Kalervo Mielty

Thoughts about thoughts.

 

 

Years ago an idea was imprinted on my mind, that even I could become wise by just living old enough and going through human experiences, my own and those loaned from others, as many times as necessary. But being wise encloses apparently a further demand, that I then should understand the true meaning of life at least in regard to myself.

 

Of course some ideas have already found home in me, become familiar and manageable, even somehow understandable. But could that be called wisdom or just a pile of thoughts, seeds of wisdom, mostly even non germinative?

The human mind is all the time trying to reach some object, whether a concrete or an abstract one, to which it can identify its thoughts and feelings in order to find itself useful or acceptable. To the mind empty or silent means the same as to become stupid and vain – a threat of losing itself!

The mind believes that thoughts, feelings, forms and sensory perceptions as a whole are a person himself, an individual identity worth holding on by all powers in order to maintain so called mental health!

But can the human mind ever be fully sane, if by sanity we mean seeing things really as they are? The history of mankind offers a convincing evidence of the collective madness of mankind, a history, which is entirely based on the unreliable functions of the human mind.

The common word man comes from the Sanskrit word manas, which in a broad sense means a principle of reason. The capability for reasoning is often said to separate us humans from other species of this earth in our favour. But is it really a sublime skill in the form and usage it appears among us today? Can it for example make us permanently happy? Or is it the thing that holds us imprisoned into continuous thinking, feeling and sensory processes with no peace and lasting happiness. Of course there are huge differences in the quality of human reasoning – from rude automatic reactions to highest inspirations.

Am I suggesting that we should entirely stop thinking and feeling so as to avoid going astray? Thinking with all its limitations is really a good tool in this material world. It can solve many practical issues, but it cannot give proper answers to any fundamental questions of life. What is life, why are we here on earth a little while and then in turn seem to disappear – who knows where? Can there be life after life, and what would it be like? If life is really eternal, so the previous question would evidently become a contradictory one – for in that case life is not either coming or going - it just is! This kind of view could even suggest that in some fundamental level every being is always alive, but not knowing ones basic state because of the identification to the functions of the mind.

At least one thing I have learnt. Digging up ones life does not lead anywhere – or why not – it could lead to fear of tomorrow, in the way that yesterday’s unpleasant events turn into shadowing threats for ones future. On the other hand waiting for better might become a reason to move the starting point of ones living from this moment to some distant period in the future.

I have come to the conclusion that all of us are mentally writing an autobiography, ones own story called ‘me and the others’. In that story I am usually a secret hero whom the world has not yet recognized, or in different circumstances an ill-treated martyr who is waiting for a great compensation sometimes in the future.

Secret authors, that is what we are, continuously interpreting ourselves to ourselves, sometimes even believing our sophisticated explanations.

But only a few have courage to make ones ideas public. Maybe we are afraid that others do not necessarily recognize us on the basis of our story. They could say that the story is a fake or even a quotation of some better author. It is often difficult to tell myself what part of me represents the real me, and what part is just an infection caused by other people.

To our little mind, the one that we call our self, this world of ours is an enormous mixer. How is it possible to separate good grain from husk, considering that a human mind hardly knows itself? The old request, that a man should know himself, does not help much, for even the greatest ideas tend finally to lead us to a dead end.

A common conclusion that everything in life is relative does not solve anything, especially if a human being wants to find something absolute and permanent.

A history of stupidity – that could be a name for the rambling of mankind. But history in itself is but dead words, and the future is just a huge pile of ideas based on yesterday. It is sure that we can live only at this very moment – not yesterday or today. For us humans this fact has always been utmostly difficult to accept, because we think we have a history. On the basis of the past we create an image of our future in which all our ideas should gain their fulfilment. This moment is just an ever open door to all the goals of our lives.

All the possibilities are waiting in the future, where we also can perform such fine works as the greatest figures of the human history. But we should see that history is often but a coloured story written by winners. Could we but ask about the greatness of Alexander the Great of the thousands who were crucified by his command during his famous works? And what would say about the idea of loving ones neighbour the numerous people who had to meet with the opposite of the principle, an extremely cruel religious intolerance?

