Is it possible to view the human
body without considering it to be either a machine or a
holy temple? I suggest that the answer to that question is
"yes." Such an affirmation of the living body entails a
functional perspective that focuses on the unity of the body as both
the expression of individual experience and the concrete basis of
personal behavior. A corpse can be analyzed chemically and
otherwise, and the spirit may be apprehended by means of mystical
intuition; but the body must be lived
in order for the integrity of mind and body to "make
sense." The level of integration at which mind and body are
perceived as complementary terms in a functional unity is rooted in
sensation. If sensation is to be anchored in the deep,
free-flowing experience of the body, then the restrictions to natural
motility in the organism must be dissolved. Based on the work of
Wilhelm Reich and others, it is possible to identify with considerable
exactitude the localization of blocks to movement within the
person. In practice, there are many reasons why it is no simple
matter to eliminate these blocks completely in the course of advancing
personal growth and improved functioning.
The contemporary world is the product of a long period of evolution,
and there are various levels of challenge that present themselves to
the individual who sincerely wishes to confront and work through
restrictions that limit his or her
experience of life. On a strictly functional level, most
individuals have encountered significant difficulties during the
formative period of growth. At another level, the social
context of the modern world creates, in many instances, formidable
obstacles to healthy living. This is easy to
comprehend if one considers the inordinate degree of stress
associated with life in contemporary civilization. In some
situations, there can be no hope of escaping the deleterious effects of
disturbing circumstances. We must do everything possible
to remove ourselves from such situations. Sometimes it is
feasible to confront and overcome difficult conditions and to bring
about
constructive change. Making an effort to do so is then
reasonable. In any event, life
often demands courage and a serious attitude in the face of adversity,
and risks must be taken at times by every person, both in the interest
of survival and for the
purpose of fostering a more meaningful existence.
Apart from individual problems and generalized
social
and cultural distress, it is also true that human beings stand in an
uneasy biological
relation to the rest of nature. The development of the human
nervous system, for example, has made possible a great complexity of
responses to adversity, and this very complexity, connected with the
capacity for foresight, has been associated with a tendency toward
paralysis of action as well as the development of an overemphasis on
logical, cognitive processes. The reaction to this
overemphasis, at times, results in a compensatory reliance on intuition
which then goes beyond the scope of what is sensible.
Aside from the individual, social, and biological stresses
characteristic of the modern world, one might also identify a certain
form of alienation that is religious in nature. The word
"religion" (religare: to tie,
to fasten), in the strict sense, means simply to feel oneself bound up
with the cosmos, to be a part of the greater universe. The role
of religion has been challenged by science and, ironically, science has
taken the place of religion for many people. But the true basis
of the religious sense is a deep feeling of contact with nature and
with life, and neither organized systems of dogma nor scientific
beliefs can substitute for a natural sense of contact. Such
contact must be rooted in the body.
There is a strong argument that can be made that restrictions and
disturbances in bio-energetic contact with oneself and the world are
the common functioning principle underlying many of the difficulties
which human beings face. No matter how acute the human intellect,
thinking takes place in an experiential vacuum if the life of the
senses is withdrawn from awareness. Such deadening and distorting
of sensory appreciation are a form of learned behavior. The level
at which such learning of the misuse of oneself takes place
is to be found in the deep, organic processes of the body. If
this were not
the case, personal reeducation would not be such a challenging
proposition. What is at issue is a visceral self-awareness that
gives one the experience of being connected to life. The means of
suppressing such visceral, living contact is acquired in the form of
habitual restrictions in the range of movement, feeling, thinking, and
sensation within the person. A principal mechanism for such
restrictions is a contraction of the striated muscles of the body and a
spontaneous interference with the vegetative functions mediated by the
autonomic and central nervous systems. To reestablish vegetative
contact based on more nearly optimal motility requires changes in basic
patterns of response at the sensory and motor levels, as well as
changes in self-perception. To make such changes, one must be
prepared to reorient oneself in the world.
