A Ghost in The Shell: The Soul of Disembodiment

Towards a fuller understanding of the dance between matter and spirit in the west...

A Beast Who Rips Consciousness from Flesh

It is an inescapable fact that we all are born into a culture that plays ‘at least some’ role in shaping who we become. This is one of the threads ‘The Fates’ have woven into your experience during this lifetime. There are assumptions, beliefs, values, and narratives that seep from the cracks of every civilization. An ooze that lives inside the bedrock of each society. A soil from which we all grow.

This both offers gifts as well as curses and for those of us seeking to cultivate a more authentic relationship with ourselves and the world at large, at some point we are asked to move through the gate of our original culture.

While it is a tragic move to place the bulk of the blame for all our perceived personal problems on culture, for it victimizes you on profound levels, it is also dangerous to stack everything on the individual. Individuals and culture are not one, and they are not two, but are aspects of each other that shape one another in a bidirectional way. Individuals congregate together to create cultures and then in turn cultures shape individuals.

In this article, I want to highlight an insidious aspect of modern ‘western’ culture, which is to disembody you at multiple levels. This is not a great earth-shaking proclamation by any means. My felt sense of it is that modern Westernized culture is itself a ‘disembodied’ beast who rips consciousness from the flesh at vast scales, and the bigger bitch about it all, is it does this while simultaneously selling us on the notions that the material world is all there is. It effectively imprisons us with a nebulous limbo dimension caught between the world of matter and spirit.

This fosters a state of affairs reminiscent of the epic anime series ‘Ghost in The Shell’. A quote from the show that epitomizes this is:

“There's nothing sadder than a puppet without a ghost, especially the kind with red blood running through them.”

What this means at a practical level is that we are a culture that is not deeply connected to the dense material dimensions of our being, what we call the ‘physical body’ and, we are overly identified with the body at the same time; we are told that the ‘limit’ of you ends at your skin! It is as if we are just ‘ghost-controlling meat puppets’.

We live in a culture literally insulated from the earth, which is also disconnected from its ancestral past. It epitomizes transcendent nature-dominating philosophies, while also directing us towards the cranial brain's rational faculties as the ultimate way of knowing.

This same culture stifles physical aliveness and spontaneous action, sits us in front of computers, and hands us cell phones blasting hypnotic TikTok images 24/7. On top of that it de-animates the world by placing us in a lifeless universe. Yet somehow, this world of dense matter is all that exists, because only that which can be measured and quantified is real. Damn.

The overall somatic sensation this generates is akin to being nothing but a mind inside a virtual reality world, with some pretty bleak options at that.

It is as if we have an avatar that we ‘ride on’ until it wears out, and then when it wears it out, we are either winners who go to heaven where we are rewarded for our moral righteousness, or losers who are sent to hell to be punished for being all around pieces of shit; or conversely the game just ‘ends’ and we cease to exist. Is it any wonder why there is such a fear of death in modern times?

Metallica captures the way most of us relate to the body in their song:

I will occupy

I will help you die

I will run through you

Now I rule you too

Come crawling faster

Obey your master

Your life burns faster

Obey your master, master

Master of puppets, I'm pulling your strings

Twisting your mind and smashing your dreams

I assert that this is largely an artificial construct built primarily by religious ideology and reinforced by Scientism, political narratives, endogenous Puritanism and corporate agendas.

The Sacred Body as Nature Spirit

A core underlying sentiment held within this state of affairs is that the ‘earth plane’, this dimension of reality, is nothing more than a board game we are dropped into; either randomly by the virtue of selfish genetics, or by a faraway sky god. This stands in stark contrast to many different indigenous and traditional cultures, who felt that this world was a material reflection of a deeper spiritual one, existing in an ongoing continuum, much like the layers of an onion or the rings of a tree.

In this world-sense, everything around us is alive, pulsating with the breath of life that animates living creatures. What this means is that ‘earth-world’ is a spirit world, and the spirit world is a ‘material world’, because what is closer to the truth is that there is one totality vibrating at different densities of expression, from what we commonly call the ‘material’, to the subtlest of lofty numinous forces.

This is a ‘dimension’ of reality. This understanding helps to generate a deeper underlying sense of an animist world, where all aspects of the universe are alive, and imbued with spirit. In this way, we are capable of being immersed in this world, like drops of water in an ocean. Consciousness does not stop at the skin but pervades all.

From this vantage point, (which we can call an animist multidimensional continuum) the body itself is a nature spirit. A being capable of spontaneous, intuitive, and profound intelligence. It is an elemental being, or what some might call a deva or daemon of the earth.

