Daily Theosophy

As much attention was given to the roofs which could only be seen from the sky. Architecture as a whole had adopted a three-dimensional esthetic.

(157)

(modern city design)

From the cities went hi-speed railroads towards other countries, through the lands and the deserts, over rivers and through and over mountains, and from space they looked like a worldwide network of silk threads. Thousands of miles were traveled in mere hours. Intercontinental transport was usually by airplane.

Mustafa and everyone else in the community where he lived had from a very young age been taught by his parents that there was only one God, and that one had to obey this God, and that there were only two ways in life: to follow God or to deviate from God’s commandments. God was very lenient with the mistakes of everyone who followed his advice – that means everyone who was just and generous, forgiving and merciful. The highest character traits of their God were forgiveness and mercy and justice. However God could do nothing for those who, independent of which particular religion – whatever religion it might be because they did not differ in spiritual essence turned away from the spiritual path – rejected all advices and ultimately led themselves to destruction. God could do little for materialists and those who refused to believe in any spiritual truth. God didn’t like fights and quarrels, and had taught people to wish each other peace at every opportunity.

This was the general atmosphere in which Mustafa was brought up. What he already had understood as a small child, was again emphasized at the university: God had no form and no name, he had no shape and could not be depicted. God was nowhere to be seen, but at the same time was everywhere. Every existing thing and being, whether visible or invisible, had come forth from this omnipresent God, and had issued forth from His Divine mind. And humans had been given a free will, so that they could dualistically choose between good and evil.

As said, Mustafa’s parents had moved away from the cities. Still they had all the comforts. Mustafa was a very bright and broad-minded boy. Though he had good social skills, and could be found smoking a water pipe with fat tobacco together with some friends at some of the many alcohol-free café’s in the nearby villages, his favorite occupation was to escape social talk and empty fun, and go into the desert. Nobody else ever went into the desert if not necessary. It was a hostile environment to most people’s minds, with snakes, wasps, heat and thirst.

Mustafa had been living in or near deserts for a number of subsequent lifetimes stretching over a few thousand years, and mostly in that same country. This had no doubt developed his silent habits. From earliest childhood he had been very silent, often just sitting on a stone and staring into infinity. Even when five years old he used to wonder alone into the desert – to which his mother didn’t agree at all – and when he got a little bit older he could stay away for many hours. Nobody knew what he was doing there. He didn’t tell. His friends in the village found him a little weird, but as silence and patience is the very character of a desert, it was not considered as weird as people in a western city would have found him. When he was twelve he was given a young camel. Soon the camel became his best friend, though it was still to young to ride on. And the friendship relation came form both sides. He took very good care of the animal, and soon he would take him out into the desert on his walks, guide him to small oases of water and fresh fodder. They rarely met anyone. There were a few remote houses, very old, built of loam and painted white, or what was left of the old paint, and some still had straw as a roof. Nobody had lived in these few houses for decades. But they were good places to find some shadow for his camel and himself. The silence there was absolute. Mustafa would spend hours, even days, at these places. When it was not too hot he would sit on a small hill dry hill or a stone. He would sit motionless, staring towards the horizon as if he was watching a lonely camel slowly walking over the gray rocks and brownish sand-dunes. Apart from an occasional wasp – it was a miracle how these creatures came there and could survive in their holes in the sand – and perhaps a snake under a stone, Mustafa and his camel had no company.

What brings a human being who has access to loads of computer games and other entertainments to sit silently in a desert, apparently doing nothing? Everyone at home knew that he was not crazy and indeed very intelligent and kindhearted – even towards wasps. His mind became as silent as the desert itself. One couldn’t have seen it from the outside, but within his mind happened more that a thousand computer games and university books could have produced. From the silence arose everything. Universes were created in his mind, or it could penetrate into the subtlest philosophies – far subtler than any philosophy ever invented by city dwellers. It seemed that there was no difference between a question and an answer in his mind. It seemed to see the past and the future – there was no difference between the two. There was a great desire to investigate the truths of the universe as they are – not as per any philosophical or merely mental approach.

When at home, apart from the farmer’s work together with his father and his social life, he wrote beautiful simple poems – poems which could be understood by every villager, a PhD’er as well as an illiterate. They told about unseen worlds of mystery, of worlds were nobody had ever been, but nevertheless seemed more real than the world they saw everyday. Another special thing of Mustafa was that if one of his friends would have a problem, an inner problem of which the person wouldn’t even talk, he would answer that friend without saying a word or making a gesture. The answer just arose as an answer, or the seed of an answer, in the friends mind.

Life went on for a number of years like that. Not very far away, a few days on his camel, were ancient hidden caves. Inside the caves he found strange paintings: of people with animal heads – or where they gods?, snakes with legs, or headless people walking upside down. The caves seemed more silent even than the desert. It a deep, mysterious silence, as if their was a presence of something. Mustafa could not explain the meaning of the paintings, but he had a strong feeling that he had been there before, long ages ago. He understood that with his brain mind he could not explain or understand these paintings. Nevertheless he felt that they were part of a deeper mind – the mind of an artist long ago that was beyond conceptions, but nevertheless had tried to express a deep understanding of consciousness in a visible form. Mustafa took the paintings with him in his memory in all detail.

While sitting in the desert he would remember the paintings before his mind’s eye, and he would meditate on them. They told something of another world. It was a true world, thought Mustafa, but still he was unable to understand its significance. What he saw was a true part of human consciousness, but a consciousness that was strange as well as distantly familiar to his present consciousness.

Mustafa’s mind

Mustafa was alone in the desert, with his camel who was happily resting and chewing during the heat of the day a short distance away.