It is hard to make abstraction of our education about the human body. After all, materialist science and it’s hypostesis permeated our world to the degree, that certain things we find unquestionable facts. For this science, the world of the senses is the only world outthere, to the level, that research what is not biased towards a materialist approach is strongly discouraged, and anything what points to the suprasensible is omitted.
I for long wanted to have an in depth analysis of the so called “scientific method” on this forum, to prove that it is not free at all from subjectivity, and also it is strongly affected by existing theories. Today, only that research is seen as scientific what extends the rule of the main existing theories - our science is specialized and more and more lost into details.
Given this enviromnent, every sound thinking person who has some education, accepts the scientific world view, even if one does not really know it, it accepts it because this is what rules the media, too. And to give them credit, rightly so, because what has passed down as an exernal religious form is inaccesible to a mind yearning for comprehension. The revival of yoga is explained by this, because it apparently provides a reasonable approach, insted of blind fate based on the authority of religious tradition. Yoga being practicable without beleiveing in some dogma, draws many through the accesibility of asana practice. After all, we all have bodies, and we can move our limbs freely. Thus, our own development is literraly put into our hands, instead of relying on blind fate.
It is where we are, and it is the best starting point. The confusion about chakras is understandable. It is clear that these are not physical organs … they are not there if you cut open a human being. Sure there is the spine, and nervous tissue, the solar plexus, the brain, but you will never find physical constructions similar to the number of petals described in the Upanishads, to give an example. Thus, if one has a strong scientific education, it is hard to even accept the existence of chakras - the superficial thinker will identify them with various glands, or nervous hubs, but in reality, based on the anatomy of the physical body, chakras are non-existant.
Thus, we go back to the question if we are able to accept the idea of a spiritual, non-material part of the human being, or not. One needs to know the current scientific theories and world view well enough to realize how many assumptions they use, and to even realize that the main theories are not really proven, but hypotesis what are not in contradiction with the experiements. What this means, that from a materialist point of view they are likely, but on a deeper analysis, they cannot be called facts.
Huge intellectual efforts are put into these theories, so naturally, if one questions them, one needs to be prepared for a similar performance.
To give an example, biology, what is not that old of a science, assumes that the living cell is a mechanism, ruled by the DNS, and the complex actions of organic molecules, and even assumes that if we are able to descipher the rules by the DNS and these molecules operate, we will be able to create “living cells”. This is not my fancy, read this article and the following discussion … to have a glimpse of what our science is today, how biologists think. It is called [I][FONT=Verdana]Fundamental complexity, Measures of Life.[/I][/FONT]
What I beleive, is that Life is suprasensorial. Sceince does not know what life is, if it knew, it could create living beings, yet, it cannot. What it can is to mingle with it, and change it’s course … but it can’t create even the most basic thing we’d call alive, a small bacteria. Yes, we can alter the DNS, and change how the bacteria or virus acts, appears, and we think we created something new, but that is not creation of life, it is altering existing life.
If one really meditates on a dead body of a human being, or an animal, or a plant, something alive, one has to admit this: This body lies in front of me, and it is ruled by the various chemical, and physical forces of it’s constituents. It is made of physical substances, and the the laws of chemistry and physics apply to it. What happens to it ? It decays, rots, falls apart, until it is but a dust of minerals. If we think of these forces, these very laws what make the physical body decay, we must assume that they also apply to the living being, too. It would be silly to think that these laws are not applicable to the physical body of the living beings. Than how come that during life, we do not decay, and fall apart ? And we must assume the existence of something, what prevents and opposes the very action of the laws what apply to dead matter.
