60 - The Astronaut of the Mind

Reflections of a nomad in a past life, having become a skipper in this life and dreaming of becoming an astronaut (of the mind) in a future life.

One has seen his life's purpose as light seen in port from the sea.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

On watch by night, it becomes clear to me that the safety of my fellow passengers depends upon my being awake.

As from deep under water, one may scan the shore, even so from the abysmal depths of my slumber I espied as beyond a threshold evanescent flashes of what the awakened state was and could be like. A powerful thought impinged upon my dimmed consciousness enjoining upon me to awaken to capture it. Yet what a struggle to keep my mind alert amid the jumble of thoughts that beset slumber! How impelling the temptation of surrender to sleep! How comforting an escape!

Sinking, I watch the desperate struggle of the mind for coherence against the entropy of blurred thoughts. I vaguely discern apparently unrelated words, even gibberish sentences surfacing at the edge of my mind, then meshing in a somewhat meaningful way, only to vanish beyond range. Sleep seemed to befuddle the mind in waves of nebulous inanity and lay a snare upon my faltering resolve to rise from my torpor. But safety is at stake! the safety of all of us, including mine depends upon both my sight and my insight subtended by that dwindling resolve that keeps evading my grip.

Yes it is the sense of urgency that comes to the rescue, fortifying my determination to steer our way with foresight, determine where I am heading for and why. I am in a desperate bid to eschew catastrophes while off-guard. I must admit an insatiable curiosity to make sense of life and to understand what is enacted in the drama of life all around. And to guess why I am doing what I am doing is also essential to my orientation.

Navigating by the planets soon proves misleading to a nomad who places more reliance on the 'fixed stars'. Besides they would look very different as seen from Paloma or Brazilia. Moreover the expectation of dawn is for those who are at the time on the dark side of the planet. For the astronaut there is no dawn because there is no sunset with the exception of the rare case of an eclipse. And the stars would look very different if I were hurtling through space at the speed of light.

But if I were to space-walk, can I really say that I am flying above San Francisco rather than London? My sense of location in space has shifted and so my sense of meaningfulness. Incidentally what does it mean to be located in space? Pushed beyond its customary range, the mind reels. Planet Earth is in outer space; ergo, am I not in outer space when my body is on the Planet? Yet paradoxically my aura which is also my body extends in the starry sky.

My intuition tells me that the guidelines for our joint safe faring rests upon a sense of meaningfulness rather than aimless rambling, and that such meaningfulness can only lie beyond my personal horizon of meaningfulness. I ponder upon the meaning of my life and life in general. Brainstorming my mind for explanations within the purview of my understanding would inevitably stand in the way of the understanding they seek to support.

Explanations are the steps to understanding; yet lingering upon them will obstruct the very understanding that they led to. Are we not limiting our grasp of the meaningfulness of the universe by our rudimentary assumptions that it should be logical? Are not contradictions part of its meaningfulness? Is it not our aversion to accepting the contradictions of our thinking that has so far debarred us from accessing the thinking of the universe? And is it not a feature of the freedom of the mind to refuse to demure to the constraint of logical consistency?

Under pressure, I come to realize that it is my insight that alerts my sight, spurring it to espy beyond its range, snuffing out clues which surreptitiously spring into sight as dawn adorns the shadow world with flashes of uncanny effulgence. By what jugglery of mind am I able to muster these clues into guide-lines giving me a sense of orientation beyond the range of my horizon?

But what do I mean by a horizon? It only exists in my mind, not in reality. A horizon is function of a vantage point which spells a limitation. Consequently it has the virtue of making me aware that it hangs precariously on the measure of my ignorance - one more evidence of my failure of having availed myself so far of the many dimensions of my mind.

Indeed I had not realized that my mind is not just a fraction of the mind of the universe, but coextensive with the mind of the universe. Is that what one means by the mind of God? What does one mean by God? The being of which the physical universe is the body? Or is one not limiting what one ascribes to God by one' anthropomorphical projection upon infinity of the finitude of what one assumes is one's own mind? That is why theologists insist upon the 'transcendence' of God.

