Ratatoskr wrote: ↑Mon May 03, 2021 1:08 pm
Thank you for clarification. Now I understand you better. The only thing that still remains unclear is the distinction you make between "body" and "soul life". Are not body and soul life qualia in awareness ?
Yes, they are. In our inner life we have a whole spectrum of perceptual phenomena - color, tone, smell, but also feelings, thinking, willing, memories. We speak of body, soul and spirit by recognizing three major domains of this spectrum. Sensory perceptions are related to physical bodily life. When we speak of soul, attention goes to the part of the spectrum that is related with our life as a human being that lifts above the purely physical survival. Here we find our goals, likes, dislikes, relations with other beings, which are primarily of the nature of feeling and desire. When we speak of spirit we understand the innermost spiritual activity, which today is most clearly experienced in thinking (the spectrum of thought perceptions). In thinking we experience ourselves lifted above both the physical and the soul life. That's why we can think about them objectively. It's the spirit that is concerned with knowledge and understanding. Through thinking we discover the ideas which relate all perceptions (including thought perceptions themselves) into harmonious unity.
When it's said that the body exists only as qualia in awareness we shouldn't imagine that the body is only a floating image in awareness. Actually the body is the most remote and shrouded in mystery part of reality for us. We know the body only as far as we experience the qualia of the senses. Here we should be very clear of something. Man of today is actually quite mistaken when he thinks that he
knows the physical body, just because he has studied the corpse. The things that we
really know are color, tone, smell, touch, warmth, etc. - the pure experiences of the senses. The gradations and combinations of the sensory experiences are already worked upon by our thinking. The visual picture of our body is only a specific shape within our color perceptions. It is only a one-sided idea when we look at the mirror and say "this is my body". This is how the body imprints into my visual system, but the reality of the body I don't know at all. Although we know from anatomy that we have liver, heart, kidneys and so on, normally we don't have inner perceptions of them (except when in pain). This changes when we develop the higher forms of cognition. Then just as we normally feel our thinking to be in the head, we can perceive how different aspects of our soul life are related with different organs. For example, if we have persistent negative relations with somebody, in our normal consciousness we feel, say, anger and related thoughts in the head. When higher cognition is developed we can perceive that these feelings actually exist as active forces in the liver. Many diseases can be traced to their spiritual origins in this way.
So the body is not mere picture in awareness - it's multilayered spiritual reality which shapes and restricts our activity. In our soul life we may be entangled in very complicated relationships with other souls. Through our bodily life we are entangled with different kinds of beings which constitute our physical life. So spiritual development doesn't extricate us from the physical life but in fact throws light on our physical body from within. We experience in our normal state the senses and the images in the brain. We already need to develop the soul organs in order experience how the soul/astral body (where the soul organs have their forms) relates to the major organs like heart, liver, kidneys, lungs, etc. At this point we don't yet experience their biological reality from the inside but primarily how they are related with our soul life (like the example with the liver). We need even higher forms of consciousness to reach the inner reality of the metabolic system, bones and muscles.
I'm saying all this just to point attention that it isn't at all enough to focus on "it's all qualia in awareness". Yes, this is a general truth but what we experience in our normal state is only the tip of the iceberg so to speak. The qualia of our senses, thoughts, feelings in our everyday consciousness are only shadowy experiences which can become part of the full picture when they are complemented with everything which is still hidden from view and will be revealed in the course of evolution.