I am fairly convinced that thinking, even stretched at its utmost, cannot ever reach anything absolute, free of the limits of time. Thinking should be stretched far beyond its breaking point so that it would by itself see its own limitations and would realize at last to be quiet.

But being entirely quiet seems to the human mind as its worst enemy; for it assures a person that he might end up as nothing or in a state where all his fears and feelings of guilt suddenly step forth.  The human mind demands that the identity of a human being as a separate individual, would remain above all else.

It may well be, that in old women we could find the wisdom welling forth out of the depths of their souls from which all the self-centred feelings have been cried out and which is totally lacking the common manly illusion, that thinking can solve all things.

Many of the people that are considered the wisest of all have ensured us that life basically is sacred and divine. An everyday observation would certainly lead to a very different kind of conclusion. Perhaps all those wise men and women looked at life from a different angle leaving totally aside the perspective based on time. Maybe they saw everything from the eternal, timeless ground of all that exists.

One of the wisest advised us first and foremost to seek the kingdom of heaven. Only after finding this unchangeable realm or state all things can be experienced in the right light. But we human beings want to understand our heaven as a place where all our senses and other needs get a full satisfaction. And as we usually cannot get hold of heaven without time and other temporal concepts, we rather start seeking the warm and sunny beaches of this world than try to concentrate on something that lies beyond the ability of our everyday power of comprehension.

Our scientists are talking about the ‘big bang’ as the beginning of all that there exists. But in reality they cannot tell us anything about the state in where and what way this fundamental event of all events happened, because it was only then that time and space appear, giving the fundamentals of the thinking of our wise men and women.

Of course we could have a look at the Eastern ideas of how the universe comes into existence and how it in due course again returns to rest. Wise men in the East have said thousands of years ago that all forms are temporal, and that there is an interchange from formless to form even in the level of the universe. Eastern scriptures talk about manvantaras and pralayas, the former of which means the emanation in time and space the latter meaning a huge period of rest or non-existence from a material point of view. But do they say that life itself is a completely vanishing thing? No, in fact life is all that really is, an eternal life on which everything has its being – sometimes coming forth in time and space, but always being in the timeless and formless essence.

For our materialistic scientists all this is usually pure nonsense, for they rely on our senses not taking account that human consciousness could have some deeper abilities of knowing the things that cannot be explored by five senses or by any mechanical equipment.

Two thousand years ago this kind of knowing was called gnosis. It is very likely that not all the so called Gnostics were able to stretch their conscience into the basis of life, but it is also likely that some of them were much more aware of reality than the spokesmen of the Catholic Church declared.

It seems that I now have come to a dead end, because I am assuming that human ability of thinking for its conditional character never can explain the most important issues of life. Should I now accept the words of Tertullus,  “I believe, because it is absurd”, and take more seriously all the so called sacred scriptures? Or is there for a human being available a completely different way of approaching these unresolved questions? Is it probable that beyond the entire thinkable things one could find an entire and total knowledge reachable to the human consciousness that can overstep all the limits of its ordinary mental processes?

I am pretty sure, that some of the finest individuals in human history really have found and experienced the essence of life and have tried to transmit something of it at least to their disciples. It is quite obvious that some of the followers have merely imagined having reached the ultimate goal, whereas they in fact had just taken the first step on the path leading to the realization.

A further conclusion of my thinking is that the ground of all must rather be found inside than outside of a conscious being, because all external things are but results and consequences of temporary nature.

The outcomes of mental imagination may seem lively and interesting, but to a great extent they are based on past thought forms, not on the essence beyond all.

One of the wise men said that all good things come from above, where there exists no change – in other words no time. If this is to be taken as a right conclusion so I should by all means try to lead my consciousness into a state where it could be able to draw directly from the ultimate source – being one with it.

This is what I believe, but unfortunately my belief has not reached this final goal and made me wise – not to talk about turning me blessed! And if I am not blessed in this very moment, so I have no reason to wait for illumination in the future, for future is but a pile of thoughts based on my past.

So the only thing for me is to avoid coming and going, so that I simply could be alive, in the timeless here and now – in eternal life.

Please let me know if you want to present some interesting topic for me to handle,
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