Daily Theosophy

The wasps had helped Mustafa in his philosophical, almost mystical thinking, and he owed a lot to them. Forever he felt love as well as pity for insects and other animals, and prayed for their rapid evolution.

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(the deductive mind)

From now on Mustafa directed his attention only towards his own mind, but always radiated sympathy towards ‘his’ wasps. God’s mind could create everything. Human mind could create architecture, art, ideas, instruments. It was as nothing as compared to God’s mind. But, because humans are part of the omnipresent divinity, human creations were also God’s creations – ‘polluted’ as it where through the human mind. People knew that – if not intellectually, then still intuitively. That is why the most beautiful art and architecture had always been made for God, for their highest but still unreachable ideal, and artists often thought that God inspired them directly. What was actually the case, was that in their faith and confidence they had lifted their own creative mind towards a higher level – a level were more of the divine was shining. A little more, perhaps; but some pieces of art and music, and especially some religious buildings were amazing. Just seeing or being around such human creations could uplift a sensitive person almost to the level of godhood – and even a non-sensitive person was greatly stimulated in his or her spiritual evolution. In any case of art awareness, something indestructible had hit the person who perceived it, that remained with them even after their death. But for many common people that is just a little above the level of their daily consciousness.

Mustafa thought and meditated over the mind, and found several categories. These categories were not absolutely separate of course, but they were related like facets of the same diamond.

1a. Deductive mind

First he made a distinction between deductive and inductive mind. The deductive mind was reasoning from a general proposition or axiom down into an ever increasing variety of possibilities. It was a form of logical mind. When the proposition was true, and the logic was sound, the conclusions were also true. The combination of the various conclusions were also true. On this idea mathematics and logic were based. If you knew the first or essential or highest truth about something, thousands, or theoretically, infinite conclusions and mental compositions could be drawn. For this process you would need a really clear and pure mind: no biases or preconceived conclusions are allowed. For a mind like Mustafa’s (let along God’s Mind) this was no problem. But almost all ‘normal’ people jumped to all sides with their conclusions, ending in a haze – or exactly were they wanted to land because of some self-interest. Not so with Mustafa. The first procedure delivered philosophers, the second procedure was good for sophists and creators of commercial advertisements. Such people earned their honor and money by creating confusion. Mustafa found it immoral (he had studied Ethics besides philosophy at university). Mustafa was only interested in truth and reality – whatever the consequences.

There was one problem however: How would anyone know if a proposition or axiom was true? The propositions and axioms were themselves the makings of human minds – who, by their very nature – can not ponder the depth of infinite Reality or Divine Truth. That means that if the axiom is wrong, everything derived from it is also wrong. The whole mental construction or theory or way of seeing and approaching things falls apart like a building in an earthquake. As humans, we can know and understand only axioms and propositions which hint at the truth – which are helpful in training our mind, in building a society and practicing science and philosophy. Axioms could be God-given, perhaps: hints thrown into the mind of humanity by God himself. But as the dual mind of humans is for ever inadequate to understand the divine, humans are always confused: they just can not know the True Reality behind the axiom with their discursive mind. The greatest philosopher can not know the Truth as long as he clings to his dualistic human mind. He has to transcend, or ‘kill’ the human mind.

Still one can not say that axioms are entirely false. Mathematics, planimetry, stereometry are all based on the axiom of the ancient Greek Euclides who proposed that two parallel lines touch each other in infinity, i.e. never in worldly reality; or that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. The infinite can not be understood by the finite mind. Even the finite can not be really understood by the finite mind. So we rely on Euclid – hoping that he knew and saw more than we do. But Euclides was also a man, and lived in what his mind made up. So it could be wrong. Some great mathematicians have doubted Euclid’s axioms.

Another axiom was Mustafa’s beloved one: ‘There is one God and God created everything.’ But, looking strictly, who had taught him that? It had been his mother when he was but a toddler. She was not particularly intelligent, but he had never thought of doubting her. Later Mustafa had given a great content to this God-concept. He had not even a thought of ever doubting the universal truth of it.

