Daily Theosophy

So, Mustafa concluded: if God is Mind, Universal mind, and humans have mind, the task of humans is to know the heart or essence of mind – and they will know God. They will know that they are God.

(161)

(the analytical mind)

2. Analytical and compositional mind

He also thought about analytical and compositional mind. If a mental or physical object is complex, it can be taken apart. A wasp is a wasp, but the mind can recognize it, analyze it, into parts: eyes, wings, intestines, tracheids, feelings, cognition, will power, mind power, etc. In this way we understand more and more about a wasp, of every existing thing. Even atoms can be divided and analyzed. If not physically, then still mentally. There is no limit. But if we have taken a wasp apart, we have no more wasp. If we take a house apart, we have stones and wood and plastic, but no more house. If we put the stones etc. together again in their original order, we have a new house. If we put the parts of a wasp together – do we have a new wasp? Well, if we could also put the feelings and other soul-aspects back in their place, perhaps we would have a new wasp. The same with a human. What do you think? Would that be true?

Mentally and physically we can analyze every object, every phenomenon, every existing thing or being. But after analyzing, we can only conclude that we haven’t found its essence. We never find an objects essence by analyzing. And without its essence we can never recompose it precisely as it was. You can put stones on top of each other in the same order – still the new house will not be the old house. The house is also formed by the people who rebuilt it, and even more by the people who live in it, their feelings and attitudes, and by environmental circumstances. It can be drawn painstakingly precise from the same architectural plan, still it is not the same house. ‘Nothing within God is ever the same for an infinitesimal split of a second,’ Mustafa concluded. You see how a lot can happen in a desert. The whole philosophy of humankind can invisibly be present in a lonely boy’s mind. God is everywhere, and partly visible, but mostly invisible.

But we have a compositional mind also. Animals have it instinctively, as if pre-programmed, otherwise they could not build nests and so on. But humans can consciously take things and according to their mental visualization they can put things together until a new, complex thing exists. The same applies to thought itself. We can compose theories out of loose, apparently unrelated elements; in the material world we can create new, so far unknown instruments from unrelated elements as silicium, rubber and copper, etc., together forming a TV. These new things are composed, they consist of smaller things, which in themselves may be composed. But no human instrument has a soul, personal feelings or a mind. The ‘mind’ of a computer is a soulless process; the real mind of the computer is to be found in the designer and the user.

So the common human mind can analyze, it can compose, but it can not create a soul. ‘God can,’ Mustafa thought. Another bright thought flashed through Mustafa’s mind: He had found the difference between living nature and non-living nature! When nature creates itself the impulse comes from within and expresses outwards. The essence or soul of the living being, with its inherent intelligence, brings out from itself the totality of the living being: the visible being is the production of an invisible seed. The seed contains mind, purpose, soul; these use physical matter to build a proper vehicle: a body. Even DNA molecules derive from a soul, a mind from which they issue forth. Then there is a mind which can modify a number of chemically and physically separate parts of DNA molecules according to a scheme: for example to develop wings as well as a wish to fly. The one would be useless without the other. Both come forth from the intelligence of the heart of the same evolving being. But Man-made things come from an outside mind (i.e. the human mind) and are put together by compositional activity by action from an outside force, such as our hands or instruments. The soul and mind of the maker stay outside the thing itself. Therefore a man-made thing is never a living being. But a nature-made thing is always living, has a soul and is produced from another type of mind than the compositional human mind that basis its knowledge on analysis beforehand. The mind inside living beings is an inherent part of their soul – and it is not compositional or analytical, but directly divine. This type of mind does not make divisions and compositions, it is not abstract like the human mathematical mind, but is rather a reflector of (an aspect of) Reality. It is a mind without doubts and discussions. It is pure, transcendental non-dual mind which manifests itself for our dual, discursive mind. The human mind analysis and puts labels. Unconsciously the animal mind does that also: what is a table for us, may be a house for a dog, or just a landing place for a fly. Thus we put labels and restrictions on everything, according to our wishes. And doing so, we never see Reality. We can never become natural creators in this way. Because we do not yet know our own Heart.

3. The human and the animal mind

Then Mustafa tried to ponder the difference and equality of a human mind and an animal mind. Was there a difference – and was the difference gradual or was it a difference in principle? It was a difficult question for Mustafa. At that time Mustafa had not learned the monastic teachings which Shano (and we) had already learned earlier in our story (though in ‘actually’ Shano learned most things ten years after Mustafa).

