DEMOCRACY IS SELF-GOVERNMENT

Harold W. Percival

PART II

FEELING-AND-DESIRE

The Two Aspects of the Immortal Doer in ihe Human Body

What are feeling-and-desire, as the two aspects of the Doer in the body, if they are not of the physical body; and how are they to be distinguished from each other and related as the Doer in the body?

Feeling is that in the body which feels, and which is conscious of or as feeling; it is not sensation. Without feeling there is no sensation in the body. Feeling is not a sense; but while feeling is in the body, the body has sense, and there is sensation through the body. In deep sleep feeling does not contact the body; then feeling is not conscious of the body, nor is it conscious of sensation in the body. When feeling is in the body it operates the body in and through the voluntary nervous system.

Sensation is the result of contact of feeling with the body. When a hand in a glove grasps a hot or a cold object, it is not the glove or the hand but the feeling in the nerves of the hand that feels the hot or cold object. Likewise, when the body is affected by heat or cold, it is not the body but the feeling in the nerves that feels the sensation of heat or cold. The body is not conscious any more than the glove is conscious. There would be no sensation in the body without feeling. Wherever the feeling in the body is, there is sensation; without feeling, there is no sensation.

The body is visible and divisible. The feeling of the Doer in the body is invisible and indivisible.

Desire in the body is that which is conscious of or as desire. Without desire, feeling would be conscious but would feel little sensation, and would be unresponsive to sense impressions. Desire operates in the body through the blood. Desire is the conscious power in the body. It acts and reacts to feeling, and with feeling, in all that is felt and said and done. Desire in the blood and feeling in the nerves run side by side through the body. Desire and feeling are inseparable, but they appear to be separated, as the blood-stream is from nerves, chiefly because they are unbalanced and are not in union. So desire dominates feeling or feeling dominates desire. Feeling and desire are, therefore, to be distinguished as the two inseparably conscious sides or aspects or opposites of the individual Doer in every human body.

Desire is to feeling as electricity is to magnetism, and feeling is to desire as magnetism is to electricity, when they are considered separately; but they cannot be separated. Desire of the Doer in a man-body is keyed to the function of a man-body, and in the man it dominates its feeling; the feeling of a Doer in a woman-body is keyed to the function of the woman-body, and in the woman it dominates its desire. Desire and feeling in their respective man-bodies and woman-bodies act and react as electricity and magnetism do in nature. Desire and feeling in the man-body or in the woman-body are related; and they act, each in its own body, as do the poles of a magnet.

How do desire and feeling see and hear and taste and smell, if they live in the blood and the voluntary nerves of the body and are not the senses?

Desire and feeling do not see, hear, taste or smell. These senses and their organs belong to nature. The senses are individual ambassadors from their respective elements of nature: they act as reporters to the feeling of the Doer in the body, of the sights, sounds, tastes and smells of the objects of nature. And as ambassadors of nature they are to engage feeling and desire in the service of nature. Feeling has four functions which are related and are cooperative. The four functions are perceptiveness, conceptiveness, formativeness and projectiveness. These functions of feeling, in conjunction with the action of desire, bring about or project through the body the phenomena of nature and the works of man, by the creation of thoughts, and by the exteriorizations of the thoughts as the physical acts, objects and events of life.

