body when regeneration capacities are fully developed, when imbalances in the chemistry can be kept in check, and when the will to health is fully active. The question then resolves around what will human beings do with extended long life or virtual immortality? Unless they remain young and fresh in their minds and vital energies, this extended lifespan can become a burden and a curse, the mother notes quote.

3:15 And then you will see when one is normal, that is to say, unspoilt by bad teaching and bad example. When one is born and lives in a healthy and relatively balanced and normal environment, the body spontaneously, without any need for one to intervene mentally or even vitally, has the certitude that even if something goes wrong, it will be cured. The body carries within itself the certitude of cure, the certitude that the illness or disorder is sure to disappear. It is only through the false education from the environment that gradually the body is taught that there are incurable diseases, irreparable accidents, and that it can grow old, and all these stories which destroy its faith and trust.

4:09 But normally the body of a normal child, the body, I am not Speaking of the thought the body itself feels when something goes wrong, that it will certainly be all right again. And if it is not like that, this means that it has already been perverted. It seems normal for it to be in good health. It seems quite abnormal to it. If something goes wrong and it falls I'll and in its instinct, its spontaneous instinct, it is sure that everything will be all right. It is only the perversion of thought which destroys this. As one grows up, the thought becomes more and more distorted. There is the whole collective suggestion, and so little by little the body loses its trust in itself and naturally losing its self-confidence.

5:05 It also loses the spontaneous capacity of restoring its equilibrium when this has been disturbed. End Quote. Reference Shrioro Bindu and the Mother Powers within, Chapter 16, Body, pages 126 to 127.