It’s a Buddhist thing; when you realise that you are not your body. The proof is that if you were unlucky enough to loose a leg, you remain the same conscious individual; complete. Many people are permanently identified with the meat and bones which they were given to complete a life time. This illusion contributes to a general fear death in the population. But from a spiritual perspective, death is completely safe! For the more spiritually aware, death is merely our energetic body leaving the physical body.

Some of the best evidence for the reality of our non-physical higher Self or Soul, comes from those who have died and come back. These ‘near death experiences’ describe the early stages of the transition we call ‘death’. If we accept this, then it becomes easier to allow the possibility that our soul will enter another body for another life on Earth.

For the Soul, the cast off body feels like a well loved overcoat that is left on a train. But in fact the Soul is more at ease without a body; feeling bliss. Those who describe their near death experience felt reluctant to return, but they were guided to complete what they need to do here.

At a even more subtle level, this world can be experienced as a rough representation of a more sublime parallel dimension, because it is digital hologram. As far fetched as this may sound, contemporary physicists are presenting evidence supporting this theory and Michael Talbot explores it in his book ‘The Holographic Universe’. This dimension is what in the Bible is called Heaven and you would therefore expect there also to be it’s opposite. According to David Icke, there is indeed a malign parallel dimension which has broken the law of non-interference by influencing a Cabal of human institutions with the aim of world domination. In order to know what this Hell would be like it is similar to the film ‘Hunger Games’ and parts of this movie have already started in Gaza and Southern Sudan.

The process of our body growing old also prompts serious reflection on what we really are. Most elders ‘feel’ they are a much younger age than their body. From this we might deduct that the natural process of physical ageing does not affect our Soul. Indeed, if we are open to the idea of life , then we might after death we might give credence to the idea that we leave our bodies every night when we sleep. It is the body that needs to regenerate at night, not the Soul. These experiences outside our bodies we can recall as dreams. The Soul has the wonderful ability to go anywhere, as demonstrated by Saints and Prophets throughout history.

To move from this sublime thought to the modern western world, there is a debate about gender which cast some light on the subject of souls and bodies. Some souls feel to the opposite gender to their body, which might be a memory of a previous life where we might have have a body of the opposite gender. A crude solution is ‘gender reassignment’; physical surgery and chemical manipulation. But just because this is possible it does no mean it is wise, in my view. Psychological and spiritual understanding is more important than appearances and gender roles in society. As is said, ‘know yourself’. In Jungian psychology all men contain a female persona and the reverse in women. Our relationship with our opposite gender characteristics within ourselves will produce inner peace for the Soul, rather than the personal and social conflicts which identification with the body creates.

The body is after all, never a problem in itself. The more honest we can be about our bodies, then the sooner we can be less concerned with self image. In Naturism, men and women walk around naked and enjoy the principles of equality, fraternity and liberty. Problems created by the ‘deadly sin’ of lust are not involved as nudity is not sexual in many contexts. Those who cannot control their lust are likely to be trapped in their bodies and are in a Hell – the other state of consciousness to the Garden of Eden. The terrorist group ISIS as an example of souls in Hell, destroyed ancient statues of the human body in the name of religion, whilst importing devout Muslim ‘brides’ and abusing them mercilessly as sex slaves.

The feelings of ‘shame’ in nakedness that Adam and Eve felt are not natural but are produced by controlling social and religious rules and dogma. These treat every person to be no better than the least. Therefore, everyone is treated as being unable to control their lusts. Islam embraced the rule of tolerance and understanding towards sex and gender equality long before modern liberal societies understood the benefits of this ideal.

The Holy Quran insists on ‘modesty’ in dress. There are no specific ‘dress rules’ so different cultures have decided what is ‘modest’. If modesty is understood to mean ‘covering up’, this has to mean covering the whole body. But where to stop ‘covering up’ is a missing detail in this guidance. Why do men not wear face veils for instance? From a moral perspective, the whole issue of modesty is irrelevant if men and women were to control their lust as is their higher spiritual duty. Surely dress codes serve society best when they express the Divine beauty within and without? The human body was, after all, designed by Allah.

The beauty of the Greek gods wonderfully expresses the human body without shame and self consciousness. These gods are powerful symbols of the complete human condition. The ancient Greek myths and legends describe at a psychological level, how to master one’s Self within a single lifetime.

In a different interpretation, the word ‘modest’ may also or instead, be forbidding displays of high self opinion and excess wealth. Such an interpretation would hit hard in many wealthy Arab countries!

These ideals remind us that we should not be distracted by this physical world because it does not last; only our Souls exist perpetually. Vanity, whatever one’s social rank, is always transient, as in the last lines of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’;

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings!

Look on my works ye mighty and despair,

Nothing besides remains. Round the decay,

of that colossal wreck, round and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Compared with the fruitless pre-occupations of the Guidance Patrol in modern Iran, inner cleansing and self improvement is the most noble spiritual objective, involving no judgment by or about others.

One of the principle Hermetic laws is that every aspect of creation is male or female. The Alchemists depicted the duality of the Sun and Moon as expressing this. The Sun is the radiant expanding male principle, known as Yang in Eastern philosophy. The presence of the sun gives rise to the reflecting moon, or Yin, which expresses the complimentary feminine characteristic of absorbing, contracting and most importantly, reflecting.

This ability of reflection is what distinguishes humans as unique. Although all of nature is ‘aware’ in various ways and differing degrees, only humans are able to properly ‘reflect’ internally. We can remove ourselves from what we observe. We can be independent observers whilst participating. This ability inspired the scientific method. Through this extraordinary ability we reflect the same characteristic as God or Mind who is after all the ‘Great Observer’.

Without the physical world God cannot know itself. Every galaxy, every human and every atom contains this ‘awareness’ and can create and destroy in the same manner as God or Mind which is knowing itself through human experience in the physical dimension. In this view, matter becomes a difficulty but necessary means to experience of the Divine.

From this stand point we might appreciate that what we call ‘my body’ is no more than aeons of star dust, condensed into biology and energised by Mind. This Divine unity enables an experience which we call ‘life’ although at no point can we ever truly put our finger on it and never will.

‘The lone and level sands stretch far away.’