Daily Theosophy

So what was he doing !? Sitting there in the hot desert, studying his mind !???

One can not just stop a habit. However, he had reached a point of no return. He realized that, still his mind went on.

(164)

(the probing mind)

10. The probing mind

‘Some things are more true than others,’ he thought. One couldn’t send a spaceship to another planet based on a fantasy technology. Technology had a truth that mere fantasy could not bring about. If planets like Mars and Venus would have been mere fantasies, how could one have landed on them? So modern scientific ‘fantasies’ contained more truth than the fantasies which had taught in the Middle Ages that the sky was a dome with little holes placed above the flat earth, and that through these holes God’s light was shining – what to us appeared to be stars. Or other nonsense. ‘So was progress possible within the mind? Or was progress itself a form of fantasy within real existence? Is it possible for the mind to create fantasies which then can be scanned against the light of divine truth? Could one recognize the analogy between a reflection and reality? The initiative would then come from the human mind, not from God’s mind: so that step by step human mind and humanity makes progress with God’s help, or with comparing intuitively with universal Mind?’ As long as people would think that the earth was flat, an erroneous thought like this could never be scanned to or reflected by a divine Mind. Still, the people in these times were as sure about their beliefs as we are now. ‘Is there a Divine Mind or Universal Mind? Does it have real existence? Or was it just a next level of fantasy, of illusion?’

Mustafa’s conclusion was that the mind itself could not answer the question. Even God as people saw Him was a theory, a fantasy, or a probe of the mind. It was not ultimate reality, unstained, faultlessly true forever. ‘We have to leave the mind behind. Still it is our only guide,’ he thought. – But that was just another thought. He felt himself caught in a treadmill. How to get out?

11. Mind and matter

One thing that was still a very great problem for Mustafa’s mind, was: ‘where material things came from?’ He could now easily understand where fantasies and relative realities came from. They exist within the mind itself. In the mind one can imagine anything and everything. The mind can also think about material things. An intelligent abstract mind can even design a material machine entirely on its own, in its imagination, without touching any physical material. It can do the same with mathematical formulas and planimetric or steriometric mental objects. Mental ideas could be put into words or paintings or music, or poetry. But a mental image alone was still far from a material object. You had to use your hands and collect existing materials, and combine these materials in such a way that the product would be more or less answering to the original mental image. One never could do that perfectly: no instrumental music or painting is as perfect as the music heard or the image seen in the mind.

So, were there two realities: mind and matter? Still, mind and matter had so much in common that the mind could perceive as well as think of material things. How could the mind perceive and think about matter if they were totally different, of a total exclusive nature? Mustafa’s only explanation for this problem was that mind and matter have something in common. Then, can mind create matter, or is matter something that merely is susceptible to mental imagination? That would mean that mind and matter are partly the same and partly different? He had always understood that God’s mind created all things, the whole universe, visible and invisible. Had God also created matter? Or were God (or at least God’s mind) and matter two distinct eternals? But how can their be place in one universe for two distinct eternals, two infinities? If ‘something else’ than one eternity and infinitude existed, then no second could exist, because that would logically limit the eternal and infinite – what is impossible. ‘So,’ Mustafa thought, ‘ultimately mind and matter can not be different in Reality.’

Certainly not Mustafa himself nor any person he had ever met had the ability to create physical matter itself by his mind. But perhaps God could. He continued to think about this. A hypnotist or a magician can create mental illusions so real that the unwary spectator thinks they are real. But are they real, or only illusions? Or is there no difference between illusion and reality? Both seemed a logical possibility to him.

Deducing from the point of view of the One Omnipresent God, no absolute separation can exist between matter, mind and God. They must be one and the same, undividable, inseparable. There can be but one substance. You could give any name to that substance. One could call it Universal Mind-Matter, or Spirit-Substance or Spirit-Intelligence-Matter, or Spirit-Intelligence-Perception-Energy-Matter. Or simply God. or It. Anyway, whatever name you would give, the various components of the name were mental constructions for the same thing. Like water, steam and ice are different names for the same thing. These only differ in hardness, but not in essence. The one can change into the other, the one can dissolve or evaporate or condense or freeze into the other. Following that comparison, mind could be condensed spirit, and matter could be ‘frozen’ mind. All three would be spirit in essence. All three would be substance in essence. No real difference between substance and spirit.

Mustafa’s final conclusion on this subject was that mind is an aspect of spirit, and that mind has, by its very creative nature, the ability to imagine forms and condense into them. This would involve the universal presence of God or Spirit in Matter, and of Mind in Matter, and that Mind was God and Matter was God, and God and Mind and Matter were Substance. The Universe in all its aspects, material and non-material, is identical with God, and God with the Universe.

‘But then – why is there imperfection? God is perfect by definition. But mind is not perfect – or is it? Is Matter perfect? God can not be perfect and imperfect at the same time – because then God would be imperfect.’ So Mustafa concluded that God, Mind and Matter were perfect, and One – and that mistakes and imperfections were unreal appearances, made up by human would-be philosophers with little intelligence.

12. The hallucinating mind

In their effort to transcend the limitations of daily consciousness, people had tried to enter other states of consciousness. Perhaps they were more true, more universal.