Truth only becomes valuable with wisdom in our activity

Truth only becomes valuable when there is wisdom in our activity. Indeed, our certainty with regard to the truthful standpoint is found only when we have had the courage to also take other standpoints and actually consider them. To take only our own standpoint, without honestly assessing the value of those of our fellow creatures , is first of all completely unloving. For in the other person's points of view, judgments and considerations, we will also find much of value. Through love, people come to each other, which makes us brothers and sisters.Watch video on YouTube

Last time I spoke about this booklet, it is a kind of conclusion I have drawn from this pandemic, which has been raging for almost two years now. Whether it is the pandemic itself that is raging, or the measures associated with it I will leave to you to judge, but in any case something is raging and as far as I am concerned, if you reflect on this: What actually happened in those two years, what has taken place?, then I believe that the most important thing is that we become aware that this is an ordeal of our ability to determine the truth. And we see that that ability is largely lacking, that we as humanity are not passing that test. That's actually my conclusion, which of course sounds very straightforward and I can object to a lot of it myself, to that conclusion, but I want to say with it, what I also said last time, that I see this as a call to us humans to develop the capacity with which we are created. And that is not only that with thinking you find the truth, but thinking is also in the first place a way to wisdom. And wisdom is something else than truth, because wisdom has to do with the fact that you can make the truth work in life. Truth alone is useless in life on earth; truth only becomes valuable when it is also expressed, can find expression in actions. And so I began to write down what, of course, I didn't come up with in two years, but what is a result of years of working on the development of thinking, that's what I wrote down, how you can develop your thinking faculty, so that it doesn't remain a passive receiver, but that it becomes a possibility to actively think along with everything that occurs in life, in such a way that you thereby get a feeling for how things really are. And when you get a feeling for how things really are, you also get a feeling for the hinderances that are present in the human being to let everything that you carry with you in thoughts, feelings and wishes fall away from the truth, as it were. I have sought counsel for this from great masters of the past, beginning with the great master Krishna, who holds a discourse for his friend on the development of the soul. What touches me very deeply in this is that Krishna points out that you can't actually find wisdom, because there is a cloud of desire that fogs up truth and wisdom. You can't get to that, because you are stuck with your personality in certain desires, in certain feelings, in certain lusts. And that's actually where I took the starting point for these twelve exercises which then finally end, in the last exercise, in a kind of acrobatics of thinking, which you then will have developed, namely, that you try to develop an ability not to think along the well-beaten path merely, but also to be able to move your thinking in the opposite direction. So that means that you are able, for example, to sing a song in reverse. Then you must have thought it first and that is quite difficult. But you can do that as a human being, because you have done a whole palette of prior exercises. So that was my conclusion in the end: it actually makes little sense to correct all the inconsistencies that we are confronted with every time, it only makes sense that we, that every person, goes through a development, so that he himself can do that. That he himself sees what is correct in the reporting and what is not. And that means, among other things, that you have to learn to practice very, very much patience. And that you don't want to jump to conclusions with every piece of information you get, but that you have to gather as it were and very gradually by following with active thinking what presents itself to you, that you know: eventually it will become clear to me, how it all fits together. And that also means that you have to develop the skill of not only being strong in your own opinions and judgments, which most people can do, but as I said last time, you only think they are your own opinions and judgments, you don't realize at all that it's poured into your mind, but okay, we can do that very well, being strong in our own opinions and judgments. 

But practicing to think completely opposite opinions and judgments, as if you really think it's so, as if you really think it's true, that's really an art in thinking and it's very important. That doesn't mean that you have to abandon your point of view, then you wouldn't be able to find a point of view anymore, but it's about learning the mobility in thinking. And if you always stay on your own point of view then that is first of all completely unloving, because then you cannot actually expect to hear anything from what another person thinks. Once you begin to do these exercises of putting yourself in the position of opinion and judgment of others, then you will find that there is always a lot of valuable ideas in there, in other people's thoughts. So you can smooth out your thinking by doing that, but of course that doesn't mean that you then have, let's say, twelve points of view and don't know what it really is in reality. Your certainty with regard to the true point of view is only found, because you have had the courage to also take other points of view than the ones you already had. Well of course that is a challenge now, isn't it. When you are absolutely convinced that the only salvation at the moment is to get vaccinated, that you try to think: Why, what do those people actually think who think something completely different? But that you really do that seriously, so not just like that, let's try that too, no that you really put yourself in the other person's position. And the same applies the other way around, of course. 

