Our Forgotten Boy Talk by Sasi Sekhar, Editor Taattvika Quarterly Web Magazine

All of us have a body. A mind too. We can distinguish one from the other. The baby in the cradle possesses a single entity, the mind-body continuum, instead. The baby doesn’t experience pain in its belly. It simply becomes pain. When it is fed by its mother or encountered by a human face, it becomes joy personified.

As the baby grows and enters the symbolic world of adults, its mind pushes back its body and becomes the new emperor of the baby’s world. The organic connection between the body and the mind is severed. The mind becomes disembodied. The Emperor’s New Ideas spread across the whole society. The Body is clean forgotten.

A world without a body becomes abstract. It is a virtual world. All abstract entities give birth to many more abstract things. Theories produce still more theories. People become intoxicated by the deceptive clarity of their knowledge. Minds without bodies can not experience. They can only represent their once-embodied experiences as images. These images are but mirages from which they can not quench their desires. People become existentially insecure, epistemologically unsure, and spiritually impoverished.

The body always tries to remind the mind of its ( body’s) forgotten status. It tries to restore the lost contact. It makes its presence felt, whenever we are in border-line situations such as sexual ecstasy or unbearable physical pain. Poets,writers, and artists never ignore the body. It is through their creations that we can recollect and reconnect with the pristine world of embodiment.