The technology – I mean the technical abilities of animal bodies – were in many cases far greater than those of human bodies. Humans could not fly on their own, or swim or climb very well, they were relatively slow, and human senses were often dumb compared to animals senses. Cats see better in the dark, dogs have better noses, bats have better ears, and even tiny insects can fly – while we humans are, without our artificial gadgets, bound to the ground. For humans, the air and the deep seas were terra incognita until recently, whereas butterflies and birds perfectly understood the movements of the sky millions of years before the first human baby was born, and fishes the sea. Moreover humans belong, esthetically, to the ugliest creatures on earth, Mustafa thought. Still, nothing seemed to have been created by the animals’ or plants’ personal minds. All creatures had in common that they were too stupid to really understand that 1+1=2. We humans are clumsy creators compared to God – clumsy engineers, clumsy artists, clumsy thinkers. Still humans are the only ones who can think on their own. ‘Humans have a spark of God no-one else has,’ thought Mustafa. He called it ‘imperfect creative mind’. He thought that it was a real aspect of the divine mind, as far as creativity and understanding was concerned. Still God didn’t have to create or understand anything at all, because ‘He’1 was all: the future, the present and the past, all that was and will ever be. So the human mind was of God, but still far away from God.

These are just some of the adventures of Mustafa in the desert. Outwardly his camel was doing the same: it just sat and looked in a distance. But inwardly there was an unbridgeable gap between the mind of the camel and that of Mustafa. Both were friends on a level, and went there own path of evolution – but further apart than Europe is from Australia.

Of course this is but a summary of Mustafa’s thought development over a longer period. It didn’t all happen in one day. Humanity itself has used thousands of years to reach its present philosophical level – and humanity may even be more confused now than the people three thousand years ago, despite our modern increase of material knowledge. But knowledge alone is not yet insight or wisdom, let alone Reality. ‘What is the connection, the bridge between knowledge and wisdom?’ Mustafa asked within in himself, in the silence, in the desert.

His mind answered: ‘Wisdom is knowledge applied in a useful way.’ Wisdom is not just the sum of knowledge – though this may lead to particular skills. But wisdom is having learned something beyond the discursive mind. It has reached a deeper essence than knowledge. It has reached that from which the knowable arises. The knowable is a reflection of something still deeper. A wise person, or an experienced person, having spend a great part of his life with particular knowledge or practice, has learned something essential. He knows intuitively, almost automatically, how to apply knowledge. Knowledge will be lost when he dies, but wisdom remains and supports the future – and will grow further and further. A good, usually senior, doctor does not have to rely on mere university knowledge and books. By his experience his intuition tells him how to act, what knowledge to apply. Wisdom is beyond mere analysis, beyond mere theories and knowledge of facts. Wisdom is gained by an inner process. An illiterate farmer, within his field of awareness, can have gained more wisdom in his life than an accomplished professor.

The best wisdom is gained by combining mental knowledge with the heart: the heart is by nature wiser than the mind. It steers thoughts by an energy of love, compassion, or towards inner recognition of the truths behind them.

Mustafa realized for the first time that he knew a lot, but had little wisdom. Often he didn’t know who to solve the simplest practical problems. He had been so much in his own mind that he had not learned to help anyone efficiently in daily practical things.

He had understood, as appears from the above analysis, that mind is limited from above and below. Above, because one could never be absolutely sure about axioms and propositions. Even if the axioms were God-inspired, the mind would immediately pollute it with its duality, its doubt, its inner disputes and discursiveness. On the lower side the mind was depending on perceptions, and perceptions are always imperfect, because limited to a small spectrum. Moreover every perception is itself a theory which depends on the mind and its level of understanding.

On the other hand, real axioms were pure in their essence, and through it the mind has the ability to make more of a perception than the imperfect eye or ear or tongue etc. could transfer. If the mind has experience with a particular type of sense impulses, it has formed a picture for itself of the repeatedly perceived object – and perhaps recognized its noumenon. Thus the mind can correct imperfect information coming in from the senses by the help of its inherent power of comparing memories and its inherent power of recognizing essentials. Even if we do not consciously use our analytical mind, the mind is analyzing and composing in our subconscious. Even the minds of animals do that, and thus animals may gain a particular wisdom on their own level. But no higher heart-wisdom is involved in the case of animals. Human wisdom is of a higher nature. It refers and communicates silently with something of divine intelligence deep inside. That is how wisdom grows.

The analytical and compositional mind alone can lead us around for ‘sightseeing’ within our own preconceived universe, just as mathematics and logic can within their universes, but it can not transgress its own limits. Impulses from something more essential than this type of mind are needed to grow spiritually. And these impulses can be acquired by yearning for them. This yearning might be called ‘devotion.’ It is the innate desire to understand, to grow, to crush limits, to realize oneness with God.

4. Devotional mind

So Mustafa, who had so much analytical training, and had read so many books, now became consciously aware for the first time of the existence of a devotional mind