The Ignorance of Self

One has arrived at the sight of the truth that although the intellectual wealth of the whole world is ours, yet we are barely wiser. We still wonder why the earth was made and what the real meaning of life is. We would still like to learn the art of self-control and the way to undisturbed happiness. We are still disturbed by some unexpected flash of interrogative thought which moves across our minds and ask why a good God permit evil and suffering. We are still battling with the secret seed of the inevitable death.

The materialistic intellectual insists on taking one position: that is the position of standing on his head and then studying the universe as he sees it; because he can see only the dim earth, he hastens to the conclusion that this is the all-existent. If only he would trouble to reverse himself for a while, oh, he might then perceive the sky as well as the earth, and thus gain a truer perceptive. This is a far-fetched possibility I know.

Man uses the faculty of observation and of reason, applies both to a study of the world, but will not apply them to a study of himself. He is ever willing to study the outer fringe of self, the passions and thoughts which throb through his personality, but he is totally unwilling to penetrate deeper and find out “who” is behind that traits.

Logic, I know, is a remarkable tool. One can perform many useful and necessary operations of a commercial, domestic, practical or professional nature with its aid. Nevertheless both history and our political experience tell us that logic is often used to substantiate a lie.

As a matter of fact the superficial find logic a useful means of proving one’s self-right, however wrong. Logic is an admirable servant to a wise employer, while it is a bad master in the service of fool or a rash leader.

The nation of that honorable leader is exposed to all manner of sanctions and threatened by other nations and, for her educational system, forget it. This has been the fate of my own country but you cannot stop them from buckling on their logic as proof, while they, like the profound thinkers puts it, cannot stop “mistaking basins for helmets.” And, that was why the highest criminal the nation ever produced – i mean produced - was having police escort to aid his lucrative business.

However, if any short-sighted intellectual tells me that higher truth must necessarily be false because it is mystical and therefore cannot be logical, I must perforce turn round and tell him to go and get a deeper experience of life and not limit himself to the narrow round of book. If he has only applied his logic to the outer world and thinks it cannot be applied successfully to any expression of spiritual truth; that is not the fault of such truth but his own.

I would have him come up out of his little corner of life and go through the search and suffering every true spiritualist has to endure, and then perhaps he will return a silent man, abashed of his former idiocy.

It is important we know that the latest production of the university is not necessarily the last word of the universe. For instance, an academic will think nothing of peering into his mental wardrobe for an opinion or of taking out some dusty suit of a theory, and offering it to foolish clients with the brazen remark that it is a perfect fit for truth, when in fact, it is so tight at the shoulders and so baggy at the knees that it would be a better wear for a scarecrow.

Despite the learned and lengthy volumes of our professor and generals, we still know little of the baffling mystery of the mind. But the sagacious, having plumbed its depths, will explain its true nature in a few words.

The new physicists have explained away matter, but our intellects can follow them only theoretically. There is, however, an intuitive faculty in man which, though generally dormant, can follow them in a very real way. Our consciousness of the solid world depends largely upon the senses, which in their turn are our means of apprehending matter.

We moderns have been so busy studying the world without that we have largely forgotten to study the world within ourselves.

It would even be better off, were it necessary, which it is not, to throw all our past learning into a bonfire and forget it, than to let it stand constantly in the way of our attainment of this higher purpose.

The call of man’s spiritual self is supremely more important than the call of his mental machine. The first is divine, and will, when answered and obeyed, bestow lasting happiness; the second is mechanical and can give but transient satisfaction.

No lesser study than self is worthy of the highest power of man’s mind. Scientists have already known through the experiments of hypnotism that the real seeing agent in sight is not the physical organ of the eye, but rather the mind that uses the organ. In short, it is the mind that works the eyes. They have yet to discover what it is that works the mind of man. And when they do that they will come in contact with the real self of man, the being out of whom both mind and body derive their existence and maintain their lives.

We suffer because we are astray from our center, leaving the “nipple” to suck side. If we could remember who we are and turn back to the Saviour’s foundational love, sorrow and all political problems, troubles and tension in our national life will drop off with no thoughts to feed them as the leaves drop off in autumn with no sap to feed them.

We are all resounding to the gravitational pull of the over self, and if the way is long, I tell you, the end is sure. For man, the real man
(“I am”), is unidentified virtue and it is truly made in the image of God, as the biblical phrase puts it, and the divine qualities which he possesses can never be destroyed by any other but by oneself.