The physique is coming again into sight as a website for experimentation and as a goal for a kind of quasi-transcendence. Throughout the inverted world of the lesser actuality, the bodily physique has all the time been acknowledged because the car by which life is skilled. In different phrases, it’s our avatar while on this realm. As such, it has all the time been a website 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). Numerous 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 tips on how to regard the car of the human bodily physique.

In my earlier guide – Hijacking Actuality – I famous how latest narratives try to put the human physique as a website of weak point. That’s, the physique is open and susceptible to illness and an infection; it succumbs to growing older and exhaustion; it disallows the human being from the complete vary of experiences. On this gentle, narratives of transhumanism try to achieve floor as a means 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 embedding deeper into the parable of technological salvation. The strains usually are not a lot being drawn however being blurred. American author Philip Okay. Dick, well-known for his science fiction books that query the character and validity of actuality, spoke in regards to the blurring of boundaries between physique and atmosphere in his 1972 speech “The Android and the Human” –

“The environment, and I imply our man-made world of machines, synthetic constructs, computer systems, digital techniques, interlinking homeostatic elements—all of that is in reality starting an increasing number of to own what the earnest psychologists concern the primitive sees in his atmosphere: 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 atmosphere 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 observe 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 when it comes to the ‘nice flash,’ ‘illuminating gentle,’ 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 absolutely inside the materials world and is open to social engineering and affect.

The physique in historical past has all the time been a website 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 might be that the controlling companies inside 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 powerful emphasis on the purification of the human physique; on it being free from toxins and corruptive influences. On this means, the bodily vessel was mentioned 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 technique to block these illuminations than to deprave the physique’s purity by a polluting atmosphere – socially, psychologically, and biologically. As such, the physique has all the time been a website 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 vital historical past of modernity, how the physique has been fought over as a website of energy. The bodily physique can be thought to be a location of resistance in opposition to the institution powers. It’s a mounted place the place a person could be situated, discovered, and held accountable. And now that our bodily actions are frequently tracked by the digital infosphere, there may be even much less probability to flee the attention of authoritative surveillance. If we can not escape from our our bodies then, it will seem, we’re without end inside the system.

The human physique has all the time been accepted as a unit inside the social matrix. This has additionally been expanded to outline our bodies when it comes to social establishments: we’ve the physique politic, the social physique, the scientific physique, the medical physique, the physique of a corporation, and so forth. The as soon as sacred website of the physique, which was the vessel for somatic religious experiences, has been adopted, or co-opted, right into a social development of our bodies that belong beneath management and subjugation of exterior authorities. In Gnostic phrases, the physique’s website of energy has been known as these of the ‘sleepers’ and the ‘wakers.’ Sleepers are these whose inside self has but to interrupt by 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 cause why ecstatic experiences, whether or not by religious or different means, have been suppressed, outlawed, and discredited by orthodox religions and mainstream establishments alike. Ecstatic experiences that may break down the considering patterns and conditioning buildings of the Inversion are alarming for establishments of socio-political energy. How will you management, regulate, and self-discipline a physique, vitality, 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 objective 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 occasions, there was an rising deal with what’s termed the innate consciousness of the physique, and which has been revealed by 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 the physique, and it’s this which threatens people who search to regulate the dreaming thoughts of humanity. Nevertheless, the matrix of actuality just isn’t a clean-cut realm.

We exist in an anthropological atmosphere 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 genetic engineering, implants, augmented actuality, and the sciences of nanotechnology, biotechnology, and knowledge know-how (together with synthetic intelligence). The Inversion is making an attempt to achieve our keen compliance by 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 celebs past. There’s maybe no residing one that has not gazed up into the night time firmament and puzzled in regards to the cosmos on the market. And maybe, there have been these individuals who upon gazing up puzzled whether or not they weren’t residing inside some sort of bubble. The dreamer’s world has typically been depicted as a bubble actuality, most notably by the Renaissance alchemists, as on this well-known engraving:

The Thinker’s Stone lies outdoors of the realm of the Inversion; it may possibly 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. Cause sufficient, then, for this to have grow to be the brand new vacation spot for the trendy pioneers inside the lesser actuality.

The break from the physique begins at an early age by social conditioning. To some extent, all people need to relinquish a few of the contact they’ve with the innate intelligence of the physique (together with the physique of the pure world) by being included into the ‘social physique.’ And because the social physique turns into more and more enmeshed inside the digitized panorama, this alienation from the physique will solely likewise enhance. 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, it is a focusing on of the ‘pure physique’ in order to deprave its potential for deciphering deeper layers inside the Inversion. The body-medium for the life expertise can be considered by transhumanists as a hindrance upon the evolutionary journey towards an ‘immortal society’ that’s destined for the celebs.