All objects of nature radiate particles which can be transmitted by the senses to feeling, as sights, sounds, tastes and smells. Feeling responds as perceptiveness to any one or all of these impressions transmitted from the objects of nature by the senses. Feeling magnetically communicates the impression to desire. Then the impression is a perception. If feeling-and-desire are indifferent or opposed, the perception is disregarded. When the perception is desired and with the electrical action of desire in thinking on the perception, the conceptiveness of feeling causes the perception to become the conception of a thought, in the heart. The thought conceived begins its gestation in the heart; by the formativeness of feeling, its development into form continues in the cerebellum; and is elaborated in the cerebrum by thinking. Then, by the projectiveness of feeling and the action of desire, the thought issues from the brain at the point of juncture between the eyebrows over the bridge of the nose. Then there finally occurs the exteriorization or the embodying of the thought by spoken or written word, or by drawings or models, or by printed plans and specifications. Thus, by concerted human effort, have come into existence the tools and roads and institutions; the houses and furniture and clothes and utensils; the food and productions of art and science and literature, and all else that makes and supports the civilization of the human world. All of this has been done and is still being done by the thinking of the thoughts by the unseen Doer, the desire-and-feeling in the human. But the Doer in the human body does not know that it does this, nor does it know of its ancestry and heritage.

Thus the Doer, as desire-feeling in a man-body, and as feeling-desire in a woman-body, exists, as it were, apart from the Thinker-and-Knower of its Triune Self. And though the Doer is an integral part of its immortal Thinker-and-Knower, it does not know itself as such because it is overwhelmed by the senses; and it does not know how to distinguish itself as itself: that is, as the Doer in the body, the operator of its body machine.

The reason that the Doer cannot at present distinguish itself from the body which it operates, is that it cannot think with its feeling-mind and desire-mind except under control of the body-mind. The body-mind thinks with the senses and through the senses, and it cannot think of any subject or thing that is not a part of nature. The Doer does not belong to nature; it is progressed beyond nature, though it exists in a human body. Therefore the Doer in its thinking is under the spell of the senses; and it is hypnotized by the sense-mind, the body-mind, into believing that it is the body. However, if the Doer in the body will continue to think of its feeling and its desire as being distinct from the senses and the sensations which it feels, and which it desires or dislikes, by so doing it will gradually exercise and train its feeling-mind and desire-mind to think independently, and it will eventually understand itself to be feeling-and-desire; that is, the Doer. Then in time it may be able to think quite independently of the body-mind and the senses. Just as soon as it does that it cannot doubt: it will know itself as feeling-and-desire. When the desire-feeling in the body of a man, or the feeling-desire in the body of a woman, knows itself as the Doer, then it will be able to consciously communicate with its Thinker-and-Knower.

Desire-and-feeling of the Doer in the present condition of the human, controlled almost if not entirely by the senses, and not in communication with its Thinker-and-Knower, cannot know right and justice. It is led into confusion and misunderstanding by the senses. Therefore it is that even with good intentions, the human is easily deceived. Under the lure of the lash and drive of bodily impulses and passions, man commits acts of madness.

In the present condition of the Doer, unaware of its great ancestry, unaware of its immortality, unaware of the fact that it is lost in human darkness,—its feeling-and-desire goaded and crazed by bodily impulses and led into devious ways by the senses—how can it know what it should do to fit itself to come into and to take the responsibility of its inheritance?

The conscious Doer in the body should take command of itself and be self-governed in the performance of its duties. Its natural duties are to its body and family and position in life, and to the country of its birth or adoption. Its duty to itself is to understand itself as itself in the wilderness of its body and the world. If the conscious Doer in the body is true to itself in its self-government, it will not fail in its performance of all other duties. The Doer cannot free itself from the control of the senses except by the performance of its duty as an obligation. The right performance of any duty is to do that duty solely and only because it is one’s duty or obligation, and for no other reason.

The senses cannot be dispensed with; they are invaluable in all that concerns physical things and mechanics; but they are not to be concerned with any moral subject.

The authority in all moral questions is conscience. It speaks with authority, as the sum of one’s inner knowledge on any moral question. When conscience speaks, that is the law by which one acts, with reason, to be self-governed. Conscience cannot be confused with the innumerable promptings of the senses. When feeling turns from the senses to listen to conscience, the body-mind is momentarily switched off while conscience speaks. It speaks as the law; but it will not argue. If one will not heed, it is silent; and the body-mind and senses take control. To the degree that one listens to conscience and acts with reason, to that degree he becomes self-governed.