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<title>The Body Human</title>
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<span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'><b><font size="4">The Body
Human</font><o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<div class=Section1>

<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right;text-indent:27.0pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><i>
<span
lang=EN-GB style='font-size:18.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:27.0pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>T</span><span lang=EN-GB
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>HE</span><span lang=EN-GB
style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'> human frame is a miracle of creation. It would
not be far wrong to say that the whole trend of physical evolution has been to
bring out this morphological marvel. It has not been a very easy task for
Nature to raise a living creature from its original crawling &quot;crouching
slouching&quot; horizontal position to the standing vertical position which is
so normal and natural to the human body. Man has proportionately a larger
cranium with a greater and heavier content of the grey substance in comparison
with the (vertebral) column upon which it is set, his legs too have to carry a
heavier burden. And yet how easy and graceful his erect posture! It is a
balancing feat worthy of the cleverest rope-dancer. Look at a bear or even at a
chimpanzee standing and moving on its hind legs; what an uncouth, ungainly
gait, forced and ill at ease! He is more natural and at home in the prone
horizontal position. The bird was perhaps an attempt at change of position from
the horizontal to the vertical: the frame here attained an angular incline (cf.
<i>tiryak</i>, as the bird is called in Sanskrit), but to maintain even that
position it was not possible to increase or enlarge the head. It is not idly
that Hamlet exclaims:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:27.0pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>What a piece of work is a man<span
class=GramE>!...</span> how infinite in faculties! <span class=GramE>in</span>
form and moving how express and admirable!... the beauty of the world! <span
class=GramE>the</span> paragon of animals!¹<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:27.0pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'><span style='mso-tab-count:1'>&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>The
perfection of the anatomical and morphological structure in man consists precisely
in its wonderful elasticity – the 'infinite faculty' or multiple functioning
referred to by Shakespeare. This is the very characteristic character of man
both with regard to his physical and psychological make-up. The </span></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:27.0pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&nbsp;</span>¹ <i><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:
10.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>Shakespeare, Hamlet</span></i><span lang=EN-GB
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>, Act 2, Sc. 2</span></span></p>
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<span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:10.0pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>Page-79<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span class=GramE><span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>other species are, everyone of them, more or less, a
specialised formation; we have there a closed system, a fixed and definite
physical mould and pattern of life. A cat or a crow of a millioI1years ago,
like 'the immemorial elm' was not very different from its descendant of today;
not so with man. I mean, the human frame, in its general build, might have
remained the: same from the beginning of time, but the uses to which it has
been put, the works that have been demanded of it are multifarious, indeed of
infinite variety. Although it is sometimes stated that the human body too has
undergone a change (and is still undergoing) from what was once heavy and
muscular, tall and stalwart, with a thicker skeletal system, towards something
lighter and more delicate. Also an animal, like the plant, because of its
rigidity of pattern, remains unchanged, keeping to its own geographical
habitat. Change of climate meant for the animal a considerable change, a
sea-change, a change of species, practically. But man can easily – much more
easily than an animal or a plant – acclimatise himself to all sorts of variable
climates. There seems to be a greater resilience in his physical system, even
as a physical object. Perhaps it contains a greater variety of component
elements and centres of energy which support its versatile action. The human
frame, one may say, is like the solar spectrum that contains. all the colour vibrations and all the lines characteristic
of the different elements. The solar sphere is the high symbol for man.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:27.0pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>The story runs (<i>Aitareya Upanishad</i>)
that once the gods wished to come down and inhabit an earthly frame. Several
animal forms (the cow, the horse) were presented to them one after another, but
they were not satisfied, none was considered adequate for their habitation. At
last the human frame (with its conscious personality) was offered to them and
immediately they declared that that was indeed the perfect form they needed – <i>sukrtam
bateti</i> – and they entered into it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:27.0pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>The human frame is the abode of the
gods; it is a </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceType><span lang=EN-GB
  style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>temple</span></st1:PlaceType><span
 lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'> of </span><st1:PlaceName><span
  lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>God</span></st1:PlaceName></st1:place><span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>, as we all know. But the most