This view is extra keenly taken by largely western and ‘elite’ sorts 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, moderately 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 house, free, free from the horrible travails of the physique.’³ In such contexts as these, and extra, there’s a trauma being skilled by the bodily physique. Trauma could be associated to dysfunctional vitality being trapped inside the physique, inflicting discomfort and illness. In an try to flee the physique of the planet we’re being compelled to ‘techno-transcend’ the restrictions of the organic human physique.

To journey into the celebs, 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 entry into yet one more realm of the Inversion. There appears to be no real exit of the dreaming thoughts by 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 house’ exploration and ‘outer house’ exploration. The techno-dream of house colonization is the brand new favoured development while the inside house analysis of the psyche is promoted as a harmful and trickster panorama. Outer house 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 remainder should stay grounded – or with their minds in cloudscape orbit. The trick of the Inversion is that there are infinite doorways to maintain strolling by, 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 inside the dream nonetheless. Or worse, we unknowingly grow to be 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 realize 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 a lot of our societies worldwide. The biology of management is now a serious participant inside the present realm of lived expertise. There’s now a noticeable rush to achieve 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 the car of the bodily physique. As such, we’re uniting with a organic accomplice. We’re a merged being: as it’s mentioned, 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 significant truth, exterior management agendas are decided to not solely acquire energy over the outer elements of the physique (it’s freedoms, utility, mobility, and so forth.,) but additionally, by way of interventions, to have management over its inside functioning (DNA code, intra-communication, and extra).

The human physique capabilities upon many diversified ranges and acts as many issues – together with as a receiver, filter, and transmitter of energies and knowledge. It is just the false, manipulated narrative that posits the human physique as a ‘biohazard.’ By utilizing this designation, exterior companies of authority can search to additional include and management the motion of the physique in addition to gaining inside entry by chemical and pharmaceutical interventions. These prospects have been foreseen by many, not least by the social thinker and writer Aldous Huxley. Even way back to the Nineteen Fifties, Huxley envisaged the encroachment of scientism to achieve rising intervention into the human physique:

In the meantime pharmacology, biochemistry and neurology are on the march, and we could be fairly sure that, in the midst of the following few years, new and higher chemical strategies for rising suggestibility and decreasing psychological resistance shall be found. Like the whole lot else, these discoveries could also be used effectively or badly. They might 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 symbolize a deeper, religious perspective. This was to be supplied 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 mentioned that: ‘Taking a “sound standpoint,” individuals will invent a vaccine to affect the organism as early as attainable, ideally as quickly as it’s born, in order that this human physique by no means even will get the thought that there’s a soul and a spirit.’⁵

Clearly, this reveals that the human bodily physique is a website of goal in an try and curb or block reception of religious forces. Via what might seem like a ‘sound standpoint,’ a spread of socio-cultural narratives shall be created and propagated, based on Steiner, that may push an agenda of elevated medical intervention. And these medically backed concepts have the purpose ‘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 may occur in a roundabout means by the residing physique.’⁶ Humanity has arrived at the moment now, if we observe present occasions and their associated penalties. We are actually at a time inside the 21^st century the place we’re witnessing the transmutation of residing 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 yet one more part inside the Inversion. From right here on, we’re biologically susceptible to an encroaching machinic impulse that, by its very nature, will morph bodily mixtures 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 displaying this sickness or dis-ease. The Inversion has made certain that the organic and psychological dimension has coalesced. The ripple of a bodily trauma is being felt throughout the planetary membrane as individuals are compelled 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 can be 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 concern of decay and deterioration.

Within the trendy age, loss of life has changed intercourse as the trendy taboo. The sanitized atmosphere of the hospital has changed the house because the place for passing away. The expertise of loss of life and dying has grow to be indifferent from neighborhood life with the impact that emotion and closeness has been changed by medical administration. The dying physique has grow to be inverted right into a factor of disgust and embarrassment. Loss of life has now grow to be one thing shameful – a forbidden course of. Loss of life is a contemporary scandal. Trendy life has internalized the rejection of loss of life, 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 isn’t any room for failure inside the deepening layers of machinic materialism and computational competitors. Loss of life could be changed by tech-assisted immortality within the new ‘posthuman future.’ Alternatively, the physique could be transcended by transhumanism in order that loss of life now not haunts the halls of the bodily flesh. These are the brand new imaginings within the realm of machinic need. Humanity is on the edge of venturing into an Inversion of codified creativeness and upturned wishes. Want has overtaken pleasure, and it’s the social sphere inside the Inversion that creates and sustains this desirous torment and torture of the unattainable. And inside the unattainable, higher types of exterior management should be endorsed to compensate. For this reasoning, present forces have begun to ascertain 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 when it comes to human life upon this planet.

In regards to the Writer

Kingsley L. Dennis is the writer of The Phoenix Technology: A New Period of Connection, Compassion, and Consciousness, and The Sacred Revival: Magic, Thoughts & That means in a Technological Age, obtainable at Amazon. Go to him on the internet at http://www.kingsleydennis.com/.

References

¹ Dick, Philip Okay. (1995) The Shifting Realities of Philip Okay. 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 distinguished 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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