“A PIPE OPEN AT BOTH ENDS”

What exists beyond the material world can be seen through our physical vision?

Let Whitman give the answer!

Whitman was aware of the world beyond the physical body. He knew the soul, he knew he could let his soul speak through his physical mouth, because, in terms of energy, our physical body is “a pipe open at both ends, so everything runs through”, as it was called by D. H. Lawrence (BLOOM, Modern Critical Views, p.13); the body is the medium through which the messages from our soul or other souls are conveyed to our physical world, or the “world of appearances”. Whitman could see beyond the world of appearances, or the physical world of physicalbodies.

The following verses (from “A Song of Joys”) show that Whitman was aware of what exists beyond the physical or material world, he could see it from above, from the spiritual dimension, where there is no separation between the souls, where everybody is connected, where Real Love is (not romance, which is only a bodily love), where love exists between souls:

“The real life of my senses and flesh transcending my senses and flesh,

My body done with materials, my sight done with my material eyes,

Proved to me this day beyond cavil that it is not my material eyes which finally see,

Nor my material body which finally loves, walks, laughs, shouts, embraces, procreates.”

Whitman was not stuck any more in the material world. He is saying in these lines that our real Being is our real source of life, energy, and that it is this energy that actually instills vital force in the body. The body by itself is nothing. It is like a very good robot, a machine, a tool, an instrument (although Lawrence was being ironic, physically speaking he was right, otherwise there could not exist persons such as mediums, who convey messages from the immaterial to the material world; there would be no passage between theses “worlds”), which must be energized by our real source of energy, our soul, which is connected to our ultimate source of energy, our Creator (like the rays of the sun are connected to it), who created us in his semblance and sustains us by His love. The “real life” mentioned above is the life of the soul, the Divine soul of man. Without this, man is nothing, just a bunch of bones covered by flesh. Like the poet wrote in these lines from “A Song of Joys”:

“Myself discharging my excrementitious body to be burn’d, or render’d to powder, or buried,

My real body doubtless left to me for other spheres,

My voided body nothing more to me, returning to the purifications, further offices, eternal uses of the earth.”