significant thing about it is that the gods alone do not dwell there: all
being, all creatures crowd there, even the ungodly and the undivine. The Pashu
(the animal), the Pishacha (the demon), theAsura (the Titan), and the Deva (the
god), all find comfortable lodging in it – there are many chambers indeed in
this mansion<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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<span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:10.0pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>Page-80<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span class=GramE><span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>of the Lord. Man was made after the image of God
and yet Lucifer had access into that tabernacle and all his
entire host with him. This duality of the divine and the undivine, the
characteristic mark of human nature as it is, presents a field and a labour
through which man's progress has to be worked out. The soul, the divine flame,
has, been placed in Ignorance, that is to say, what is apparent Ignorance, the
frame of Matter, just because this Matter in Ignorance is to be smelted,
purified, given its original and intrinsic substance, shape and character. The
human person in its actual form is not obviously something absolutely perfect
and divine. The type, the norm it represents is divine, but it has been
overlaid with all obscure and base elements – it has to be washed and cleaned
thoroughly, smelted and reconditioned. The dark ungodly elements mar and vitiate;
they must be removed on the one hand, but on the other, they point out and test
the salvaging work that has to be done and is being done. Man is always at the
crossroads. This is his especial difficulty and this is also his unique
opportunity. His consciousness has a double valency, in contradistinction to
the animal's which is, it can be said, monovalent, in that it is amoral, has
not the sense of divided loyalty and hence the merit of choice. The movements
of the animal follow a fixed stereotyped pattern; it has not got to deviate
from the beaten track of its instincts. But man with his sense of the moral, of
the good, of the progressive is at every step of his life faced with a dilemma,
has to pause at a parting of the ways, always looks before and after and is
puzzled at a <i>cas de conscience</i>. That, we
have said, has been made for him the condition of growth, of a conscious and
willed change with an ever-increasing tempo towards perfect perfection. That
furnishes the occasion and circumstance by which he rises to divinity itself,
becomes the Divine. He becomes the Divine thus not merely in the own home of
the Divine, but on all the levels of the manifestation: all the planes of consciousness
with all the hierarchy of beings – powers and personalities – find a new play
of harmony, a supreme and global fulfilment in the transfigured human vehicle.
The frame itself that encases the human consciousness acts as a living
condenser: the very contour in its definiteness seems to exert a pressure
towards an ever larger and higher synthesis, it may be</span></span><span lang=EN-GB
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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<span
lang=EN-GB style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>Page-81<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span class=GramE><span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>compared to a kind of field office
(Einsteinian, for example) that controls, regulates, moves and configurates all
elements within its range. The human frame even as a frame possesses a magic
virtue.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:27.0pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>Vaishnavism sees the Divine as a
human person, the human person par excellence. </span><st1:place><span
 lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>Krishna</span></st1:place><span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>'s body is a radiant form of
consciousness (<i>cinmaya</i>), no doubt, but it is as definite, determinate, and
concrete as the physical body, it is the physical itself but in its true
substance. And its exquisiteness consists in its being human in form. The
Vedantin's Maya does not touch <span class=GramE>it,</span> it is beyond the
illusory consciousness. For they say Goloka stands above Brahmaloka.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:27.0pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>The Christian conception of God-man
is also extremely beautiful and full of meaning. God became man: He sent down
upon earth his own and only Son to live among men as man. This indeed is His
supreme Grace, His illimitable love for mankind. It is thus, in the words of
the Offertory, that He miraculously created the dignity of human substance,
holding Himself worthy to partake of our humanity. This carnal sinful body has
been sanctified by the Christ having assumed it. In and through Him – his
divine consciousness – it has been strained and purified, uplifted and
redeemed. He has anointed it and given it a place in Heaven even by the side of
the Father. Again, Mary – symbolising the earth or body consciousness, as
Christian mystics themselves declare – was herself taken up bodily into the
heavenly abode. The body celestial is this very physical human body cleared of
its dross and filled with the divine substance. This could have been so
precisely because it was originally the projection, the very image of God here
below in the world of Matter. The mystery of Transubstantiation repeats and
confirms the same symbology. The bread and wine of our secular body become the
flesh and blood of the God-Man's body. The human frame is, as it were, woven
into the very fabric of God's own truth and substance. The human form is
inherent in the Divine's own personality. Is it mere anthropomorphism to say
like this? We know the adage that the lion were he self-conscious and creative,
would paint God as a super-lion, that is to say, in his own image. Well, the
difference is precisely here, that the lion is not self-conscious and creative.
