Das letzte Mal, dass ich mich ernsthaft gefragt habe, was ich tun soll, war während meines Studiums. Ich habe Philosophie studiert und ich wurde oft gefragt, was ich damit tun möchte. Was für eine bescheuerte Frage, dachte ich immer. Es ist ein innerer Drang, fast ein Zwang, dem man sich nicht entgegenstellen kann. Jeder solcher Versuch muss scheitern, es gibt nur ein Vorwärtsdenken. Es war also gar nicht wirklich die Frage, was me should do, or what to do, or how the world can be saved.
Thinking
Rather, it was the question of his own existence. What to do with one's life? What does it mean to live and for what? How can you approach this question? For me, that was philosophy. For me, doing what meant thinking how? Now I am asking myself this question again. It's nice to be able to ask yourself this question. It is not easy for many people to allow themselves to ask this question.
I am reading the Kena Upanishad. Who sees while seeing, who hears while hearing, who thinks while thinking? That really is a good question. I have long tried to look at this from the tradition of enlightenment - and have repeatedly come up against the limits of thinking. How could it be otherwise? The Kena Upanishad only has a limited philosophical answer.
However, instead of trying to explain how it can be that my material body can think and then consider the question of why, the line of thought in the Upanishads is different. How can it be that the universal consciousness presents itself in such diversity?
The question that then arises for the individual remains: What to do? But it is a different way of thinking: instead of understanding oneself in a functional and enlightened way, Indian wisdom is about being carried. Which thought, which consciousness, which insight, which life is realized through me? I meet many people here who have discovered this question for themselves, and some of them have also answered it for themselves - sadhana.
I listen without judging. People open up here quickly, very deeply and honestly. I laugh a lot, am enchanted and moved by the stories, deeply moved... I hear stories and insights from people who have given themselves completely. Often this is not easy, some are privileged, others not at all, it has nothing to do with it.
Senses
So I ask myself again, how do we think? Who thinks while thinking? Who hears when hearing? Who sees while seeing? There is only one thinking, one hearing, one seeing. When I think and you think and we think together and others listen to us think, what is actually happening? When you and I listen to a concert together, or when you and I and others look at an exhibition to see what the artist has seen and wants to show us, what is happening there? What is manifested in the words, the music, the painting, the architecture? Why can we (not) learn from history? Who has the knowledge of a library?
These questions are so obvious, and we just as obviously don't have a starting point for an explanation. We then say that this is culture.
Life
Life has always been there, even before atoms. The Big Bang was the coming into existence of what? Electrons? Hardly.... Matter thinks (AI), it has memory (DNA), in its interaction it overrides the laws of space and time. When science says something like this, it's always in the sense that it sounds strange, but don't worry, we'll explain it away. The Grand Unified Theory, but without consciousness, without life in a sense worth living. It seems to me that the more knowledge we accumulate, the less we understand. We no longer even understand the questions.
And my sadhana? Listening. It is one of the most difficult arts. It is only possible with a reduced self and an expanded self, but hardly at all with an ego.
OM MANI PADME HUM
If you would like to delve a little deeper into the Kena Upanishad, please refer to this: Sri Aurobindo Vol 18
"For, if there were no such necessity of Mind in Matter, if the stuff of mentality were not there already and the will to mentalize, Mind could not possibly have come into being out of inconscient substance." (p.35)
