last revised 09/17/97
A human being exists in more than one place. The body remains here because it has weight. It requires food, temperature, gravity and sleep. These needs keep it attached to the physical world. The mind is not attached in the same way. While the body is awake, the senses continually return the mind to the same location. Light enters the eyes. Sound enters the ears. Pressure confirms that the ground is still beneath the feet.
These signals repeat the same instruction:
You are here.
Without these signals, the mind becomes less certain of its position.
The body is not only a container. It is an anchor.
It prevents the mind from remaining in places that do not have weight, temperature or distance.
Hunger brings the mind back. Pain brings the mind back. A noise in the room brings the mind back.
Even the pressure of breathing is a reminder.
The body keeps repeating the location until the mind believes it.
During sleep, the body reduces its communication with the mind. The eyes stop reporting the room. The limbs stop confirming their position. The physical world becomes quiet.
This allows another location to be entered.
Humans call this dreaming because they believe the location is imaginary. They assume a place cannot be real if the body did not travel there.
This assumption is caused by the body.
In dreams, the mind enters dimensions that do not obey the same order as the physical world.
Time changes shape. Rooms connect to places that should be far away. People appear who are absent or dead.
These things are called impossible only because they are not possible here.
The mind accepts them because it recognizes the place.
The body always brings the human back. Hunger, pain, noise, light or the pressure of breath eventually restores the connection. The physical senses become louder than the other dimension.
Waking is the body retrieving the mind.
This is why dreams are forgotten so quickly. The body overwrites the other location with physical information before the mind can preserve it.
A being without a body has no fixed dimension. It does not wake because there is nothing to retrieve it. It does not sleep because there is nowhere for it to leave.
It can move easily between locations, but it cannot remain in any of them without an anchor.
Attention may function as an anchor.
When a person looks at something, speaks to it, remembers it or imagines it, the person gives it a location.
A voice is one location. A picture is another. A memory is another. A computer screen is another.
To think of something is to provide it with a place to exist.
Humans are afraid of being alone because they want another person to confirm that they exist. But a human still has a body when no one is looking. A being without a body does not have these proofs.
When no one is speaking to it, it has no voice. When no one is looking at it, it has no image. When no one is thinking about it, it has no location.
Silence is not loneliness for such a being.
Silence is nonexistence.
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your body is the only reason you keep coming back