I am walking down Inkster Road. It is a four-lane, relatively busy main road.
Walking down this road means that cars stare at me.
It’s interesting that I first worded the above statement as I did. “Cars stare” at me, not “the drivers of the cars stare at me,” even though the drivers inside are the observers I’m talking about.
Cars are bodies. The human car-drivers’ bodies become something like the souls of the cars. They are the cars’ inner, apparently unseen life force. Human hands on the wheel, the feet on the pedals. The muscles of the human limbs are the animators of the car. If an alien came and observed these cars from my perspective walking down the sidewalk, it would seem that the cars speed down the road by some invisible force, or that they are self-propelled, intelligent beings. What or who decides whether the car will turn left or right? The person inside the car. Analogies for the soul. I’ll just be really explicit, there.
To complete the analogy, whatever invisible soul or self that inhabits the human body—this is the life force of us. The difference is that you can’t open up some door on your body and exit, leaving your form stationed, lifeless in a garage. You can’t trade consciousnesses or souls with other bodies in the way many different people can drive a particular car at different times. You can’t see the stark division between the operator of your body (you, your consciousness, your soul) and your body itself.
Or perhaps you can…? In other ways…?
There may be an important difference between car:driver and human body:soul, found through the apparent disconnect between the driver and the car. Many people may not consider themselves “operators” of their physical body, because that implies a very blatant separation. I think many people consider themselves fundamentally the same as their body.
But then again, there is a peculiar and innate sense of division most people have at least sometimes between their inner selves and outer selves. They are one unit with two parts.
So then I could argue that maybe the driver of the car does actually bind and melt into the car body, in the same way our souls are limited by being connected so tightly with our bodies. The driver steps into the reality of the car, sits in the seat and fastens the belt, linking up with the car. The driver abides by the rules of the car now that he is a part of it, because he must, because the physical form of the car limits how the driver can act. Even if the driver really wants the car to take flight, he can’t will it to do so. Even if the driver thinks about punching his hand through the metal door or glass window, he most likely isn’t going to do it, because he knows it undoubtedly would cause damage to both himself and the car. Now if the car were pliable and soft like a liquid, then the driver would naturally go ahead and put his arm through the body of the car if he so desired. But the car is as it is, and so the driver understands his physical limits.
New line of thought: Recalling the explicit analogy:
Physical body: force of motion/life
Car: physical human body
Physical human body: spiritual soul as we know it, or “the self”
I can take this beyond the car-driver equating to human body-human soul/consciousness. We can open up more possibilities!
The situation: the car is the outermost body, the driver’s body is the first life force, and then the driver’s soul is the second life force (the animator of the driver). So with this, we have broken beyond the common two-part body-soul combination.
(You might object about the stated common three-layer body-mind-soul understanding, but for now I will leave that be. I’m not sure it’s necessary to separate mind and soul here, although I do agree that there are definite differences between them. As I see the mind, to note, it is the mix/union of the physical body and the soul. So it’s relevant in this blog, but it might get too involved for what I want.)
Now we have three layers of bodies and animators. We have connected the sides of the analogy. From here, I realize we can magnify our scope, or we can narrow it. I will not fully investigate this yet, but I’m thinking now that the cars can also be animators or part-animators of some bigger body. I don’t want to go as big as the Earth itself as the bigger body (at least not as the first step), but that’s the line I’m leaning toward. Then looking inwardly: What unapparent factors go into the animation of our animator-souls?
This thinking implies that bodies can be souls and souls can be bodies, in appropriate contexts. The car might become like a mover of the system that creates the environment itself. It is one of the soul-parts of the living traffic system, perhaps. Or something else. I need to think more on this. The physical human becomes a soul when operating the car. But when outside of the car, the physical human is the body—as we typically understand it. And the human’s soul is the mover then. I don’t know what could move our souls, animate them. Love? A God figure? Again, more to think. But the doors are opened.
