Chapter 8- Engineering

CHAPTER 8

Engineering

Dietary Exercise Suggested:

A diet of taste and an apothecary of invention.

This exercise best permits portions of food which are extremely small and differing from one another - with great variety. This may be experienced throughout a day for an entire month at a time.

Commentary:

With this dietary exercise we come to examine the many, many foods available and experience combinations which are both nutritiously wholesome as well as quite flavorsome – enjoying foods in their most natural state, broiled or steamed, baked or tossed; combined or sauced, contrasting the uniqueness of each.

The object is never to repeat one dish in a week (not even the same sandwich for example, or daily cereal) and always to keep the servings remarkably less than what you are accustomed to (approximately half, to one third of the size), although you may of course eat other foods depending upon the needs of your hunger.

There is to be no plate mixing – i.e. not to have a variety of bites on the one plate, but rather that the one food chosen is eaten singly, with an interval of at least ten minutes having passed before going on to the next.

In a lesser exercise a party can set a buffet meal to be experienced in a similar fashion, tabling as many different fruits and vegetables as is possible (but not necessarily in very large quantities), and depending upon the time given to the dinner being taken into account also (six serves an hour maximum).

Our sensing through taste is primordially keen. As infants it is as though we are absorbed by our food, and not it by us! Through the soulic perception of the child the nourishment which comes to it is sucked or gulped and later to be mushed, and this nourishment entwines the child to itself – whether it be the milk of a mother, or later, the substance from another kingdom. There are spirit-arms embracing the infant coming from the highest-most aspect of the food taken in.

This is because the very nature of that food responds accordingly with the nature of the child, during the interaction of digestion, assimilation and absorption. It is the Christ-likeness that responds out from the child which draws the embracing forces back into it during this process … providing that it is a ‘live food’ which is being fed, quite naturally. (‘Live food’ denotes that which contains its natural fluids, without having been dried and reconstituted back again).

This lessens with age in respect to our abilities of calling forth the highest of aspects from that food which we take in. A man may well go on to poison himself, if it is that his own consciousness is marred with an evility that shall attract and extract much of the same from those substances he consumes.

Everything interacts – it is not just a case of what a fruit or vegetable may do for us, but much more of a question of what we do to it, and then how it reacts within us as a result.

The first understanding we may arrive at when consuming singular portions at intervals (which, by the way, we recommend for infants as a regular diet, yet with a daily repetition) is one of recognizing certain properties within the foods, and within our own responses as well. If the palate is confused then the overall impressioning shall be confused also.

Questions:

• What is the difference between the combining in a single recipe and the combining on a plate?
• What is the difference when the combining occurs in the stomach anyway?

The soulic forces which are characteristically expressing themselves in this world, circulate, aspirate, permeate, only in fluids. Within the body the first soulic interaction occurs within the saliva in the mouth intermingling with the substance placed on the tongue.

When we combine food in any given recipe the mixture is taken into the mouth at the one time (for the purpose of this exercise that is) whereas, if we are to eat different portions from the one plate concurrently, they shall be markedly changing – unless one put a little of each on to the fork and then shoveled it in all together (which some people do instinctively – children for example will mash all of the food in the bowl together and eat it that way).
 

Also, from this introductory idea you can see that the emphasis here is on the activity within the mouth, rather than the combusting later to occur in the stomach’s performance. All the way through there shall be parts of the material absorbed or discarded, however the transaction which is vital to the very etheric qualities as imparted in the food occur in the meeting of the tongue, the saliva, and under the tongue (rapidly passaging the body), whilst the vaporous activity travels up through the sinus passage and through to the pineal region as well. 

What is not to be seen or measured physically here is the reactive process entered into between the consumer and the consumed. As the very nature of the substance begins to penetrate the auric membrane of the consumer there are immediate decisions to be had as to whether or not these vitalities and their characteristics are desirable, or compatible, with the nature inside the individual. These decisions are first met with and dealt with in the mouth.

All along the digestive pathway there are reactions to this substance which encourage our own ‘inner’ discrimination and tolerance. Substances which are assimilated via the skin or directly fed into the veins deny the individual the response/reaction and invocatory powers which would otherwise be experienced through the mouth and out through the south pole of the trunk.
 

The child in utero is not obliged to make these discernments before his incarnation, and when born into this world goes on to delight in the findings of most mouthy engagements – in sensing their holiness because of that of his own. He will try this method with objects as well as food – trying to divine their characteristics – which will or will not be successful, depending upon whether or not the substance encountered is of organic origin or chemically/synthetically contrived.

As an adult he will lose something of his differentiation (as well as his powers of high invocation) and he shall forgo his single-mindedness through this lively experimentation. The consciousness itself becomes somewhat fragmented and he begins to attempt many tasks at the one time, not only is this apparent in the diet, but also when one tracks the thinking alongside the activities effected as well.

The consciousness itself is never interrupted out from being itself – the flow has eternal origins and persists onward likewise – but what is meant by ‘fragmented’ is to say that it is called hither and thither by the many undertakings the individual has bought into at any given time. It becomes episodic, rather than concurrent, and the reasoning processes themselves are given over to a preferred cross-referencing with the intuitive faculties, or to the lower animal. This of itself is not unhealthy, and yet the ideal lies in the individual being able to exert his reasoning uninterruptedly when choosing to do so at any given time. If a person is given to ‘flighty’ thinking which dashes its way subjectively too frequently to allow for anything else, there will be tensions that shall arise inwardly, spiking the thinker into yet more sporosis (sporadic intermissions). The effect is compounding.

Reason, however, alleviates this and draws the thinker away from their subjectivity and out into the world at large. It is the nature of reason to be freeing, rather than restrictive, for it is as one continuum, a wave that shall take our former selves into the oceans beyond our usual range and carry us into further capabilities than ever before arrived at.

The other benefit to be had in this exercise is in that we may begin to awaken simply to difference. The properties of engineering entitle this, as its magic in the world is determined by effort, exactness and differentiation. It is by differentiation that we learn not only what something is, but also what it is not – being the testing of certain reality and the discovery of that which will lead to a more reliable effort and exactness in our work within the world further along.