The mistake of the mystics is to negate reasoning prematurely. Only after reasoning has completed its own task to the uttermost will it be psychologically right and philosophically fruitful to still it in the mystic silence. (20.4.69)
AD: The fundamental question is built in. In other words, what does life mean? The fundamental question is built into you, and until it gets worked out, until every question is answered, you won't stop.
…once I have gone through the process of reasoning, brought it to maturation, exhausted it, now I am capable of observing.
Until then, I don't observe, I select. But when a person has thought out, or reasoned through, what the fundamental meaning of life is for him, and the reasoning processes come to a slow halt, gradually just not bringing up the questions any more because they've been answered, only now is that person capable of observation. And I think that's what we mean by a poet. Prior to that there's that questioning attitude that the mind works with.
But what you have to try to grasp again is (how to be/(inaudible)) and that is that this fundamental question which is inherent in or built into the very nature of the individual, is a question that goes on asking itself, and it must be answered. It doesn't matter how long it takes--a hundred lives, a thousand lives--but sooner or later, it must be answered. And in that process of working out the solutions or the answers to most of the questions that arise, in that very process--you must think of that process as very, very natural: just like a tree grows, and it gets old and dies. Similarly, you must think of reasoning that way. The soul, by incarnating in so many lives and experiencing the totality of all the thoughts or ideas that made it to be what it is, is now DONE with, not only the contemplation of the ideas, but where it could not contemplate the ideas, it lived out the ideas, now it is done with all that. Now it can take the position of a poet--a poet here in the true sense of the word--that his mind can be a mirror in which the universe could be reflected without any distortion.
Questioning
"There is a kind of questioning which is built into each of us. It may work itself out over many lifetimes. (63) This questioning is our quest, it is the pressure of our divine Idea which is seeking to actualize itself. Similarly, we find the idea of the prayer of the heliotrope in Arabi: some part of us which is in continuity with God, and begins to turn, and turning turns us along with it, toward our divine Face.
The questions must really begin to excite us, to grab our attention, so that we might even stay up all night thinking about them. (45)
AD: Living Wisdom: 1984 0125 Logos guides you 1/25/84
On the other hand, experience would not ordinarily turn us to the divine, only producing more habitual experience. At some point the Overself responds, or begins to direct the search. This is the actualizing of the logos aspect of the Overself, directing our readings and understandings aright as we "progress toward its holy seat". (64-65)
rc: Looking within, hoping your understanding will be guided--that’s a very different perspective than what we ordinarily call the activity of the intellect.
Anthony: Yes. But if you have honestly made an attempt with your intellect to try to understand these things, you come up against a blank wall, because the intellect can take any position, even contradictory positions, and follow them through. It can agree and disagree about anything. Something higher has to come in to guide it through that. But you do have to initiate the process; you do have to start it. You do have to seek it out. And it comes into play after a while.
[It has to be understood here how wisdom correlates with the habit traces of our life experience. Is tropic residue wisdom? What makes understanding wisdom rather than habit, which we are trying to be free from? See the transcripts from fall 1983 on the engrams in the brain and the light which comes in to make connections. ]
Enlightenment AD comment on [28.2.79] 1984 0324 #36
AD: Enlightenment is in manifestation not out of manifestation so I wouldn't put it that way but one way maybe of putting it would be first of all, the function of egotism is overcome and that means that the soul would be able to directly guide the individual in whatever role he has to play in life. That guidance would be one of wisdom, you would be living in the house of wisdom, you'd be sharing its consequences. Also another thing about enlightenment is it's a state of perpetual happiness. I think it was one of Freud's greatest discoveries when he said the ego is the seat of anxiety. That's 185% true. The ego's constant manipulation of thoughts so that we become submissive to them and then the consequences if following through with that identification leads to a state of conflict, frustration, sorrow, despair, and all these things. So I would include in enlightenment the fact the ego no longer has that power and the consequence of that release from that egotism, not the ego because the ego must go on, but release from the egotism, a release from the compulsion to identify with any of the thoughts that the ego may have is a kind of happy state, a state like I spoke about earlier, the world is always of that nature. There's even in early Zoroastrianism, for instance, they considered it unspiritual to be sad. That's how much and how completely they negate the ego and all its manipulations. So I think it's more than just one thing to speak about enlightenment. One thing you can say is it's characterized by the fact that one feels this union with his higher self, always perpetual, never broken. Secondly it's a state of happiness. Third, it's guidance by the highest wisdom.
SEE: Comments by AD on PB: on Fallacy of Divine Identity: in Ohio Transcripts
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