Daily Theosophy

The last few years were difficult – he could do less, but his mind became more content, wiser and hopeful like a pre-dawn before sunrise. There was singing inside his breast. He had many pupils in the art of wood carving, playing drums and making bows and arrows in his life.

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(some wisdom stories)

Next to making woodwork, bows and arrows, music and musical instruments and teaching music, he also taught philosophy. Not is a class or any formal way, but by means of the many, ever developing stories, or mythologies, growing in his mind. That is, they came in his mind, but he himself sometimes wondered where they came from. In particular moods it would happen spontaneously. The stories always remained simple and always carried the essence of the sacred teachings. Those who had ears to hear could hear, the others just enjoyed the fun of the stories.

Here is an example of such a story:

One day, long, long ago, when there were no forest, no creeks and no sounds, the people felt lonely. There was nothing around them, nothing above them, no forest, no savannas, it was not warm and it was not cold, and they didn’t have much to do. The only thing above them as was first seen by the one with the best eyes, and then by the others was the sky – blue at daytime and black at night time. And there was the river from which they could drink. The river came from the sky at the edge of the earth. They saw the sun lonely in the sky at the daytime, and when he disappeared there were stars and sometimes the moon. It was all far, far away. They asked the sky to give them some company, something to enjoy, something to play with. The sky did not answer at first. They kept on asking everyday for a year, but nothing happened. Still they continued the second year and the third year. Nothing happened. The people did not despair, because they did not know what despair was. They just had a feeling in their heart that they should ask the sky. After seven years, the one with the best eyes saw a tiny black dot in the middle of the sky. After a while the others saw it also. They wondered. They called out: come, come, we are lonely, come to keep us company and play with us! The tiny dot became a little bigger, and after a while the one with the best eyes saw that it was a line, a little line moving along the sky. And then the others saw it also. The line became bigger and it was moving its body undulating like a millipede. It had a head and a tail and it was flaming with tongues of fire. It was like it was itself on fire and the fire had many colors. Many days and nights the people only looked to that moving fire-line coming closer. Amazement, a new feeling, arose in their hearts. It came closer and closer and the one with the best eyes saw that it was a caiman, and the others saw it also. The fire-caiman had wings, they saw now and it moved quickly towards them. A new feeling was born: awe. The flying caiman became bigger and bigger. Finally it landed near the river and laid an egg in the sand, and then flew up again into the sky. The caiman became smaller and smaller, became a fiery line, than a spot then a tiny dot and then disappeared. The one with the best eyes could see it longest, but even he lost sight after a while.

Now there was only the egg with the people, there at the river side. Everyone went to look. It was just a caiman’s egg, and they thought that after some time a caiman would hatch from it. It was a special egg though, saw the one with the best eyes. You could look through its blue and faintly purple glassy shell what was inside the egg. They saw that there was no caiman in the egg, and a new feeling was born: disappointment. But the one with the best eyes looked deeper and saw that it had two halves inside: an upper half and a lower half. It was all made of transparent jelly – half solid, half fluid, or a fluid that could not just flow away, like the jelly around a frog’s egg, but within a solid translucent shell. The upper half of the egg’s jelly was transparent and nothing was in it, it seemed. But that at the top it was, as some people with good eyes became aware, faintly, very bright bluish, the same color as the transparent shell which surrounded the egg, and below the bright, almost invisible blue there was yellow, almost invisible, and below that there was a very transparent very dark blue. Then everyone could see it.

The lower half of the inside of the egg was less transparent, less shining, but consisted of four very clearly visible colored layers. These stronger colors draw the attention of people even before the one with the best eyes had noticed it. The top layer of this lower half was but narrow and dark green, like emerald, and below it a much thicker layer of deep bright red – like the bright red flowers-of-fiery-love that the people of Shano’s day knew so well from the forest and which girls liked to give to boys to express there love and desire. The red layer in the egg was powerful and radiant like ruby. The third layer was orange and the fourth layer was purple like amethyst1, and the bottom of the purple was almost like very dark brown earth without transparency. A new feeling was born: wonder. People wondered about the beauty of it, and how it could exist.

The next day the orange jelly had moved and formed transparent rivers. Fluid seemed to stream inside them. The rivers went in all directions and flowed through the whole egg, but especially into the purple layer. The purple gave all things a form. But it was the red color who seemed to want it happen: the desire came from the red. It had the power and the orange jelly had but to obey. The yellow carried messages from one part of the egg towards other parts. The red secretly asked the green above for guidance, but took the honor for itself. A new feeling was born: secret evil. And then forms became visible, first for the one with best eyes: The purple became the stones, minerals, mountains and rivers and the air, and the dark part of it became hard and cold. The orange became the molds and plants of all colors, and later became green. Thus a new thing was born: the forest. The forest transferred the energy it received from the sun to the people and the animals and to other plants. Thus everything grew with the energy of the sun. The red became the animals and they were fiery, selfish and aggressive at first, but later they became calmer. The green became human beings, stupid at first, like monkeys, but later more clever and skilled. The top half of the egg, the but faintly colored jelly, became the gods, invisible for the eyes of men and women.

From then on the people lived happily in the rainforest with its large rivers and small creeks, colorful birds, cooing doves and mysteriously chirping insects, sweet smelling flowers of all colors with which they adorned their hair, and all materials to produce artifacts. Their hearts wish had been fulfilled. They heard the spirits of the forest, and learned from experience that these should be regarded as friends. In the river lived a caiman, a kingly caiman, and on his back stood, like a flame, only visible for those who have good eyes, the queen of the forest, to whom all the spirits paid respect. Since then the people lived happy and without boredom, and there was a lot of joy everyday.

Because people had not learned to think in abstractions, except Shano himself and Moimoi a little bit through Shano’s influence, the stories had to be concrete and imaginable. Forms and colors and normal feelings they could understand, but mathematical abstractions, abstract concepts (which have no form or color and can not be seen or even imagined), such as eternity or empty space, or time that was no day and no night, could impossible be understood. That is why the mythological stories were composed by the wisest among the people, the ones with the best eyes, for the common people, so that later they will also see. And, even if the true book would be abandoned in the future and because there perhaps nobody left who could understand it, the stories would be told from generation to generation, together with the hidden message within them – until the time the messages could be understood.

Another story was about the sun, the old moon and the young earth. The sun was a glowing golden light, the moon was faintly lighted, but enough to remind the people of the sun during the night, and sometimes …