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August 18 - October 1, 2019
Sheldon’s researches
three types
viscerotonic, the somatotonic and the cerebrotonic.
in others there is a disequilibrium which results in acute internal conflict and extreme difficulty in making adaptation to life.
a datum to be accepted and made the best of.
is within the choice of the individual to make a bad use of the best karma and a good use of the worst.
religion cannot survive unless it makes an appeal to all sorts and conditions of men.
elements of belief, of precept, and of practice contributed by each of the principal categories of human beings.
viscerotonic temperament
the type of physique in which the gut is the predominant feature,
to run to breadth, fat a...
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slow reaction time, love of comfort and luxury, love of eating, pleasure in digestion, love of the ritual of eating in company (the shared meal is for him a natural sacrament), love of polite ceremony, a certain untempered quality of flabbiness; indiscriminate amiability; easy communication of feeling; tolerance and complacency; dislike of so...
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somatotonic tem...
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the predominant feature is the ...
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physically strong, active an...
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assertiveness of posture and movement; love of physical adventure; need of exercise; love of risk; indifference to pain; energy and rapid decision; lust for power and domination; courage for combat; competitiveness; psychological callousness; claustrophobia; ruthlessness in gaining the desired end; extroversion toward activity rather than toward people (as with the v...
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cerebrotonic tem...
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the predominance of the nervous system results in a high degr...
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restraint of posture and movement; physiological over-response (one of the consequences of which is extreme sexuality); love of privacy; a certain over-intentness and apprehensiveness; secretiveness of feeling and emotional restraint; dislike of company; shyness and inhibited social address; agoraphobia; resistance to habit formation and incapacity to build up routines; awareness of inner mental proces...
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the viscerotonic loves
polite ceremony and luxury, and makes a fetish of ritual eating in public.
To the somatotonic,
Proselytizing zeal, the courting of martyrdom and the readiness to persecute
extremer forms of asceticism, and the whole stoic and...
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dogmatic insistence on hell fire and the sterner...
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the cerebrotonic,
habitually lives in contact with his inner being, and for whom the revelations of religion and psychiatry are not startlingly novel.
emotional res...
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change of heart and life tends to co...
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he is forced either to simulate conversion by an act of conscious or unconscious fraud, or else to regard himself, and be regarded by others, as irretrievably lost.
great cerebrotonic contribution to religion is mysticism, the worship of God in contemplative solitude without the aid of ritual or sacraments.
the life of voluntary poverty seems not only tolerable, but often supremely desirable;
iconoclasm.
Perhaps this enlightens my inner struggle with public vs private expression of my faith. The first two thirds of my life were so focused on the public (external) rituals that i now want only to indulge the private (internal) contemplative practices.
Among cerebrotonic inventions are hermitages and contemplative orders.
finally the great systems of spiritual philosophy, such as those of Shankara, of Plotinus, of Eckhart, are the work of cerebrotonic minds.
Two questions now present themselves
which of the types has been most influential in the framing of the world’s great religions?
which of the types is best fitted to discover the truth abou...
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In Christianity
central core has always been cerebrotonic and viscerotonic, contemplative and ritualistic.
Christianity has been a militant, proselytizing and persecuting religion.
The two key words of contemporary Western religion are respectively viscerotonic and somatotonic, namely “fellowship” and “social service.”
their full value can be realized
the contemplation of ultimate Reality gives meaning to the emotional warmth of fellowship and directi...
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the main social function of the great religions has been to keep the congenitally energetic and often violent somatotonics from destroying themselves, their neighbors and society at large.
there is no organized temporal power which acknowledges even theoretically the supremacy of any kind of spiritual authority.
It is in pure contemplation that human beings come nearest, in the present life, to the beatific vision of God.
what extent is the viscerotonic justified in his claim that ritual, group worship, and sacramentalism enable him to establish contact with ultimate Reality?
One practical conclusion remains to be recorded.
religion is a system of relativities within an absolute frame of reference.