Incidentally, could it not be that it is my reliance upon the impact of the mind of God upon my mind that stays me within that illusory horizon? Such an horizon does not really exist except from my perspective. That is: it is because I assume that my mind is limited that I call upon 'other than myself', when in fact these are further dimensions of me.

Since all is God, thou art not other than God.

Ibn 'Arabi

Yet one still needs to account for transcendence - "beyond the beyond".

The way I think of myself changes with my perspective, and so my understanding. But if the safety of my fellow passengers depends upon my sense of meaningfulness, and this depends upon how I think of myself in the universe, imagine the challenge I am facing!

How could I not feel unequal to the challenge to my mind? It is in a spirit of modesty (of which I clandestinely pride myself) that I pretext that my mind is limited, comparing it with the mind of the universe. Do I realize that it is my assumption of being what I think I am that spells my ignorance? Imagine it is my self-image that screens my own self knowledge that keeps striving to make itself known to me? Is it not this very assumption that obstructs my accessing the boundless reaches of my mind?

By positing that my mind circumscribes a limited range within an unlimited compass, by assuming that the universe or God is 'other than myself', I fail to apply the holistic paradigm: namely that my mind like a wave in the ocean expresses the mind of the whole universe albeit less well than the mind of the universe. Yet I must ever remind myself to leave room for the majesty of the divine thinking: divine transcendence way beyond the holistic level that I share. The two areas of my thinking: the circumscribed and the boundless work against each other!

Yet I can see why many mystics await the grace of divine revelation, thinking of God as 'other'. Maybe this is a worthy means of accessing further reaches of understanding by by-passing the limiting effect of the personal self-image. Maybe applying passive volition unleashes further dimensions of being. Some Sufis however change the terms of this antinomy by imagining what the converse perspective would be like.

I follow the clue: I flip my sense of identity to the other side of that fictitious horizon; suddenly I watch those emerging thoughts that now aver themselves clearly to be contrivances of a hologram projected from my real being, not the thoughts of my real being! I observe that they obey certain rather rudimentary laws of the middle range mentation programmed into humans within a bearable measure like radio sets for domestic use, not for high-tech users. How on earth did I allow myself to be fooled all this time!

Now I realize that the limitation I ascribed to my mind was due to my using it as a buffer to protect me against the power of boundless thought lest it annihilate my view-point? It is like emerging from Plato's cave into the glaring sun, overwhelmed but shattered by the magnificence. It would take the released prisoner time to cope with the bounty of meaningfulness, hypothesized the philosopher, but what a wonder! Yes life does make the most ultimate sense, but it takes this altitude to encompass it! I can see why when entrapped in the middle range thinking, it could not possibly make sense.

As I watch by night while my fellow passengers are sunken in the slumber of blissful oblivion, while our safety depends upon the prospect of exploring the unchartered reaches of the mind - of the universe? of me? my understanding struggles to shake off its support system: lo there is a moment of illumination - a flash of meaningfulness at a cosmic scale. Is this illumination? Then the gravity pull of the non-existent yet fictitious ego takes over - back to mediocrity.

O to roam in the outer space of intelligence at a cosmic scale as an astronaut of the mind to contemplate the sun of sheer perspicaciousness forever but for the short spell of an eclipse rather than being immersed in the arctic winter when the sun emerges but a few minutes above the horizon to plunge one back into the dismal night! But why the eclipse? How could one know of light if not for the contrast of darkness?

By the way, I have being absent-mindedly referring to 'me', speaking about reaching beyond 'my understanding' throughout, but if my understanding is co-extensive with that of God or that of the universe (except less efficient), or is this further transcended by divine omniscience? then what do I mean by me? - by me in the universe?

As I watch in the night of understanding while my fellow companions trust themselves to my looking beyond my self-styled horizon, flashes of lucidity beset my soul as I leave my mind behind; it is not the light I see, though, it is the light that I am in reality, if only I knew that I know!

When the unreality of life pushes against my heart, its door opens to the reality.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
