The Body Consciousness

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. 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 organise them into organ systems, limbs, nervous and brain tissue, etc. It responds to various environmental conditions automatically.

Scientists recognise 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 bio-electric currents or gene activity to provoke these advanced capacities (which are known to exist and can be observed in certain fish, salamanders, etc.

It is clear that through the mind’s development and the vital nature’s extremes, that the body has been put to tremendous tests. 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 recognise 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 life span can become a burden and a curse.

The Mother notes: “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. 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 ill; 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, it also loses the spontaneous capacity of restoring its equilibrium when this has been disturbed.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter XVI Body, pp. 126-127