Daily Theosophy

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.

(158)

(mustafa’s mind)

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. Nothing moved, nothing changed. The air was windless. The only creatures were some solitary wasps which flew off and on, following their impulses, their duty. Mustafa looked at the wasps, and his thoughts moved in their direction. And that is how the wasps became his teachers, though the wasps themselves weren’t even aware of Mustafa’s existence. ‘Humanity’ is no concept in a wasp’s mind. Humans are just as far away for them as the highest gods are for us. Apart from the possible threat that big things pose to them, they have no consciousness which includes human existence, I suppose.

He could look at the wasps for hours. He learned to recognize them individually when they flew to their nests in the sand. He didn’t exactly know what they were doing inside, but no doubt they would have eggs or babies to care for. When leaving the nest they would fly away, apparently knowing exactly what they were doing.

Mustafa was a very intelligent young men, already having finished his university studies at nineteen with the highest possible marks. But here in the desert were no books, no lectures, no internet, no pre-chewed mental information. Only wasps. And desert. And silence. And his own mind. And it was this last thing, his own mind, which took care that the desert was far from boring. Indeed for Mustafa the desert was more exciting than any game he had played alone or with friends and won or lost in his younger years.

In the culture where Mustafa grew up he had always heard, from a very young age as soon as his ears could hear and his mind could perceive something, that there was only one God. He had never doubted that. It had been a given fact, as true as the sunrise in the morning. He had also learned that God created everything that exists, including the desert, the Blue River, himself and all crops and animals.

Because he was a very intelligent child, he had soon understood that God was not some great man abiding in heaven who had all powers and skills and could decide over good and evil and good and bad luck for people. He had already realized that God was everywhere. Because creation was everywhere. Wherever he looked, to the left or the right, behind or in front of himself, close by or faraway, up to the stars and down to and (mentally) right through the earth, everywhere was ‘creation.’ So God must be everywhere in infinite space and infinite time. Were space and time infinite? Apparently – because if it had a beginning and an end, you could, in your mind, still go beyond, outside its limits. So God must be infinite in time and space.

The ideas of ‘one God’ and ‘Universal Creation’ had also been the basics for him at the university he had studied – unpronounced absolute truths. At the university one could study economics, technology, biology, philosophy and what not – everything that society demanded. Still, that religious axiom of ‘One God’ and ‘Creation’ had never been abandoned, not even seriously doubted.

Mustafa looked at the wasps and thought: ‘They too are God’s creation. All of them, individually, are in some way God’s creation. The same God who is eternal and everywhere, the same God who created Mustafa. How was that possible? God must have been very busy since eternity if He had to create all creatures one by one. But because it was eternity, He also had had infinite time to do things. But Mustafa’s intuition told him that this way of reasoning was not correct – even though it was taught that way at university.

Looking at and thinking about a wasp he realized that God had not only ‘created’ the wasp, but also every individual cell, individual molecule, atom and chemical process within the wasp. And the wasp’s feelings – even its thoughts, if any. The wasp was a complex composition of infinite factors. Because within God there could be no smallest thing and no biggest thing, everything that existed consisted of infinite other things.

‘Yes,’ he thought – ‘wasps definitely have feelings. What else would make them do the things they were doing – and what else would make them avoid dangers? Apparently wasps could be happy as well as unhappy at times, and for the latter case they had a sting to make their presence known to an unwary outsider – but they showed no signs of lasting unhappiness.’

If God was their creator, God must be Mind in the first place. Mind is the creative faculty in everything. Did wasps have a mind? Well, not as humans have, not even as mammals and reptiles have. But what they were doing was still very intelligent. They knew how to find their nests, and how to fly to other destinations. They could avoid objects, or put them to use at will. They never flew exactly the same route – which proved that they were not mere automatons. So even wasps do think on their own level, they make conscious decisions, have their own pros and cons, but they can not think about their own consciousness, they cannot think about themselves comparing themselves with other beings. They are just conscious. To think about one’s own consciousness is typically human. Wasps are so-called ‘primitive’ creatures – nevertheless they fly a thousand times better and more efficient that the latest hi-tech airplanes. Their field reconnaissance was excellent. And so was their performance of duty on behalf of the next generation.

One day a new wasp, that is one who Mustafa had not seen before, came to build her nest. She came alone and also in the future did everything on her own.