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Voice of the Unknown
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Myself, you are full of secrets that you call Me. You are the voice of your unknown.
~ Paul Valéry
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The spirit of enquiry protects one from the calamities that befall the unthinking fool. When the mind has been rendered dull by the absence of enquiry, even the cool rays of the moon turn into deadly weapons, and the childish imagination throws up a goblin in every dark spot.
Hence, the non-enquiring fool is really a storehouse of sorrow. It is the absence of enquiry that gives rise to actions that are harmful to oneself — and to others — and to numerous psychosomatic illnesses…
They in whom the spirit of enquiry is ever awake illumine the world, enlighten all who come into contact with them, dispel the ghosts created by an ignorant mind, and realise the falsity of sense-pleasures and their objects.
[vichara or enquiry is not reasoning or analysis; it is directly looking into oneself]
~ YOGA VASISHTA.
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I don’t fear death. I don’t fear it, nor do I grieve. When I’m sad, I think: How can I be sad if that great adventure that is death awaits me. If I’m lucky, I’ll be annihilated, erased completely, and if not, if there’s another life, I’ll accept it as I accepted this one. It doesn’t get any worse than this. It can even be better.
~ Jorge Luis Borges
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Yield to temptation. It may not pass your way again.
~ Robert A.Heinlein
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The miracle that is unfolding minute by minute somehow escapes us. We go on planning an improved future or else we’re ruminating on our errors of judgment or past misfortunes. And the miracle keeps rolling along in front of and inside us completely unnoticed.
We’re not wind-up toys but we do a pretty good imitation if we take no interest in our unknowns. All those barriers to inquiry piled on us by our particular culture render us a facsimile of a human being, hardly able to use our gift of consciousness. We’re subject to waves of infectious ignorance and fear as they sweep through the noosphere. Absence of inquiry breeds chaos. People get hurt.
