Layers & Levels Chapter Eight: Body Speech and Mind

We are getting to the end of the initial series of Lists which describe reality from non-materialist points of view, mainly but not only from the Buddhist tradition. This list has only three components and is really less a list as a very basic description of experiential reality. Indeed, perhaps this is the only one I should have offered from the get-go.

Simply put, in life – aka ‘experience’ – there are always three basic layers or levels namely: Body, Speech and Mind.

Body:

We all know what that is. Our physical body which has an inside and an outside. We feel the inside and can perceive our own and others bodies outside. It is that which is physical, dense, solid, particular, existing in a particular place though it is always moving around; it sees, hears, smells, tastes and touches. In short, it has a particular form beyond which is outside, and therefore not, the body.

Mind:

Mind is that which thinks, feels, perceives and processes; more fundamentally mind is that which is aware, awake, conscious. Mind dreams, imagines, analyzes, responds. If the body’s eyes perceive objects in space it is the mind which sees and evaluates them. Mind is that which perceives meaning and via which is channelled intention.

Speech:

This one is less obvious, perhaps, but is simply an interface between Body and Mind. If you go for a walk in the woods, for example, there is no end of speech principle at play: birds singing, squirrels chattering, insects buzzing, monkeys or dogs howling, with occasional louder moos or roars from larger animals. Leaves quiver, reflecting light into variegations of colour, light and dark or release raindrops in a pleasing patter onto the carpet of leaves below which crunch and rustle as we pass. All forms communicate certain qualities to each other in the sensory realm we share. Plants, though having a different sensory makeup, are highly attuned and responsive to what goes on around them – far more than ourselves in many ways. But lacking eyes they do not ‘see’ visual forms as we do though clearly they are aware of other forms around them and adapt or respond to them. All forms and shapes with their colours, textures, odours and movements are in a constant state of transmitting and receiving with all around them.

From a deliberately flowery text I wrote years ago to help work through chronic Lyme Disease :

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The money quote there in terms of Speech principle is: living languages of meaningful qualities.

As with all such formulations, it is good to sit with them for a while and notice them over time in everyday experience. Body and Mind are fairly straightforward. On a literal and human level, Speech is speaking: with Body and Mind we communicate with each other using both voice-box, tongue and also various facial and other gestures. At some point we evolved initial scratches and scribbles in the dirt into sophisticated mathematical and vernacular languages. But also Speech has to do with the communicative nature of qualities, including how inanimate things like furniture and paintings express their nature to us by communicating something stylistically, atmospherically. Not to mention a lady’s hair, makeup, lipstick, nail polish, dress and smile – all are clear and present, not to mention delightful, examples of the speech principle.

In this sense, all qualities are Speech Realm phenomena. In a way, we can say that everything is talking in one way or another. This is a very deep, all pervasive aspect of living beings and the space, or realm, they inhabit, just as much as space is filled with no end of forms (body) and the ability to navigate in a world filled with such forms (mind).

That said, as with most of these lists, one shouldn’t be too rigid with the categories. Just as there a human beings with jealous god tendencies battling with each other in the canyons of Wall Street, so also there are highly communicative speech realm bodies like a peacock’s tail, or mind and presence rich uber-solid physical manifestations, like a motionless Zen rock garden. In short, all experience blends all three aspects so there is no such thing as only Body or only Mind, however there are these three core different aspects of experience which are both interesting and valuable to contemplate.

Further, the Speech notion highlights several key differences between this and more common materialist formulations describing so-called ‘reality’, including such notions as human beings being evolved apes and such. The Science philosopher and mathematician John Lennox is, along with Iain McGilchrist, one of the leading Western voices exposing the materialist outlook as a) widespread, b) fallacious and c) harmful. Here are some short quotes from Lennox lifted from a video entitled “John Lennox: The Question of Science and God, Part One”:

‘Information is not reducible to physics or chemistry (physical matter, particles or Body) which means that materialism is false as philosophy…

therefore purely materialistic science is not going to encompass a huge area of reality… making science not the only way to truth..

[indeed] making science the only avenue to truth is very dangerous and logically absurd’.

One ‘area of reality’ the materialist worldview does not see is the Speech realm. Although it may not be structured into words and possess grammatical rules, who can deny that a flower in bloom is expressing no end of qualities to others in the same realm, aka mandala, and in so doing helping to define the nature of that mandala? Similarly, the shape of each and every leaf on each and every tree communicates qualities. In this regard, we could go so far as to say that ALL physical form is designed in such a way as to communicate qualities about itself to the mind level in its realm – indeed it is the mind level that creates any awareness of ‘realminess’.

We can say that all form exists within a field of consciousness-awareness which perceives such forms as qualities expressing the various properties and intentions of the forms in question, such qualities being a type of meaningful language read by mind. So all the time we find ourselves in a realm manifesting forms (body), qualities (speech) and meaningful presence (mind).

So the next time you look at a flower, observe a bee or bird, watch a dog or a human amble across the street, or participate in a conversation among friends at the dinner table, you might want to pick up on the many simultaneous body, speech and mind aspects at play. This won’t trigger a life-changing experience, but it might help you notice what has been right in front of you your entire life in a different, and hopefully interesting, way. It’s a non-materialist way of appreciating the experiential universe we collectively create and share.

Postscript:

I had to write out several versions of this Chapter because too much kept crowding in. This is because, as mentioned at the top, perhaps this ‘list’ is the only one I needed to present. What has become clear is that many future chapters in this Series will be going over different layers and levels of the already presented material essentially drilling further down or using them in various contexts, albeit probably the one most often referenced will be Body Speech and Mind.

For example, one traditional example chucked from this chapter is The Three Bodies of Buddha, usually presented in arcane, impenetrable language. A second aspect is The Three Lords of Materialism’, a fascinating though an entirely different take. Later I will present some critiques of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution wherein one of the most substantive objections is how DNA, which of course Darwin lacked the means to observe and which we now know determines cellular development and function, is a form of code, which is language requiring some sort of mind whose intention and sense of purpose, or meaning, develops such a language which in turn determines cellular form and function making all three levels of Body, Speech and Mind clearly in play no matter how distasteful or ‘unscientific’ materialists may find this simple fact. Darwin’s bottom-up random-genesis theory, which bases all on physical matter, simply doesn’t explain how such language (speech) can have been developed to direct (mind) cellular development, let alone how they integrate and indeed create entire organisms. In any case, the discussion will naturally involve consideration of all three body-speech-mind aspects of living organisms, not exclusively emphasizing only the physical. Indeed, most modern scientists, not familiar with these simple non-materialist ways of viewing this our experiential continuum, lack the vocabulary to easily distinguish these various aspects and rather feel compelled to fit things into a uni-dimensional ‘theory of everything’ instead of accepting that reality comprises various (ever-changing) layers and levels, which of course is the principal thrust of this series.

Finally, here is the rock garden picture again. Hopefully you can easily pick up on various Body, Speech and Mind aspects therein – not to mention various layers and levels…