One of the problems facing anyone seriously concerned with
changing his or her perspective concerning the place of human beings in
the world is that such a venture calls into question the character of
our personal experience and challenges the well-established habits of
our thinking. Certainly it is possible to achieve superficial
change without disturbing our sense of reality. By definition,
however, such change cannot be radical in the etymological sense of
"going to the root" of the matter. If we wish to promote truly
radical change for ourselves, we must be prepared to confront
some disorientation in our personal sense of identity as we change
perspectives. The fostering of change in a positive direction
requires that we discover our roots. From a functional, organic
vantage point, such roots are to be found in bodily experience.
It is easy enough to assume that in the contemporary world the life of
the body has been granted a central place in the awareness of
individuals. To make this assumption, however, is to confuse a
sophisticated preoccupation with the image of the body with the deep,
underlying experiences of bodily processes that are the genuine source
of meaningful contact with the world. An image, by
definition, is a copy or a likeness, and the self-image of an
individual is a reflection of an underlying sensory experience.
This is not to say that the world of images is without value. It
is clear, however, that images dissociated from the reality of bodily
experience may become a nightmare. This is the world of the
sorcerer's apprentice; one unleashes a power by which one comes to be
dominated. As Alexander Lowen has observed, the modern world is
bewitched by images. [1] This does not mean that images are
to be shunned, but when images become divorced from
the life of the body they become unreal. One then becomes a slave
to the mental life. Certainly, in the contemporary world the life
of the body has been subordinated to the life of the mind. It
must be noted that such a subordination is not a casual affair, but
represents an actual suppression of bodily experience.
Considering the pressures of modern living, it is natural to wonder
what a positive alternative to the current order of society and culture
might be. The answer is that what human beings need in order
to realize their inborn potential for creative living is to be part of
a genuine community. On the one hand, culture serves as a
boundary between humankind and the rest of nature, and in this sense it
functions
as a protective device. On the other hand, culture draws people
together in a positive association for the sake of pleasure,
self-expression, and personal fulfillment. At the basis of
culture is the social nature of human beings. Stated simply,
human beings need one
another. The issue of human beings living in a community reaches
deeper than the utility which such an arrangement provides in the face
of adversity in nature. Each person desires warmth and contact
with
other people. This is what allows for personal fulfillment based
on the experience of pleasure. There is a positive quality to
life when authentic contact with other people is the normal mode of
existence. Such a quality is lacking in most situations in the
world
today, and the result is tragic. In a mass society with a mass culture
there is an anonymous quality to existence. Such a
situation breeds violence and anti-social behavior. [2] In this
context, many individuals
seek to alleviate their anxiety and to shore up a diminished sense of
self by establishing
pseudo-relationships in which genuine commitment, involvement, and
reciprocity are
lacking. In this kind of situation, cooperation may be idealized,
yet at bottom each individual strives only for his or her own
personal gain. This is in contrast to the situation that
characterizes a genuine community, in which freedom and responsibility
are joined.
Based on the bio-energetic principles introduced by Wilhelm Reich and
the structural-energetic perspective developed by other investigators,
a view of the body which draws together the mental and physical aspects
of experience and behavior can be outlined. On the experiential
side, such a view involves the sensation and awareness of more
integrated functioning. The body is experienced as a whole, such
that needs, drives, feelings, thoughts, and movements of the person
are unified in a coordinated manner. One has good contact with
oneself and the world. On an objectively discernible level, such
experience is correlated with a balanced posture, graceful movements,
and a lively expressiveness. [3] Behavior and experience are
complementary. To move in the direction of such integrated
functioning entails a challenge, and one of the necessary responses to
such a challenge is the evolution of a personal philosophy on the part
of the individual. Since no two individuals inhabit the same
position in the world, it is not to be expected that any two
individuals will share exactly the same philosophy. On the other
hand, a shared experience of what it means to be alive in the
world provides a basis for fundamental agreement on the essential
values of life.