However, if there was truth in an axiom – even though the truth was but a reflection of transcendental reality, the phenomena must all contain that truth. No phenomena can move away from its own inner truth – nothing can lose itself. So, if the axiom is true, it must be able to predict possible phenomena – or rather show its possible manifestations, i.e. phenomena. If by actual perception a phenomenon is different from the axiom-deduced prediction – the axiom itself is proved to be faulty. Then it was no axiom at all, it was merely a supposition. Such an insecure ‘axiom’ is called a theory. The mind can make up any theory, and keep the theory standing as long as it is not falsified, toppled. Some theories stand so long that people regard them as axioms – and that is very dangerous of course. Take a social example. For many thousand of years and in many cultures throughout the world it was ‘axiomatic’ – at least a crystallized theory – that women were less worthy than men. There capabilities were less, the had a low mind (if any), and moreover were a nuisance for ‘spiritual’ men who could not master their animal sexuality. Even a recent, most respected leading European philosopher like Hegel, less than three centuries ago, believed that women were by nature less than man. Nowadays we can not even imagine that this was a general belief, which at those days accepted even by the women themselves. Imagine the amount of unnecessary suffering by suppression and blockage of mental and artistic development for billions of women throughout millennia ! It was all just due to a ‘small’ philosophical mistake at the basis, a small crook in man’s (or woman’s) mind !

If we properly analyze any scientific theory, it rests on a shaky basis. Remove the basis – or a presumed axiom – and the whole theory collapses. No theory or viewpoint is absolutely sure.

There is a difference between axioms of mathematics and logic and axioms concerning the workings of nature. The first category creates its own universe, apart from natural reality. The second category – nature itself, has already been created and thus derived from something more absolute than an axiom. Human minds can try to impose axioms on nature – but in reality they only project aspects of their own mind, their human mind, imperfect and dualistic by nature. Imposing such axioms may help us to try to mentally understand nature, but has no influence on nature itself. Nature just is.

1b. Inductive mind

Deductive mind can be balanced by inductive mind. In this way we can solidify scientific theories, or refute them, make them generally acceptable or generally rejected – but nor the theory nor the rejection of it is ever absolutely solid, absolutely sure. Seeing and registering and measuring the small facts of daily life is the basis. Induction is a wonderful property of mind. Even when things are totally different from a phenomenological point of view, the mind, if concentrated or involving itself with it during a considerable time, is able to recognize common factors in different things. For example, fish move by themselves, and elephants too. Fish do not look like elephants. Still we see that both have something in common: movement. We find many other things in nature that move, sometimes rapidly, sometimes exceedingly slow, like a growing cactus. But they all move. So we induce that all moving things have a common factor. We called it ‘life’ This axiom held until people invented machines: they move by themselves, but are they alive? The answer is: no. So we have to adjust our definition of life. Apparently ‘life’ can not be defined by movement alone. So we need a next, higher mental step – like ‘living beings are all characterized by procreation’. Stones don’t procreate – be does it mean that they are not alive? Thus we build castles of induction. Things become ever more complex, because the first theory is rarely satisfactory. If it were satisfactory and indisputable we could henceforward call it an axiom. Every time we pose a new thesis, it stands until research and new data present an antithesis, or a total rejection of the thesis. If not altogether rejected, the thesis and the antithesis may embrace and strengthen each other and thus lead to a synthesis on a higher level of understanding. This synthesis immediately become a thesis, ready to be challenged by a next-level antithesis, and so on. Still, when the basis is removed, the construction collapses.

So, Mustafa reasoned: deduction and induction reach out to each other. After enough perception and experiments on the one hand and deduction from a ‘divine’ axiom, the two would reach each other – and if they fit perfectly, one has found unshakeable truth – haven’t we – concerning all involved phenomena? Have we? Can we really know phenomena? Can we really know the Reality of an axiom? Phenomena are dependent on our mind. Mathematics is a theoretical system existing on its own, in the human mind, but finds no exact parallel in physical nature. So physical nature as we perceive it is dependent on our mind and our perceptions and our instruments of perception – and even if our mind would be flawless, perception never is: our eyes, ears etc. cover only our material and material-energetic world, and then only a very small band of its whole spectrum.

Still our flawed minds and imperfect perceptions form the basis of our sciences, philosophies, technologies, religious understandings and social organization. It works reasonably – not perfect – but if there was no link between our imperfect mind and senses and Reality, God’s Reality – nothing would work. So even though faulty, mind is not useless, not a total lie, not a total illusion. If it were, there would only be chaos (the opposite of kosmos = order) – and there would be no-one to perceive it.

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.

2. Analytical and compositional mind