Preksha Meditation

Author(s): Jethalal S Zaveri
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati

Page 7

It is obvious that our spiritual personality (or soul) must have a physical body to function and perform in, until we achieve the purest state of consciousness. In other words our mundane existence functions in duality, i.e., there is a subtle spiritual self within the gross physical body. It is the spiritual self which gives us a sense of wisdom and mastership to control the operations of the physical body.
Now, as soon as we accept the duality of our existence, we realise that there must be some means of communication between the spiritual self and the physical body. That is, there must be some built-in mechanism within the body through which the former can exercise its power and authority and control the grosser elements of blood, bones and bodily organs. This mechanism must translate the code of intangible and imperceptible forces of the spiritual, into a form of crude power which is material enough to function through flesh and other material chemical constituents of our body. These inter-communicating computers or transformers between the finer spiritual and the grosser physical selves are found to be our endocrine and nervous systems which produce and distribute the substances called hormones, neurohormones etc. That the building and evolvement forces, functioning to integrate organism within man, operate, wholly through the neuro-endocrine system of the body, is now a scientifically established fact.
The most basic feelings-primal drives--are the unlearned instincts such as, hunger, sex, anger, fear and aggression. Thousands of other emotional responses based on equally powerful feelings, not necessarily instinctual but learned, interact with these primitive drives. They may reinforce a primal drive or countermand it.
1. For example a non-vegetarian would be delighted when served with. ; say, a well-cooked lobster dinner. On the other hand, a born vegetarian
would find the very sight so repulsive that he may throw up. In neither case is the lobster responsible for the result, but learned emotional foolings.