QUESTION 6: The purpose of our life
6- Thinking is not enough
Thinking is as natural to man as breathing, eating and moving. Thinking is what differentiates
humans from animals. Whether we like it or not, we must think. Sometimes we even think about something we don’t like to think about.
It starts with the information that we receive from our senses. We are inclined to think about what we can see. This is the domain of predilection of science. We want to discover the laws of nature surrounding us. That should not be a problem if the scientists themselves would not question the validity of human thinking. As they don’t trust it, they want everything to be validated by experiment. It took 4 years before somebody paid attention to Einstein theory of relativity and they questioned it for years. They only accepted this theory after they had an experimental justification. The message that we get from the scientists is that human thinking can help but is not dependable.
There is something special about human thinking. It is that we can ‘think about our thinking’. When we make a mistake in our calculations, we must look for a 'thinking mistake' and correct it. This is thinking about our thinking.
Imagine a society completely dominated by logical thinking. If you make decisions that cannot be justified, you would be sent to a psychiatric hospital run by robots using AI. They would not call it ‘Artificial Intelligence’. They would just call it ‘Intelligence’. It would be a society doing many things without any feelings - such as atomic bombs.
If your parents were treating you with ideas and no feeling, you would feel frustrated and rightly so. The child needs feelings more than ideas.
You may ask yourself: “What would give my children a better chance to be happy in life? Is it to be good at mathematics or to be a good dancer? Thinking can help you pass an exam but there is a lot more to learn. An education based on thinking alone would replace freedom with rules. You would suffocate.
If thinking cannot be left alone, what else do we need? Is it feelings? Intuition? increased consciousness? common sense? What do you think planet earth is using to keep all those plants growing and all those animals alive? Is it thinking? Instinct? Are we surrounded by the law of nature? In a conflict between ideas and feelings, chances are that the feelings would prevail.
Thinking feeds on facts. It uses logic to process information. Intuition feeds on emotions and our relationship with other people. A little love could solve many problems. To solve all of them would require a love of the whole world including those who create our problems.
Thinking is, unfortunately,
the first thing that comes to mind!
Our body keeps us attached to the material world. This is the domain of predilection of human thinking. It is a good place to start developing our thinking. It is not a place to stay.
We pretend to dominate the universe with our intellect. That could be a bad case of the Dunning–Kruger effect.
People who know very little think that they are the experts. There are things that we would rather not think about, but we can’t help it. If we cannot control our thinking - Who does?
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything except our thinking. Thus, we are drifting toward catastrophe beyond conception. We shall require a substantial new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.
-Albert Einstein
“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena; it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”
– Nikola Tesla.
“The time has come to realize that supersensible knowledge has now to arise from the materialistic grave.”
Rudolf Steiner
Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings - always darker, emptier and simpler.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.
-Shakespeare
Let’s assume that thinking was not created alone in the universe. It came associated with its opposite. What could be the opposite of thinking?
-It must be instant knowledge. No need for reasoning. You know that somebody is lying and should not be trusted. You don’t have a proof, and you don’t need one.
-It does not require calculations
-The opposite of thinking can be based on experience. Something like the maturity of the elders. It is based on a general feeling that they developed over the years.
Intuition is the opposite of thinking. There is no reasoning. There is no need to assemble ideas together to go from A to B. Intuition is direct knowledge. You fly from A to B. You just KNOW that you are in danger or that somebody is not trustworthy. You KNOW that this car is going to change lanes. You KNOW that something is not safe. It is through intuition that we relate to our pets, to the forest, to the flowers, to the sunset, to music… It is also the most powerful way to relate to each other.
Thinking isolates. Intuition unites.
Not only is our intuition very limited but we discredit it. If a woman wants to justify buying a dress, she is not going to say: “I fell in love with that color”. She would rather say: “I have nothing to wear - It was on sale - It matches the color of my shoes…”. She knows that she needs an explanation that will be accepted, and intuition is not one of them.
Let’s keep the thinking where it belongs. It is very well adapted to making a chain of ideas based on facts. Our thinking was born from our interactions with the material world. It started with our ancestors’ making tools. At that stage we were guided by the laws of nature. It was a safe place to start. As human thinking became more sophisticated, we distanced ourselves from nature. We wanted to be free and that included freeing ourselves from the laws of nature. This is a growing problem. We are replacing the laws of nature with intuition. Women seem more gifted than men in this domain. They know that men should not be left alone. If some day you find it difficult to choose between feelings and ideas, go for the feelings. They come from a level above us. Chances are that they are more in 'alignment' with nature.
We need a mixture of thinking, common sense, intuition, ideas, instinct, hunch, presentiment. We could call it ‘consciousness’. If we could be fully conscious of everything surrounding us, this level of increased consciousness could replace the verification by experiments.