What a beneficial effect that would have in society. So I don't see this pandemic as a sanitary exercise. But I see it as an exercise for us humans to come to an independent formation of opinion and judgment. That requires that we become active in perceiving and in thinking, that you therefore wake up from your sleep dream and try to really engage in life with commitment. That when you hear or see or read something, you are really there and that you can reproduce it afterwards, that not half of it has actually been forgotten, so that you then perhaps unconsciously add to it and then don't actually say it as it was at all anymore. You know, that's how people are, how we are. That seems to me the exercise. Not the question: Should I or should I not be vaccinated, but the question: How can I follow the whole issue with my thinking in such a way that from that following, the activity thereof, it will be revealed to me how it all actually fits together. That seems to me the challenge and from that conclusion I wrote this little book. And that will also have a sequel, because of course it is not only about thinking. We are also sentient beings and we also act. And you have to let your vision fall on that too, so that you get a view of what you as a human being are spreading between you and the truth, so to speak. All those clouds of opinions and judgments, but also of feelings of sympathy and antipathy, of misconceptions about what 'doing' actually is, and so on, that we as human beings must slowly but surely bring into the self-knowledge, so that you can face that. 

I am convinced that we as humanity will develop in such a way, not only should we, but we will, that we will move towards the point where the ideal becomes reality that all people become brothers - and sisters. 

You probably know that in the passage from the 18th to the 19th century Friedrich Schiller lived and he wrote a great poem about joy, an ode to joy, but in it he is then very inspired and in it he sings about the ability of human beings to be friends with each other. And when you look at yourself and you should have to say, I have no friend, then actually you should just slip out of the human community, you should just slip out of it, because then you don't really belong in it. The human thing is friendship, is brotherhood, and from Schiller then come those words: All people become brothers!

This inspired Beethoven and he composed his Ninth Symphony in such a way that this poem by Schiller is sung. That is a fantastic musical achievement, the poem is already a fantastic achievement, but that music is something that moves you deeply and it is that song that has been chosen by the European Union as, let's say, an anthem, a hymn. You can find some of it on youtube. There are flashmobs, where in an ordinary everyday situation something suddenly happens that attracts attention, and so there is, I would recommend, you may already know, a flashmob in front of the bank of Sabadell, where those beautiful Spanish people start... First there's one musician, but more and more come, and eventually it turns out that in the area of the orchestra that's forming there is also a choir and they sing in Spanish; All people will become brothers. 

Yes, these are things that you actually have to look at, because they give you back the confidence that people are in fact already brothers. When you see such recordings then you see: Yes, actually we already are, but we still have to become so clearly aware of it and we still have to do so much about ourselves that we can be conscious of it in full freedom: Surely that is where we are heading, as humanity. We are not moving towards a separation between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. That is ridiculous, that has nothing at all to do with humanity. That also has nothing to do with life and death, that has nothing to do with medicine, with health. Those are tests for us and we as human beings will eventually come to the point where we see that. But we have to become active. And that's why I try not to influence judgment anymore. Of course I do, because you can't, you can't say anything without having said something anyway. When I say, All people will become brothers, yes then I have already said something. But of course I can't sit here and be silent, so I'm not trying to influence the judgment of the viewers but to get the formation of judgment in motion. That's the first thing. When we become strong, true, wise in our judgment, then we have taken the first step toward universal brotherhood. Because in thinking, humanity has known for a long time, there live the universals. These are the universal concepts and in them we are already brothers and sisters.