The Mind-Body Question

Some years ago, I had a colonoscopy without being fully anesthetized, and was able to watch on a computer screen the shifting views of the insides of my colon. I was both fascinated and disturbed. There, revealed in digital detail, was the deep interior of my body, a realm I had always considered a mysterious and forbidden temple, fragile and secretive as it went about its important business of keeping me alive. Surely that mystical place was separate from the world of tables and chairs, houses and mountains, even my own face in the mirror. But there it was, with no illusions. I was shocked to see membranes like jelly, with bumps and ridges and turns. I felt like a trespasser in my own body.