Consider that a person who is brain dead or in a coma, can still conceive, gestate, and give birth to a child; which is a task of such utter complexity that not even a congregation of the greatest geniuses the world has to offer, could directly recreate.

In Chinese medicine, and in other forms of indigenous body wisdom, each organ (and part of the body) has a ‘soul’; which is effectively a form of body animism, and the recognition of visceral intelligence. Each of these souls contributes to the essence of who you are in this lifetime because make no mistake, a part of who you know yourself as in this incarnation is directly the bodies various souls.

“The Wu (Five) Shen of Traditional Chinese Medicine are five spirits that represent the yin internal organ systems in the human body. These five aspects of our spirit/consciousness are Shen (Heart), Zhi (Kidney), Yi (Spleen), Hun (Liver) and Po (Lungs). These five Shen embody the understanding that our physical body, mental activities, emotional life and spiritual expression are all integrated facets of our human life.” - Dr. Jason Chong

The deeper truth found outside of the context of medicine, requiring an exploration of Daoist alchemy (and found in other traditions as well of course), is that there is also an eternal being at the core of what you are.

Human life is a complex Gordian knot of interweaving forces creating a temporary symphony of souls known as ‘you’.

In the internal alchemy and indigenous shamanic traditions, this marriage of heavenly and earthly souls that create ‘you’ are brought together into a more stable integrated union, leading to a type of spiritual immortality. This is what is referred to (at-least in part), as a marriage of heaven (the subtle world), and earth (the dense world), giving birth to the manifest world and human life.

The body is not just a shell, but an ‘earthly’ being in an intimate relationship with a ‘heavenly’ being.

If we take this stance, then the notion of disembodiment and its opposite pole...embodiment, take on very different meanings.

Embodiment Across Dimensions

Many people have begun to sense something is quite ‘off’ with the way Western culture relates to the body. Thus, we have borne witness to a revolt in recent years, with a massive insurgence of mind-body disciplines, diverse movement cultures, and some of the more holistic eastern, African, and indigenous teachings on the matter. However, the subtle creep of the beast is still at play in many of these circles.

Consider...

When people even say ‘embodiment’, what are they even talking about? Who or what is doing the embodying? Some might say...the mind.

Many of these same people believe the mind and brain are the same thing, in which case, all this is rather odd because the brain is a part of the body!

We could come up with explanations having to do with nerve signaling, sensory-motor amnesia, movement blueprints, homunculus maps and more. Those are valid explanations from a mechanistic stance that never quite addresses the elephant-sized soul in the room.

How can we even disassociate or disembody if all we are is our mind/brain? Where the hell can we even go?

When people reference brain scans or propose physiological mechanisms, they are discussing secondary effects. The primary cause is some aspect of the core being is pulling away from the body’s intelligence, either on purpose as in the case of shamanic/astral/death practices, or because some form of trauma causes the soul to disassociate, and yet another reason, is when a culture slowly cuts away the soul one slash at a time.

Embodiment can extend beyond the brain getting to know the rest of the body better. Another way to potentially relate to this is if we consider embodiment to be a deep fusion process of the eternal soul and earthly body conjoining in an act of rippling, intense and orgasmic lovemaking. How would this change the face of these disciplines?

The body in this way is akin to a highly intelligent sponge who can draw in and become engulfed with the liquid of the eternal spirit.

Not a Soul in Sight

In many indigenous and traditional cultures, there are ways of directly ‘seeing’ the soul inside a human body. This is not some kind of ‘astral’ or ‘psychic sight’, this is palpable in the flesh-level stuff. Why? A body without its eternal soul begins to erode and/or show signs of “lifelessness” in many ways.

The body is less spontaneous, graceful, vibrant and bright. A soulful body speaks, moves, intones, and shines with soul. This light can be seen ‘in the eyes’, for as they say, the eyes are the window to the soul. A being who is full of soul has bright shining eyes, and a lively complexion, even when relatively close to death, the light in the eyes can remain.

We have all heard the statement ‘the light has gone out of their eyes’, to refer to someone who has literally died, or for that matter, is spiritually dead and vacant. Is it any surprise then that in many spiritual traditions around the world, divinity, soul, and consciousness have all been associated with light?

The soul or consciousness is likely a form of light, which has now been alluded to by many contemporary scientists, who are just echoing what ancient cultures have held as true all along.

