In many spiritual, esoteric movements, one thing is certain: we must do away with thinking, because it is the cause of all division, of dualism, of being mired in materialism . Through thinking, they say the human being gets absorbed in his own inner life and oversleeps present life. Thought life is going on and on, it is formed by the peculiarities of the one person, it has no meaning in a more general way, and it leads to disputes. If we can get rid of thinking, we will be able to live our present lives, in reality, not sleeping or dreaming.
But there is another side of thinking, it is in fact the only real side of thinking. This is understanding, conceiving, comprehending. When we regard the whole natural realm, there is only one being that has a faculty of comprehending: it is the human being. So what would we do away with, if we would do away with thinking? We would forget our humanity, we could hope for a more peaceful animal nature in us, like a lamb. But maybe we would become tigers, panthers, iguanas or worse. Beings with instincts, but without comprehending things that are not instinctive.
So if we go back to evolution, where we find the homo sapiens, then it is this ‘sapiens’ that makes the difference. It is also very clear, that people who preach the victory over thinking still have to communicate by thoughts. If we proclaim that we should reach Unity instead of division, we have to use the concepts of unity and division. Thinking is mingled with all our faculties.
Nevertheless, it is true that thinking spins a veil over the spiritual world. It is exactly the thinking in concepts that makes this veil impenetrable. So actually we will have to do ‘something’ about our conceptual, abstract thinking. But we will have to do this without losing reason. And thinking is really an antipathetic movement, we have to put things outside of us to be able to think them over; so we have to push them away – which calls for some kind of antipathy.
When we wake up in the morning, coming out of sleep, maybe passing a dream, we become aware of the world around us and of ourselves. It is not only perception with the senses what wakes us; our sensual perceptions always are permeated with thoughts. If that were not so, we would see, hear, feel etc – and would not know what we saw, heard, felt… The knowing awareness is our wakeful state. Still, we are not fully awake, because immediately associative thinking mingles with the pure thinking in the senses. These are the judgments, memories, likes, dislikes, thoughts about what we have done, what we will have to do and so on. We would gain a lot if we could do away with these kind of thoughts, and would be able to think pure thoughts that rely to perception with the senses. We still would have this veil in front of the spiritual world, but we would be purely human, with conceptual thinking in its pureness, permeating the senses. We would recognize the value of thinking, the beauty of thinking, the beauty of the world and of the self.
Gardevias or the value of thinking (Not yet in English…)The value of thinking by Mieke Mosmuller
