ExistingStateOfBeing.md 2.2 KB
Existing State of Being
The stereotypical conception of the physical vs spiritual lends to imagine the physical as our currently lived mortal life in a human body, and the spiritual as that which is associated with an eternal life, which is fully realized after the mortal life has ended. That is, living in the mortal form doesn't necessarily preclude one from engaging with or incurring consequence to the spiritual world, but one does not exist as an expression of being that is exclusively spiritual except when there is no expression of being that is not spiritual, thus the spiritual and the physical are clearly separated in that way.
The Christian Science way of looking at things has tended to declare stories of the Bible as allegory, and to claim that the afterlife could not be known to be something realizable through mortal thinking. That there is no reason to believe it exists or that it doesn't exist. In that sense, it stands to reason that any separation of physical and spiritual cannot really be understood to be real or relevant except on the basis of a synthetic conception as to the nature and composition of the spiritual.
The physical may very well be a spiritual expression which fulfills any or all or none of the known frameworks for spiritual understanding. So where does that leave one's understanding of matter? Some spiritual framworks of thought (SFT) may recommend or make clear a fundamental axiom and value or goal of ridding oneself of any material desire or expectation for the purpose of being aligned with or affecting or being affected by the spiritual, and this creates a great conundrum. That is, there are obvious reasons for conducting thought from a human body, such as to acknowledge and, to some degree, take for granted the physical value of our observed Universe. And this is not just for one's personal survival and direct benefit, but even in respecting the existence of all expression of being as can be seen in material forms (humans and animals, for example). Thus, there is a moral basis and impetus for recognizing and respecting knowledge about the physical.
Where does one make a point of demarcating between these two? Or does one even need to find the point where you depart from one and come into the other?