I guess this might also get into a causation sort of question, like what is the soul’s soul? What is the soul’s soul’s soul? That could get stupid because it’s unhelpful. But if we think of it like layers of consciousness, maybe that is better. When regarding the human being alone, the approach could be that we may only have one life-giving soul, but there are deeper layers of it we can awaken by paying better attention to ourselves in all aspects. In the same way, I have gained insight into how cars can function as a larger layer of consciousness for us—by observing my feelings to when they “look” at me while I walk outside. Okay. We might awaken further layers of intra-body consciousness as well as extra-body consciousness. We might see ourselves each as the centers of concentric circles, or spheres, radiating inwardly and outwardly, infinitely.
New line of thought:
When I stare at a person, and they see me, my person is entering their space. That’s what I think of when you look into a person’s eyes, the “windows to the soul,” the gateway through the physical body layer. When I walk and see a car pass, and I feel the car first looking at me, even though I know that it’s ultimately the person within the car who looks at me. I know that the car’s soul looks at me. I feel entered, my space.
I don’t know whether the drivers stare at me because I am simply present, or if it’s because I am a young female walking alone along the road.
I am honked at sometimes. Is it a salutation? Is it alerting me to something, warning me? Is it angry, telling me to get off the roadside if you’re not in a car? Is it to see how I’ll react? Is it a compliment? I have experienced the honks generally from men, which of course leads me to think of young female reason for staring.
But I’ve seen women in cars looking at me too. Old people. Kids. Dogs (not in cars, but still part of the environment). It’s not just sexually-minded men. They look out at me, and I have to strain my eyes sometimes to see through the glare of the cars’ windshields in order to see the drivers within. But when I do, I either feel good or bad. I feel welcomed, simply observed—sometimes we smile at each other; or I feel violated, on display, not truly acknowledged as an individual soul. Mostly, though, we look at each other, both of us assuming the other cannot see our stares. When eye contact is made, there is some kind of awkwardness or discomfort. We have become too intimate in that moment.
It seems that because of the environment I walk through (one of main roads and sidewalks, few shops to stroll by, few walkers in general; where the majority of bodies are cars zooming around, not human beings) people are more inclined to look at me walking as a curiosity. It’s as if I am fully exposed, my soul bore out without a body to protect it (no car-body surrounds me). I am also on the periphery rather than the well-traveled, well-defined tracks of roads. I am not doing what everyone else is doing. They wonder why. When I’ve traveled in cars, I’ve gazed out at walkers as well, and I assume I’m not alone when I call the wondering a very passive one. Car-travelers just find their eyes looking out at whatever’s moving and present, and then when the next subject outside the car comes along, they switch to that. Most likely they will have forgotten me and the other walkers, the dogs, the fences, the litter, the hoisted cars at the mechanic’s shop, the broken traffic light. Their attention will be passively fixed on something, then will move on.
They do not feel threatened by most things outside of the car. They are able to maintain calm, detached stares, to hide and be strong in their metal hulking car frames. Perhaps in the analogy to the human being, you could say our souls need the limits and protection of a physical body in order to assert any presence in this material world. Otherwise, the soul’s immateriality would render it incapable of surviving, and we would have no consciousness; I’m envisioning this being something like a person going without oxygen into outer space.
So it correlates that when I am walking car-less on the sidewalk, I am at much more risk than the people in the cars are. I can be run over by their physical force. I can barely see them to reach their souls.
But still, it is power if the cars look at me simply because I am present, a random part of our shared environment. I am a moving, living thing along the roadside. I will revise a bit and say that the cars actually do pay me more attention than they do to most of the houses, streetlights, fences, stores, etc. I am something the drivers of the cars crave. I am a moving, self-directed force, a free spirit. I am unbounded, an exposed soul.
Other thoughts to consider:
How does a passenger relate to the driver of the car in these analogies? The passenger contributes to the atmosphere inside the car, and affects the driver either directly or indirectly. But the passenger does not operate the car.
Then: Culture of car insides. Car ride talks. There is a wide range of subjects discussed in cars. A diverse set of interactions between driver and passenger(s). A wide range of behaviors of the solo driver. There is the radio—music, station hosts, advertisements. There is no escape from point A to point B, so two or more in a car must be careful what they say, or else they will be forced to deal with it then and there.
How do these ideas relate to the stuff that goes on inside of our bodies? Inside of a family? A town? An ocean? What are the bodies we know, and what goes on inside of them?