“In other words, although consciousness seems to be happening in the brain, the real source of consciousness is not the brain, but light. Therefore, the brain is not essential for consciousness.”- Eda Alemdar, of Goce Delcev University Medicine Faculty

“You are the light of consciousness and also the witness of this light. You are pure awareness.” ~ Mooji

For any person seriously engaged in meditative or consciousness-altering practices, at some point, you will encounter profoundly radiant, shimmering, resplendent light. In my own state of deep meditation, I have encountered these kinds of light phenomena many times.

In her book ‘Face Reading in Chinese Medicine’, one of the world's foremost experts on reading faces Lillian Bridges (now deceased), has a whole chapter on observing the way that light shines through the eyes and how it shows you the state of the “shen” which is another word for ‘soul’ in Chinese.

Another way ancient cultures could ‘see’ the soul was in how someone danced or moved. A soulless body is more mechanical, severe, robotic, or listless. A soulful body is expressive, responsive, sensitive, rippling, in touch or in tune, even if in physical pain, illness or discomfort. It is alive.

Yes, my dear friends, a soulful body is living a body. 

These qualities do not by necessity demand athletic prowess, becoming a virtuoso of the handstand or being able to do a muscle-up. These can sometimes stifle the soul even more if the body is just a puppet. These qualities demand true embodiment, at the level of the soul. The notion of soul entering the body and shining its light into the world is not a metaphor, it is an ancestral physics understood in ancient times, that modern physics is attempting to approach.

Yet, soul is less and less common these days, in part, because we live in a ‘soul-less’ culture.

Modern Western society does not foster soulfulness, and in fact, the dominant story is that there is no soul, and if there is, it’s just riding the meat suit on this shameful rock, waiting to die and be judged. Due to a loss of ancestral life-ways, trauma after trauma builds in the body cutting off the pipelines to the divine core, and the shutting down of physicality and earth wisdom psychically severs the spirit from the flesh further.

The noble animal body and the eternal soul cannot merge deeply in this state. This is a layer of why many people do not have brightness in their eyes, and feel empty. There is no soul in sight.

Soul Recovery

Despite the current movement towards embodiment, western society does not yet possess an endogenous cosmology that can support more soul. Currently, we are being asked to ‘borrow’ from other cultures, and/or, revive long-dead traditions. This can all be fruitful and is frankly necessary for anyone wanting to be more embodied at the level of which I write. What we call embodiment can be a much deeper phenomenon than ‘moving better’.

Although some people are able to make it work, I find that physical training methods on their own are not enough for everyone over the long term. Many people make progress in mind-disciplines, feeling more alive, grounded and certain of themselves and then hit walls, or just double down, simply believing that getting better at ‘movements’ is all there is.

I have no judgment about such choices, and I cheer those who find their way through the maze of disembodiment with physical methods alone. However, what I would love to witness is a more comprehensive cosmology that supports this deeper merging of spirit and matter erupt in the west.

The walls I mention are at-least in part showing us the need to acknowledge the existence of a being/soul/consciousness at the core of the lived experience, and the requirement of a deeper infrastructure that supports the soul. What I have found in myself and others, is that at times, challenges a person is having can extend beyond this lifetime and touch on ancestral trauma, ‘past lives’, archetypal wounds affecting large swaths of population, current events generating psychic static, and more.

These become difficult to address for some people if the existence of other layers beyond the physical are not addressed.

My own process has moved in this way: embodiment followed by more subtle and soul-level material to process, which then facilitates more embodiment. I have seen the same in clients.

This is how many traditional cultures approached the cultivation process. My progress was stifled until I accepted the reality of more. While many people might claim these as ‘just stories’, well, the proof is in the pudding. Does it aid the process or not? For many people, it does.

I contend that what Western culture requires for a fuller degree of embodiment, is a soul recovery process that flows into all corners of its house. This definitely includes physical methods of embodiment as a core pillar (obvious) but also:

+The reanimating of the world by connecting it back into animism. Facilitating the sense of a living world, which lets the body know it is surrounded by kin, everywhere.

+The acknowledging of subtle phenomena as real. Letting the body access inner and outer forces, some of which are endogenous, and some which it does not generate, but participates in.

+Honoring the cycles of nature, and finding the ways that maps across the body. Knowing the body is nature that moves through cycles and phases. Some of these are innate and others are connected to seasons and celestial forces. 

+Communing with spirits and myth in the development of spiritual technologies.

+Normalizing the pursuit an innate and divine sense of destiny.

And yes... asserting the existence of the soul in the first place.