Odes to Sensory Deprivation

KEN OGGER, Freezone Scientologist

In the Motions Universe, we have the beginning of real sensation as we know it now. …  And as people became more attached to sensation, it became possible to control and confuse them by hitting them with waves of sensations. And so we have the individual much more at effect than he was previously.

— “Super Scio” 15. THE MOTION UNIVERSE

THERAVADA BUDDHISM

Theravada Buddhism’s primary practice is satipatthana – observation of body, feelings, mind and mental objects with equanimity. This might be better termed sensory deprivation

In the Western Wisdom Teachings

According to Max Heindel‘s Rosicrucian writings, called Western Wisdom Teachings, there are in the brain two small organs called the pituitary body and the pineal gland. This last gland is also called by medical science as “the atrophied third eye”; however, these teachings describe that none of them are atrophying: the pituitary body and the pineal gland at the present time are neither evolving nor degenerating, but are dormant. It is said that in the far past, when man was in touch with the inner worlds, these organs were his means of ingress thereto, and they will again serve that purpose at a later stage. According to this view, they were connected with the involuntary orsympathetic nervous system and to regain contact with the inner worlds (to reawaken the pituitary body and the pineal gland) it is necessary to establish the connection of the pineal gland and the pituitary body with the cerebrospinal nervous system. It is said that when that is accomplished, man will again possess the faculty of perception in the higher worlds (i.e. clairvoyance), but on a grander scale than it was in the distant past, because it will be in connection with the voluntary nervous system and therefore under the control of his will.

MEISTER ECKHART

If only you could suddenly be unaware of all things, then you could pass into an oblivion of your own body… memory no longer
functioned, nor understanding, nor the senses, nor the powers that should function so as to govern and grace the body… In this
way a man should flee his senses, turn his powers inward and sink into an oblivion of all things and himself.”

Saint Teresa of Ávila

The kernel of Teresa’s mystical thought throughout all her writings is the ascent of the soul in four stages… The fourth is the “devotion of ecstasy or rapture,” a passive state, in which the consciousness of being in the body disappears (2 Corinthians 12:2-3). Sense activity ceases; memory and imagination are also absorbed in God or intoxicated.

During the short time the union lasts, she is deprived of every feeling, and even if she would, she could not think of any single
thing… She is utterly dead to the things of the world… The natural action of all her faculties [are suspended]. She neither sees,
hears, nor understands.” William James quoting from St. Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle.

THE BIBLE

2 Corinthians 4:16, 18

4:16 For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. 4:17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; 4:18 While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

Some unfortunately suppose that Christian Science leads us to ignore the body, but this is a mistaken view of its teaching and practise. The redemption of the human mind and body begins the moment that truth is accepted by one as a remedy for the ills which afflict mankind, and the work of the Christian Science practitioner is to lift thought above mortal sense, up to the true consciousness of man’s being as the likeness of God. It should not be forgotten that this lifts one above bodily consciousness into mental freedom and spiritual power, and the price paid for freedom is the surrender of material and sensual belief respecting man for the Christ-ideal of being and doing. Mrs. Eddy says, “Rightly understood, instead of possessing a sentient material form, man has a sensationless body” (Science and Health, p. 280). Sensation in the body implies a diseased tendency. Even on the human plane we are not conscious of heart, lungs, eye, or ear, unless mortal mind is offering a report of some discordant condition, and the remedy for this is to lift the discordant thought from the body, or, as the Master has bidden us, “Look up, and lift up your heads.”

YOGA

  1. Yama: codes of restraint, abstinences (2.302.31)
  2. Niyama: observances, self-training (2.32)
  3. Asana: meditation posture  (2.46-2.48)
  4. Pranayama: expansion of breath and prana (2.49-2.53)
  5. Pratyahara: withdrawal of the senses (2.54-2.55)
  6. Dharana: concentration (3.1)
  7. Dhyana: meditation (3.2)
  8. Samadhi: deep absorption (3.3)

UPANISHADS

In the Upanishads, a human being is likened to a city with ten gates. Nine gates (eyes, nostrils, ears, mouth, urethra, anus) lead outside to the sensory world. The third eye is the tenth gate and leads to inner realms housing myriad spaces of consciousness.

The vision of the brilliant Soul in the perfect unity of Yoga (Maitri Upanishad)

25. Now, it has elsewhere been said: ‘He who, with senses indrawn as in sleep, with thoughts perfectly pure as in slumber, being in the pit of senses yet not under their control, perceives Him who is called Om, a leader, brilliant, sleepless, ageless, deathless, sorrowless—he himself becomes called Om, a leader, brilliant, sleepless, ageless, deathless, sorrowless.’ For thus has it been said:—

    • Whereas one thus joins breath and the syllable Om
    • And all the manifold world—
    • Or perhaps they are joined!—
    • Therefore it has been declared (smṛta) to be Yoga (‘Joining’).

SADE

“the more we know, the less we see” — Sade, Never as Good as the First Time

E. J. Gold

Our vanity convinces us that the machine is awake and supports this illusion with activity, sensation, and associative thought. — Human Biological Machine as a Transformational Apparatus.

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