The human condition, for better or worse, is to be alive and to be
conscious of life. This is a formidable fate. To live out
one's fate is made even more difficult, however, by the existence of
disturbances
in personal functioning. Such disturbances are operative in the
realms of both experience and behavior and are embodied and reflected
in diminished respiration, reduced energy, and increased tension and
stress. Since we are not free to choose our family of birth or
the social and cultural circumstances into which we are born, there is
no point in blaming ourselves for the disturbances in our functioning
that are the result of our developmental history. As adults,
however, our task is to confront and work through the problems in
functioning that have fallen to our lot. In this venture, it is
necessary to assume responsibility for the struggle to grow and to
learn. It is only by acknowledging our situation and struggling
to find constructive solutions to fundamental problems that we can hope
to change the direction of our lives. If we are determined in
this endeavor - and if we are able to discover a constructive context
in
which to gain increased insight, to learn, and to grow - the experience
of life can be deepened and the meaning of life can be enriched.
Far from being a prescription for attaining paradise, such a task
involves getting our feet on the ground in a realistic way. Human
beings are, so to speak, children of the earth. In an age of
space and "virtual reality," the tendency is to become "spaced out" and
"unreal." We can only
contemplate the heavens in a human way, however, if we have a firm
foundation on
which to stand; and "virtual" reality can never be more than a pale
substitute for lived experience.
In his notebooks, written near the
end of the nineteenth century, Friedrich Nietzsche recorded an
observation in the form of a question: "Nihilism stands at the door:
whence comes this uncanniest of all guests?" [12] The word
"nihilism" (L. nihil:
nothing) refers to a philosophy, attitude, or perspective which rejects
the value of life. The dictionary defines nihilism as a "...total
and absolute destructiveness toward the world at large and oneself."
[13] Perhaps the most starkly articulated expression of nihilism
was voiced by a military officer in Granada in the days of the Spanish
Civil War. "Viva la muerte!" proclaimed the general. "Long
live death!" At the root of nihilism and its many manifestations
in the contemporary world is a deep dissatisfaction with life.
Yet
life is a force that surges expressively in the multifaceted forms of
the living beings that occupy the earth, and even nihilism must be
understood not as the triumph of death but as the twisted and distorted
relentlessness of living impulses seeking an outlet in the face of
suppression and denial. Again, in the words of Nietzsche: "Man
would rather will nothing than not will." [14] The tragedy of
nihilism is not only the senseless destruction and the meaningless
misery that it fosters, but the fact that in nihilism life has turned
against itself.
At the core of a functional perspective rooted in life is the
conviction that life is a potent, palpable, and substantial force and
not merely a concept or an idea. Such a conviction is based on
feeling, and it cannot, therefore, be proved logically. As
Alyosha tells Ivan in The Brothers
Karamazov, "You must love life more than the meaning of
it." But if one is cut off from the experience of life, then all
that remains is the image of an absence, even if that image is filled
with fantasies and illusions meant to substitute for the missing
actuality of deeply lived experience. Virtual reality is no
replacement for reality, and like a Magritte painting, the scene on the
canvas is only the image of an image. At bottom, a simple
affirmation of life does not require flags, fireworks, or
drumbeats. We need to breathe deeply and freely, to stand
comfortably and to move with some degree of grace. We need to
feel ourselves embodied and to identify with our sexuality. We
need to understand the limits of our cultural context so that we can
pursue more successfully genuine growth and development. We need
to
have available our natural energy for life, and we need to develop a
personal understanding that conforms to our natural functional
requirements and not a distorted caricature of those
requirements. Meeting these needs is a challenge, and in the
course of orienting ourselves with respect to this challenge, we must
develop a perspective on life that is grounded in life itself and which
expresses the values of life that lead to satisfaction and
fulfillment. Love, work, knowledge, creativity, and personal
integrity are such values. If they are to be more than empty
words, they must be rooted in the living body.
