I am very sure that every human being would perceive his soul-sense again, if he would only be released from our busy mind-world for a certain time. It does not have to be the desert. I suggest the lonely hut in the mountains or in the forest. There man should stay. For 4 weeks, 8 weeks. Perhaps also 16 weeks. The living conditions would not have to be ascetic, but no media and no visitors.
And then, when all the forest paths have been explored, the house has been examined down to the last nail, all the tasty one-person dishes have been cooked, and everything that one once wanted to write down has been written down, then the person sits, back bent and hands clasped in his lap, on his wooden chair, staring into space, with nothing left to do. Perhaps it is just dawning and everything is plunged into an unreal twilight. The known reality dissolves. Everything falls away and he notices how he perceives nameless… and fear creeps over him, before what may come now. But the mind acts quickly and fills the gap created by the non-action and the silence with thinking and brooding. It does what is its specialty: it digs up old things from yesterday and uses them to construct for us the problems of today and tomorrow. As if that would define us. As if we would not exist independently of what has happened and what is coming!
An acquaintance once said to me, „I couldn’t live as lonely as you. I would be afraid of falling back on myself.“
I had never thought about this before, so I did. And after some time of thinking about it, I said to her, „I don’t find myself that significant to fall back on myself. I feel it more like this: I fall past myself and then much further. And there I discover the great mystery.“
How the human being, who is now overwhelmed by the brooding of the mind and thus prevented from real recognition, can overcome this phase, I do not know. To recognize how insignificant the events of yesterday, today and tomorrow actually are for our being, to recognize how meaningless our worries are in the face of our mortality – our homecoming – perhaps helps not to get stuck with oneself, but to fall further and to find the true inexpressible meaning there.
And then to return from there. Past our self, which pauses in wonder and looks up from its eternal wrestling with the worrying mind, because of the clear light of the ineffable knowledge, which surrounds you. Back to the here and now…
I don’t know how man can overcome the phase of the brooding mind. Perhaps it really is the time. The weeks I spoke of in the beginning, which wear down the worrier and force him to give rest.
I know. Nobody has that much annual leave. But maybe the weeks are not enough. Maybe it only works without compromise. Maybe it won’t work if you cut a few weeks out of your material life and then dive back into it. Maybe it only works if you put your whole life on the second leg, on the spiritual leg. As we know, you can’t stand on one leg.