QUESTION6.com
The world we live in
5 - The material world was a trap
Life on Earth is a trap, and we fell right into it.
We had a choice. We could develop our body channel or our soul channel of communication with the world. The body comes with sense organs that are easy to use. Without any effort, we can see, hear, smell and touch everything. We only have to open our eyes. It was tempting. We followed the path of least resistance. Unfortunately, it is a dead-end. We found ourselves turning around our body cage like tigers in a zoo. It seems that we built our zoo in our image.
For most of human history, we assumed that our reality was limited to what we could see, hear, touch, and measure. The world around us seemed solid, visible, understandable. The sky above us looked like the limit. We enjoyed the comfort of believing that everything was accounted for. A place for everything and everything in its place. What you see is what you get. We assumed that Nature was as limited as our brain! In the last 200 years many things have changed. Science has opened our eyes. Our vision is limited to a very small range between red and violet. There is a lot to be discovered in the infra-red and the ultra-violet. There is a lot to be discovered about our body and about our soul. Science made us discover the material world where everything has a shape, weight, color, and size. Everything can be measured and experimented upon.
We are now told that our material world represents only 5% of reality. The rest is made of dark matter and dark energy. What a disappointment! Instead of dominating the universe with our thinking, we have to start exploring the remaining 95%. Getting out of our predicament will not be easy. The first step is to build up the right motivation. Give me 95% of give me death! We want to elevate our level of consciousness. That must come from inside. We cannot make a flower bloom by tearing its petals apart. We can only water it. We already have a certain level of consciousness at our disposal. Developing it will require work and energy. We know that our consciousness is limited. We live in fog. We can only see what is close to us. We would have a different opinion of who we are and our place in the world if we could have a more general view of the world we live in.
Let’s make it even simpler. How would you explain to a blind person what a color is?
You could say that the color is covering the surface of every object but does not have any thickness. It is also inside the object. By cutting a piece of wood, you make the color inside the wood to appear at the surface. A certain color can be something specific to an object, but two objects can have the same color. You can make one color by mixing different colors. Printers can make you ‘see’ the color green by using only blue and yellow inks. What is important is not what you say but what the blind person understands.
You would even be surprised to learn that the human eye has cells sensible to the three colors blue, red and green. From those three colors the human brain can recreate the other colors. Some birds can see a fourth color, not available to humans. It is the ultraviolet. Birds are using ultraviolets to guide their migrations. Compared with birds, we have a limited view of the world. We are prisoners of a small jail.
Do you think the blind man would know what you are talking about?
Now, imagine someone trying to introduce us into a new world. We are like blind people to understand colors. To do so, we must set aside much of what we have learned, lower our defenses, and open ourselves to the unknown. Some call this ‘freedom’. It may be closer to ‘surrender’. We are like the young bird on the edge of its nest, staring into the empty space below and wondering whether it can fly.
This is our predicament. We must change our way of thinking and the image we have of ourselves.
The intuitive mind is a gift.
The rational mind is a tool.
Somewhere along the way,
We began worshipping the tool
and forgetting the gift.
Albert Einstein
We have used the universe as a screen on which we projected our own film
We like to think that we are well informed, aware, advanced. In fact, we built an entire universe around an extremely limited slice of existence. We may be looking at the world through sunglasses. We are sure that the world is yellow because we are not conscious of the yellow glasses on our nose. We have been immersed all our life in the material world. We trust our senses and we ‘know’ that it is the only world possible.
The message behind the 5% is that we only see one picture out of a film. From the picture of a horse jumping over a fence, we concluded that horses could fly. That would explain why knowledge does not guarantee wisdom. Comfort does not satisfy the heart. In the material world of our body, the senses are immediate. They flood us with information. They demand our attention. They make the material world feel urgent and undeniable. So, little by little, we gave more authority to what could be measured than to what could only be felt. We trusted what was visible and neglected what was vital.
The soul does not have sense organs to make us conscious of love, beauty, freedom, conscience, life, presence. We developed extraordinary tools for the body, for matter, for speed, for comfort, for control. While doing so, we allowed the visible world to dominate our inner world. We became skilled at improving our conditions, but less skilled at understanding ourselves.
We should do for our soul what we have done for our body.
How does a baby relates to a dog? When looking at the physical aspect, as we do, the child could see a threat. He is defenseless facing a monster that could chew him. Fortunately, the child and the dog are not limited to body senses. They are still using their soul channel of communication. They are sensible to what unites them. They can hug instead of biting. This is something that babies and animals can do, and adults have forgotten.
Fortunately, we can look back and see our mistakes. We can realize that our sense organs are limited. As we followed them, their limits became our own limits. How can we escape the limits of our senses? We are caught in a trap. That does not make us look very smart-Does it!
A question remains: “What could convince a soul to get associated with a human body?” We don’t have to abandon science, progress, or the body - but to bring the same seriousness, imagination, and devotion to the life of the soul. We have spent centuries using science and our thinking to extend the possibilities of our senses. The time has come to extend our capacity for love, awareness, freedom, and inner vision.
We should do for the soul what we have done for the body.
