Ch. 8. VIII. 1 & 2. Jesus: “Attitudes toward the body are attitudes toward attack! This is because the body is the ego’s symbol for its attack upon the wholeness of Creation!
The ego’s definitions of things are always childish, and are always based on what it believes something is ‘for.’ The ego of course, is for separation, itself being the belief system of separation. It denies the wholeness of Creation in favor of its imagined separation, hence it cannot know the whole and is incapable of true generalizations. The ego equates what it sees only with the use it has for it, or what it can ‘get from it,’ given its purpose of separation. Thus the ego does not see anything as what it truly is!
To the ego, the function of the body is something to ‘attack with,’ definitely not a means of communication, which would undo separation! Since the ego would have you equate yourself with the body, it then teaches you that you are to attack with, making yourself an instrument of separation!
The body, then, is certainly not the source of its own health! Its condition lies solely in your interpretation of its function, reflecting either conflict or communication! Functions are part of being since they arise from it, but the relationship is not reciprocal! It is the whole, the mind, that defines the part. But the part, the ‘function’ here referred to, certainly does not define the whole!
Yet to know, even partly know, is to know wholly! This is because of the fundamental difference between true knowledge and mere perception, a difference difficult for the worldly mind to understand. Perception of course, is always of something by something, a demonstration of separation. In perception, then, what is thought of as ‘whole’ is merely built up of parts that can separate and reassemble in different ‘constellations’ when subjected to different attitudes and desires. But knowledge never ceases or changes, so its constellation is permanent. The idea of part-to-whole relationships has meaning only at the level of perception, where change is possible. Otherwise, there is no difference between what is perceived as ‘the part’ and what is truly the whole.
The body exists in a world that seems to contain two voices fighting for its possession. In this perceived constellation, the body is seen as capable of shifting its allegiance from one voice to the other, making the concepts of both health and sickness meaningful. Here, the ego makes a fundamental confusion between means and end, just as it always does. Regarding the body as an end in itself, the ego has no real use for it. This is because the body, a mere appearance, cannot be an end!“