|
THE POWER OF NOW by Eckhart Tolle
Why have most religions condemned or denied the body? It seems that spiritual seekers have always regarded the body as a hindrance or even sinful. On the level of the body, humans are very close to animals. All the basic bodily functions and feelings – pleasure, pain, breathing, eating, drinking, defecating, sleeping, the drive to find a mate and procreate, and, of course, birth and death – we share with the animals. A long time after their fall from grace, humans suddenly woke up in what seemed to be an animal body and they found this very disturbing.
“Don’t fool yourself. You are no more than an animal.” This seemed to be the truth staring them in the face, but it was too disturbing a truth to tolerate. Adam and Eve saw that they were naked and they became afraid. Unconscious denial of their animal nature set in very quickly. The threat that they might be taken over by powerful, instinctual drives and revert to complete unconsciousness was very real. Shame and taboos appeared around certain parts of the body and bodily functions, especially sexuality.
The light of their consciousness was not yet strong enough to make friends with their animal nature, to allow it to be and even enjoy that aspect of themselves, let alone to go deeply into it to find the divine hidden within, the reality within the illusion. So they did what they had to do. They began to disassociate from their body. They now saw themselves as having a body, rather than just being one.
When religions arose, this disassociation became even more pronounced as the “you are not your body” belief. Countless people in the East and West throughout the ages have tried to find God, salvation or enlightenment through denial of the body. This took the form of denial of sense pleasures – sexuality in particular – and fasting and other ascetic practices. People even inflicted pain on their body in an attempt to weaken or punish it because they regarded it as sinful. In Christianity, this was called mortification of the flesh.
Others tried to escape from the body by entering trance states or seeking out-of-body experiences. Many still do. Even the Buddha is said to have practised body denial through fasting and extreme forms of asceticism for six years, but he did not attain enlightenment until after he had given up this practice.
The fact is no one has ever become enlightened through denying or fighting the body or through an out-of-body experience. Although such an experience can be fascinating and can give you a glimpse of the state of liberation from the material form, in the end you will always have to return to the body, where the essential work of transformation takes place. Transformation is through the body, not away from it. This is why no true master has ever advocated fighting or leaving the body, although their mind-based followers often have.
Of the ancient teachings concerning the body, only certain fragments survive, such as Jesus’s statement, “Your whole body will be filled with light.” They also survive as myths, such as the belief that Jesus never relinquished his body, but remained one with it and ascended into “heaven” with it. To this day, almost no one has understood those fragments or the hidden meaning of certain myths, and the “you are not your body” belief has prevailed universally, leading to body denial and attempts to escape from the body. Countless seekers have thus been prevented from attaining spiritual realization for themselves and from becoming finders.
Do not fight against the body; in doing so you are fighting against your own reality. You are your body. The body that you can see and touch is only a thin illusory veil. Underneath it lies the invisible inner body, the doorway into Being, into “life unmanifested.” Through the inner body, you are inseparably connected to this unmanifested “One Life,” birthless, deathless, eternally present. Through the inner body, you are forever one with God.
Adapted from The Power of Now, copyright 1999 by Eckhart Tolle. Reprinted with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA, 800-972-6657 (ext. 52). Visit www.eckharttolle.com.
|
|
