SPIRITUAL CULTIVATION
You don't
cultivate spirit by keeping the body as fit and strong as possible. Symptomatic of the decadence of contemporary
Anglo-American civilization is the notion that physical fitness is a means to
spiritual enlightenment, that bodily exercises should be indulged in not only
for their own sake ... but with a view to improving one's spiritual life! Yet this is a rather contradictory notion,
since the cultivation of spirit can only be pursued at the expense of the body,
not by placing special emphasis on physical prowess! You don't become learned through jogging, and
neither will you soar to the contemplative heights during a physical work-out
or weight-lifting exercise. People who
imagine the contrary are simply deceiving themselves
as to the true nature of spiritual enlightenment!
Admittedly, the physical and the spiritual
are to some extent intertwined in human affairs. But cultivating the spiritual through the
physical, the mind through the body, is a rather indirect, medieval, tangential
way of attaining to enlightenment, and one would have to scourge oneself
extremely hard to experience anything approaching a beatific vision or moment
of contemplative lucidity! Why go the
long way around when a simpler, more direct approach to spiritual fulfilment
would prove of far greater efficacy?
Assuming one is really interested in developing spirit and is not simply
an outright athlete, for whom the development of muscle is the primary
concern! Could it be that, of all
categories of mankind, young women are particularly prone to an indirect,
masochistic approach to the spiritual life, being unable to surmount their
bodies? Certainly there is much
contemporary evidence to support that hypothesis, though one cannot, in all
fairness, exempt all young men from a similar query, nor doubt that extensive
publicity of athletic events must have a deleterious effect on some people's
conduct.
But whether the health-freaks are genuinely
interested in cultivating spirit indirectly or simply use this notion as a
cover for purely athletic activities, the fact remains that not everyone is
destined or intended to be genuinely spiritual.
By which I mean that while spiritual cultivation is relevant to some, it
is quite irrelevant to others, and maybe most of those who regularly jog and/or
lift weights ... are in this non-contemplative category.
Is this bad? No, not necessarily! No matter how civilized a particular segment
of society becomes, there will always be others who will be less spiritual, and
hence more physical, and their proper place would be ... outside the meditation
centre, whether in the armed forces, the police, the bureaucracy, business,
manual work, or whatever. We must
remember that while some people are entitled, by their intelligence,
temperament, and physical constitution, to be the brains of society, there are
others who, for quite different reasons, must remain its body, and who will
continue to do so even while cultivating spirit, whether directly or, more
usually, indirectly.
Furthermore, we might also distinguish
between the spiritual 'sheep', who in a higher civilization ought to be the
majority, and the physical 'sheep dogs', or those who, whether as soldiers or
police, protect and safeguard the interests of that majority, keeping them in
the 'pen' of any given social system, and defending them from external
encroachments by alien systems. Nothing,
therefore, could be more foolish than to treat the 'sheep dogs' as 'sheep' or,
conversely, the 'sheep' as 'sheep dogs', when they must forever remain distinct
on account of their respective natures and duties. The important thing is to know how to
distinguish the one from the other, and ensure that they are not obliged to
behave in a manner contrary to their respective natures. Now this also implies the weeding-out of
potential 'sheep dogs' from the 'flock' and their subsequent cultural
segregation.
In a higher social system, such as I equate
with Social Transcendentalism, those who were manifestly unsuited to the direct
cultivation of spirit would be debarred entry into the meditation centres and
obliged to fulfil themselves according to their more physical dispositions,
either as police or soldiers, or something analogous. In such fashion the idiocy of trying to turn
athletes into contemplatives would be avoided, and greater spiritual progress
could accordingly be made by those entitled to make it, who would, of course,
cultivate spirit directly ... under Centrist guidance.
