BK meditation is based on a method of affirmation-response, or active abstract visualisation and affirmation.
It is not a detaching, objectifying process of clarifying reality but one of actively, purposefully creating a subjective reality.
It is predicated on the idea that experiencing reality is primarily done psychologically (being conscious, intellectual and emotional activity etc) It then extrapolates that as mind, intellect, memories and traits are intangible, and that through these we "understand" and "choose" (make intelligent decisions), therefore we are somehow separate from that reality. It is the victory of subject over object, of self-identification over non-self, essentially of ego over non-ego. They then call it "soul" - not just that "feeling" side of ourselves which we might call "soulful" but in that religious context of eternal entity.
Sometimes to understand a word or concept, it helps to look at how & why we differentiate it from its correlates, and why we've named it the way we do. Sometimes it's good to check for mistakes in our formula. Have we subtracted when we should have added?
BKs like the word games of "I & Mine". So let's play, let's look at - What is a "body"?
"Body" is a collective noun. Like "group" or "herd". It is singular abstract for a collection or aggregation.
What I call "my body" is pretty much everything contained within my enclosing skin, and a few things that feather out from it, like hair, nails, dandruff! It also contains far more non-human organisms and non-human DNA than human.
And these non-human organisms not only keep us alive - we actually cannot live without some of them - they also greatly affect our physical and mental states.
We might also include as being "within the body" short term chemicals (medicines, food, particles, & other things) that are within for a few days or weeks, and even cosmic microwaves that are within for seconds or nano-seconds. It is in constant flux.
Internally, the body extends (intends?) as far as the alimentary canal and airways.
It is in fact like a convoluted tube!! That hollow tube is like the axle around which we are continually evolving - i.e cellular regeneration!
Our digestive tract, lungs and airways connect us to the world the way a plant's roots and leaves do, where transference of oxygen, nourishment and by-products occurs, one function that keeps the organism alive. Breathing and eating and drinking is an ongoing exchange of this part of reality (me) with the rest of the universe (not-me)
Our senses are like antennae, like cat's whiskers, extending our points of contact. The mind-organ is a sixth sense, the sense common to the others that interprets and correlates the information from the other five.
Minding is to brain what seeing is to eyes, what digesting is to stomach. no one thinks Digestion is other than a noun for a process, the verb "digest".
Digestion, as the prefix "di-" implies, is a sorting out of what is to be "ingested" and what is to be excreted (which includes other waste delivered back into the alimentary canal through other organs like the kidney and bladder
Yet no-one (except a rabid Platonist) ever thinks Digestion exists separately to the stomach, the things in the stomach and the activity that the interaction of the two instigates.
Fortunately, digestion, breathing, cardio-vascular activity etc all proceed autonomically, requiring no conscious acts. Imagine how easily people would get sick and die if they relied on our consciously making them happen?
Mind-ing, think-ing, feel-ing etc are processes, responses to what is taken in through the other senses. We are mentally sorting out what has been "eaten" through the senses, ingesting and rejecting etc, responses(thoughts and feelings) arising the way gastric juices do, according to stimuli, which then trigger the next responses. Just like some foods or drinks are pleasant while others sit badly, even make us "vomit" or pass out, so too with sensory input -our mind-ing reaction is : we like, we dislike, we drift off!
Just like if you take in different combinations of food you stomach responds differently, so too the different combinations of external 'data" received through the external organs create a reaction in the brain, where the nervous system sends it all to. It is the
"Sensus communis (literally "common sense" in Latin) - a philosophical term originally used to refer to the perceptual power of binding the inputs of the individual sense organs into a coherent and intelligible representation. The term originates with Aristotle (sensus communis is the Latin translation of Aristotle's κοινὴ αἲσθησις). It is used in a similar sense by Thomas Aquinas and Rene Descartes."
There is the autonomic functions like pulse and digestion and cellular regeneration. There is autonomic mentation that is called the "unconscious" or 'subconscious".
The organism can survive for a short time well enough without any "conscious" activity e.g. planning or discrimination, but for the species to "live long and prosper"
being "conscious" (verb) or having consciousness (abstract noun) and its nominal tools intellect, foresight, interpretation - evolved. The more consciousness is developed (all other things being equal) the more "prosperous" and "successful" we can be.
If we are unconscious of signals from, say, our digestive tract or pulse, we do not act with foresight to change the conditions that will "allow nature to right itself".
But to believe that to be always tyrannically 'standing over" our heart's pulsing or manipulating all conditions, like an obsessive- compulsive control freak,
believing thats' the only way they'll be what they
should be is counter-productive, I am sure you'd agree.
People who "live to eat" are misguided, you'd agree? After becoming habituated to having certain things and amounts in their stomach, they feel lacking if they're not eating or preparing to eat.... And it becomes unbearable to consider otherwise.
When "consciousness" become habituated disproportionately - to memory, attachment to certain self-differentiation (ego) - it too becomes imbalanced, and cannot bear to consider a time when "I" can not exist. One is the digestive function, the other is the consciousness/ego function that just desires to keep on keeping on.
Then, when consciousness is manipulated to the point that the minding function believes itself to exist separately from "the body" of pre-conditions that gave rise to it, that is hubris. Awareness of life is not itself 'the life principle".
Like believing the "principle of Digestion" also incarnates and reincarnates.