The Holy Trinity
In the ancient world our ancestors acknowledged and maintained three (or more) bodies, or ‘levels’ of existance: the corporeal, the psychic and the spiritual bodies. This is, of course, is where we get the old saying: ‘body, mind and soul’. In more modern times the psychic has been largely consigned to the corpporeal (as little more than a physical bodily function), and the spiritual is all to often percieved as merely conceptual. It is from here that we get the the far less inspiring saying: ‘body and soul’.
Some of us would say that we exist on a good many more levels but that the physical, psychic and spiritual bodies are those which any ‘ordinary’ person might reasonably expect to master. Whatever view you happen to take on this, let’s assume for the sake of fluidity from here in that we are dealing with the three levels of the corporeal, the psychic and the spiritual.
The issue at the heart of this post is the interactions between these levels of our own existance. How our actions, condition and attitudes on any one level effects us on the others. There are many schools of thinking on this topic and these can generally be split up into a few groups.
The first of these groups might best be called ‘mirrorists’. Among the ‘mirrorists’ there are those who would say that a person’s physical condition (health, countenance etc.) is a direct result of their actions, condition and attitudes on the other levels. Some would go as far as to say that it is also a direct measure of a person’s psychic ability, spiritual morality and strength of character.
In my opinion the mirrorists have something of a dudd in this ‘mirror theory’. As soon as one takes into account congenital disease and the ambiguous nature of beauty and morality one must either accept something akin to the concept of karma and sustain static perception or abandon the theory all together.
The next group of thinkers on this issue might be called ’seperatists’. Seperatists would say that the physical, psychic and spritual bodies act independantly of each other and without effecting greatly any other. These aparent triplets claim that the actions, condition and attitudes of one ‘body of existance’ needs and imparts no prompting, effects or manifestation on any other body or level of that same person’s existance.
Again the reality of experience and observation would appear to quickly undo the theory of the seperatists. Far from representing some kind of existential dissociative identity disorder (as suggested by the seperatists), the holy trinity of human existance – the physical, psychic and spiritual bodies – represent three expressions of the same entity.
A more likely explaination, I believe, would be described as ‘existential holism’, and explained something as follows:
As we all know, there is a finite amount of energy in the universe. Similarly, each entity exists through the vehicle of a finite amount of energy distributed accross the planes of existance which it inhabits.
(This is not to say either that energy may not be transferred from one entity to another or that depleted energy may not be restored, but we’ll get to those issues.)
Just as the microcosm of the human body must draw on reserves of energy in order to fuel activity, so must the macrocosm of the entire entity draw from reserves within it’s being in order to act. This is why activity on the psychic and/or spiritual levels leads to a depletion of energy within the physical body.
A prime example of this transfer of energy in the extreme can be found in instances where ordinary individuals accomplish feats of ’superhuman’ strength in dire emergencies, supporting the physical body through it’s fight or flight sequence. Always, after such incidents, the person having acted with superhuman strength explains later that they dont know what happened, really, they just ‘willed it so with every fibre of their being’, or words to this effect, often adding that it was almost a religious or spiritual experience. This most common of descriptions – this ‘willing it so with every fibre of their being’ – is an excellent way of expressing what is essentially the entire entity acting through a single level toward a single purpose.
The physical body is that which requires the most amount of energy to sustain. Thankfully out-side sources are readily availably to us via food, sunlight etc., and this also makes the physical body a reliable source of potential energy for the psychic and spiritual bodies to draw on.
(This is not to say that the physical body, as the most condensed form given to the entity, is neccessarily the strongest. Alone, the physical body is a fragile, wretched thing for the most part – susceptible to all manner of corruption and malfunction and prone to injury.)
When the physical body is depleted by fatigue, disease, injury or other malady, our ability to function in our physical body normally is hindered because the body is expending large portions of energy in it’s bid to heal itself and to counteract resultant symptoms and imbalances of the system in the meantime.
The same effect is manifest in the psychic and spiritual bodies in that while the physical body is dealing with the fatigue, disease, injury or other factors – and drawing more heavily on the energy pool of the entire being in the process – the amount of energy available in reserve to the psychic and spiritual bodies and our ability to cope and function normally on these levels is depleted to some degree. In some instances, such as congenital or other long term ailment exists, the person is more capable to function at a high level on the psychic and spiritual planes, perhaps because the way we function with congenital disease and long term disability is functioning normally on the physical: for us. Conversely, fatigue, injury or other blow sustained to the psychic or spiritual bodies may result in the manifestation of fatigue, low immuno-function, and / or – by way of psychological trauma – depression while the damaged body is healed.
In all of these instances a period of rest and regeneration is required to restore energy levels and balance first to the ailing body and by extention to the entire entity. It is when this period of recuperation is unavailable to us or simply not an option that we must look to sources outside ourselves to suppliment our own energy levels.
- SoulSong
