The Body is the Creature of the Mind

[JustLikeYou]

Imagine you are a puppeteer. The puppet you are manipulating at this time has many, many strings which you may pull and release as you decide. If you have full knowledge of the precise function of each string, you may use the puppet to its full potential. But unless the puppet itself is equipped with a self-destruct string, you will not easily be able to destroy the puppet only by manipulating it.

Now let us extend the metaphor. Suppose you are a puppeteer, but your memory of being a puppeteer is artificially erased. Someone thrusts the control strings of the puppet into you hand, and while it feels vaguely familiar, you haven't the slightest clue how to make the puppet do anything useful. You toy around, you experiment. You try different things. Most of the time your puppeteering is awkward and incomplete. Sometimes you do something cool and it makes other people smile. If you are such an amnesiac puppeteer, even if there was a self-destruct string, or a complicated set of maneuvers which would lead to immediate destruction of the puppet, you would have no knowledge of it and, depending on how carefully this mechanism is hidden, you may never find it unless you are looking for it. The fact that you cannot make the puppet do exactly what you want it to do does not in any way entail that you are not manipulating it. It only suggests that you are not yet a master of manipulating it.

Are there not many recorded instances of Buddhist masters simply walking out of their bodies? Sounds to me like they have found the self-destruct string. Of course, there are certain circumstances which must be present in order for such a master to do so, but this fact only reveals the simplicity of my analogy, not the falsity of the mind's command over the body. The degree to which the body seems autonomous is precisely the degree to which its mechanisms are hidden from conscious influence. The same is true of compulsory actions at the behest of the (veiled) unconscious mind. Neurosis is a symptom of a conscious mind which is unacquainted with its unconscious aspect. The mere pursuit of self-knowledge brings with it self-mastery. This is no less true in mind's relationship to the body than it is in the mind's relationship to itself (for are the two not one?).