BY Mike Boxhall

The Fulcrum, Issue 19 Winter 2000

“I think, therefore I am.” is the famous phrase coined by René Descartes. This has become the motto of the modern mind. Descartes championed the mind-matter split. Since then, Western science, philosophy and education have been based on the subject-object divide and the human-nature divide. Much of our social and political paradigm stems from this dualism.

From this dualism flow individualism, industrialism, humanism, capitalism and egoism. Dualism also gives birth to fragmentation, separation, alienation and isolation.

(Satish Kumar)

I lay no claims to being a seer but it seems possible that the end of the second millennium and the beginning of the third may well become known as the post-Descartian, post-Cartesian, if you will and the beginning of the rebirth of wisdom. It is perhaps time for knowledge, as differentiated from information. We are stuffed with information but information is always about something and implies a separation from the object. This separation leads to alienation, judgement and a doing of something to, or sometimes for, the object, based entirely on incomplete information. Because incomplete, therefore false.

To be sure, the last days of overweening superiority of the intellect will not be bloodless. The ego will not quietly allow a co-dependence with another. The paradox of the ego is that we cannot get rid of it. Who would be the subject and who would be the object? What we can do is to enlighten it. Know it and work with it. Thus, we become whole and real.

What I think and certainly hope, is that we are working towards a realisation of the co-dependence of ourselves, the planet and everything in and on it. Life may become joint practice in which I realise that “I am because we are.” This, roughly, is the message of deep ecology, one of the latest and most comprehensive sciences, in my opinion. A science which seems to be truly searching for a unification practice. Not just a theory.

I am so excited by the potential of craniosacral therapy as a tool for the establishment, or perhaps re-establishment, of the practice of co-dependent arising, to use a Buddhist expression. And at the same time, very aware of its capacity to be a subtle lever for a  mechanical approach, information gathering and manipulation. In other words a denial of self  expression.

Doing less is more. Doing nothing, just being, with the only intention being to hear, receive, accept, acknowledge, validate, is sufficient. In this acceptance of who we are, we remember  who we meant to be, and are, in the possibility of rebirth in the moment. Intelligence is contacted. To contact this intelligence, which is joint, even universal, may mean sinking into  awareness which is below the intellect.

I am told we need to do more than enter the stillness of awareness. I have no judgement about that need. I make the observation that it is not necessary, just a need! The need can  then be accepted like all other manifestations of the intellect. Stillness is not an escape from anything, it is a dynamic process which allows the whole to unfold. It is not easy to hold, and involves practice in being in the present without the rabbiting of the past and the future. It is  one way to go.

Trust the Tide, it will take you there. Only, you have to trust it! This is where we came in, 120 years ago with Still, Sutherland et al.

Mike Boxhall died in 2019 aged 89. He was a much-loved teacher whose work was informed by a long interest in spirituality. He held the position of CSTA Chair from 1994 to 1998. 

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoints of the CSTA.