Man creates – not man the mere imaginative</span><span
lang=EN-GB style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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<span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:10.0pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>Page-82<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span class=GramE><span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>artist but man the seer, the Rishi – he
expresses and embodies, represents faithfully the truth that he sees, the truth
that he is. It is because of this &quot;conscious personality&quot;, referred
to in the parable of the Aitareya Upanishad,-that God has chosen the human form
to inhabit.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:27.0pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>This is man's great privilege that,
unlike the animal, he can surpass himself (the capacity, we may note, upon
which the whole Nietzschean conception of humanity was based). Man is not bound
to his human nature, to his anthropomorphism, he can rise above and beyond it, become
what is (apparently) non-human. Therefore the Gita teaches: By thy self upraise
thy self, lower not thy self by thy self. Indeed, as we have said, man means
the whole gamut of existence. All the worlds and all the beings in all the
worlds are also within his frame; he has only to switch or focus his
consciousness on to a particular point or direction and he becomes a particular
type in life. Man can be the very supreme godhead or at the other extreme a
mere brute or any other intermediary creature in the hierarchy extending
between the two.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:27.0pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>The Divine means the All: whatever
there is (manifest or beyond) is within Him and is Himself. Man too who is
within that Divine is the Divine in a special way; for he is a replica or
epitome of the Divine containing or embodying the threefold status and movement
of the Divine – the Transcendent, the Cosmic and the Individual. He is
co-extensive with the Divine. Only, the Divine is conscious, supremely
conscious, while Man is unconscious or at best half-conscious. God has made
himself the world and its creatures, the transcendental has become the material
cosmos, true; but God has made himself Man in a special sense and for a special
purpose. Man is not a fabrication of the Lower Maya, a formation thrown up in
the evolutionary course by a temporary idea in the Cosmic Mind and developed
through the play of forces; on the other hand, it is a typal reality, a
Real-Idea – a formation of the original truth-consciousness, the Divine's own
transcendental existence. Man is the figure of the Divine Person. The
Impersonal become or viewed as the Personal takes up the human aspect, the
human, that is to say, as its original prototype in the superconscience.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:27.0pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>The conception of a personal
immortality – the impersonal<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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<span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:10.0pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>Page-83<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span class=GramE><span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>is naturally always immortal, there is no problem
there – of a physical immortality even attains a significant value looked at
from this standpoint. The urge for immortality is not merely a wish to continue
indefinitely an earthly life, because of its pleasures or because of an
unreasoning attachment; it means regaining and establishing the immortal body
that one has or that one is essentially and potentially. The body seeks to be
immortal, for it contains and secretly is its immortal Formal Cause (to make use
of an Aristotelian term). The materialisation of an immortal being and figure
of being – that is the consummation demanded of human life on earth.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:27.0pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>The spirit, the pure self in man is
formless; but his soul – the spirit cast into the evolutionary mould in manifestation
– has a form: it possesses a personal identity of its own. Each soul or Psyche
is a contoured consciousness, as it were: it is not a vague indefinite charge
of consciousness, but consciousness having magnitude and dimensions. And the
physical body is a visible formula, a graph of that magnitude, an image – a
faithful image or shadow thrown upon the wall of this cave of earthly life, – of
a reality above and outside, as Plato conceived the phenomenon. And the human
appearance too is an extension or projection of an inner and essential reality
which brings out or takes up that configuration when fronting the soul in its
evolutionary march through terrestrial life. A mystic poet says:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:27.0pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;tab-stops:0in; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>All dreams of the soul<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN-GB
style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>End in a beautiful man's or woman's body</span><span
lang=EN-GB style='font-family:"Lucida Console";mso-bidi-font-family:"Lucida Console";
mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>¹</span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>&nbsp;</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:27.0pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>This is not the utterance of a mere
profane consciousness; such also is the experience of a deeper spiritual truth.
For the Divine in one of its essential aspects is Ardhanarishwara, the original
transcendental Man-Woman. And we feel and almost see that it is a human Face to
which our adoration goes when we hear another mystic poet chant for us the <i>mantra</i>:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:27.0pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:27.0pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>Invading the secret clasp of the
Silence and crimson Fire thou frontest eyes in a timeless Face.</span><span
lang=RU style='mso-ansi-language:RU'>²</span><o:p></o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:27.0pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:27.0pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
lang=EN-GB style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>¹W. B. Yeats,
&quot;The Phases of the Moon&quot;, <span class=GramE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>The</i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> Wild Swans at Cook</i>
<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:27.0pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
lang=EN-GB style='font-size:10.0pt'><span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&nbsp;</span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt'>² </span><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:10.0pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>Sri Aurobindo, &quot;The Bird of Fire&quot;, <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Collected Poems &amp; Ploys</i></span></span><span lang=EN-GB
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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