Questions and Meditations

21 The tyranny of the instruments

To each of us is assigned a unique body, on which we depend, which we become = an absolute which, nonetheless, ceases.

In order to sojourn in this field of progress, each of us requires a body for shelter, a life-force to animate, mobilize and sustain, a force of intelligence to orient and to guide = a vehicle and instruments to steer our course.

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The fixity of matter, even of organic matter, of our own body, with its constant necessities of maintenance, is absorbing, demanding, overwhelming.

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First, our body is given us. Then we become vitally aware, through emotions, impulses and the acting power. Later on we begin to reflect and to open to intelligence and its numerous faculties. Thus equipped, we meet the world – and the others.

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It is through the others’ eyes that we apprehend our separate identity and must perforce adapt to it and develop it.

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What we put on, we become.

This situational engagement is so engrossing that we sometimes require many years of this time measured by the revolving days of the Earth to recover some of the sense of our free existence beyond and above the instruments.

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