7. Forrest Gump and the human mind

Our mind cannot fundamentally help us out of our problems (recklessness, lies, fraud, jealousy, illness, war, etc.), as we have known for millennia. This is because it is only a tool, and one that is used for the programmes that feed it. In this respect, it is almost exclusively an instrument of self-assertion. It plays a decisive role in the suffering in this world because it absorbs the impulses it receives like a sponge. And these are ego impulses, which it processes intelligently with its logic. The more it follows this unconscious programming, the less intuition gets through. In every problematic situation, he feverishly analyses all earthly possibilities that could contribute to a solution, often in an intellectually sophisticated way. In doing so, he remains in the realm of good and evil, and if the influences of the soul are then completely blocked, true achievements of misanthropy come about. Then there are such intellectual feats in relation to the organisation of the Holocaust, to the construction and use of weapons of mass destruction such as atomic bombs or poison gas, the torture and killing of hundreds of thousands, and endless civil wars and wars.

If reason comes into play beyond reason for many people, the ratio of good to evil in terms of successes and failures is more favourable. But without the intuition that one can only see well with the heart, one still remains fundamentally at the horizontal level of matter and is ultimately unable to solve the problems fundamentally. The stalemate in climate policy clearly shows how selfish impulses from below prevent decisive steps from being taken to save the climate. The absolutisation of reason is also the crux of philosophy, which considers itself the fundamental tool for decoding the world and suppresses intuition and thus salvation. It remains limited to this level and can therefore at best ask meaningful questions, but cannot offer solutions.

On the other hand, however, when the mind, like the aforementioned sponge, absorbs impulses from the soul, it is the indispensable instrument for implementing these impulses in real life through the study of wisdom and the intelligent evaluation of one’s own corresponding experiences.

As long as the mind is misunderstood as the sole and uncontrolled authority for decision-making, without allowing intuition to have its say, it causes suffering in the world. This bio-PC of the human being, which is dependent on the input of the user, obediently takes in the eye-for-eye principle in a conflict, which is the norm in the ego world, and processes it logically and efficiently into an endless chain of wars, because people misunderstand it as a decision-making authority. He has lost the truth about himself. But as soon as he realises that the soul unfolds when it is stilled, he can himself insightfully take the steps needed to achieve this state of mind, to learn the system of meditation, for example.

Logic knows no compassion and thinking knows no love. The mind is only an instrument of perception and association; it is the user’s calculating unit for the control programmes from above or below; these usually come from below, from the ego, whereas our inner voice, our intuition, our gut feeling, our empathy, – the ‘heart’, the expression of the activity of our spirit-soul usually remains unconscious because it is drowned out.

‘It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.’
(Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: The Little Prince)

Meditation is the instrument for learning conscious, retrievable seeing with the heart. Its first goal is to stop the thought barrage, because this comes from ‘below’ or is deliberation from the mind, but in any case it is egocentric. It does not come from intuition, from the ‘heart’, because these would be flashes of thought, ideas, notions, although it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between them. Understanding what comes from the ‘heart’ only improves with increasing experience. The second goal of meditative contemplation is to maintain the defence against thought attacks and thus to make the emptiness thus created more and more stable. This is the prerequisite for the very quiet inner voice to become audible at some point. This is how you can establish a direct line to your soul. As a rule, this only comes after patient waiting, because the spiritual soul wants to know how serious you really are. The next step is to enter into a dialogue with questions and answers, when the questioner is ‘opened after knocking’ (Matthew 7:7).

Only then is true spiritual understanding of one’s neighbour, of friend and even of enemy, possible. Then the actual unity of human beings in their essential core becomes clear, just as the unity of the fingers on a hand.

In fairy tales, the breakthrough of the mind to the soul is symbolically represented by the kiss of the prince: he has laboriously made his way through the thorny hedge with its sharp thorns to reach the sleeping beauty, and through his kiss (a symbol of the spirit soul touching consciousness), Snow White also awakens from her deep sleep of purely material consciousness. Homer’s Odyssey is nothing more than the description of the mind’s perilous journey to the spiritual soul in the form of Penelope, who then ‘hears’ him. The counterpart in Hindu mythology is Rama and Sita.

The mind is an indispensable instrument of analysis, but it leads us astray when we let it decide on our affairs. It then causes mischief because it is almost always controlled by the ego. It is a single organ with its hardware, the brain. As long as we act exclusively according to its logic, we are unconsciously following the mammalian program of self-preservation.

‘It is revealed daily… that the accursed spirit of selfishness plays the leading role in most events.’
(Edward Burrough)

Since we try to act exclusively logically, we overlook the fact that logic is almost always the logic of self-preservation. For one sees clearly only with the heart. It is logical to fight back, it is logical to climb the career ladder, it is logical not to forgive but to retaliate (an eye for an eye), it is logical to rely on one’s logic. It is logical to identify those responsible for the evils of this world, such as Jews, refugees, Islamists, homosexuals, communists, capitalists, etc. Under the Nazis, there were countless people who used their highly intellectual abilities to commit inconceivable atrocities. And it is no different today: were Eichmann and Himmler or the amok assassins and mass murderers Amri (Berlin) or Breivik (Oslo) mentally deficient?

Our level of technology is constantly increasing, most of which is aimed at convenience. Our ego only cares about itself and does not ask, or does not ask honestly or consistently, about the future of our children and grandchildren. Since the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, which provided for an annual 5% reduction in CO2 emissions, these emissions have dramatically increased each year worldwide. The limited ability to recognise the consequences and thus to pull the emergency brake is due to the dominance of short-term self-preservation, as the ego understands it: ‘After me, the deluge.’ Or: ‘We’ll think of something.’ Or: ‘I won’t sign a climate protection agreement that harms our economy.’ (US President) Consequently, it seems reasonable to conclude that progress – not in humanity, but in comfort and convenience, such as smart homes with connected refrigerators – is linked to the increase in misery on earth. Man is becoming ever more rational, which means that he is also becoming ever more de-spiritualised, and therefore, through the supposed self-preservation, the trend towards self-destruction is increasing.

By surrendering to reason, we overlook the underlying instinct for self-preservation, which is responsible for our sawing off the branch on which we are sitting.

There is no doubt that we are witnessing great advances in civilisation and technology: space expeditions, mobile phones, social legislation, mobility, human rights, digital communication, etc. At the same time, we are ignoring the fact that dealing with the ego-dictated components of this progress is destroying our planet. This is not a criticism of the belief in progress, but of its egocentric orientation.

By following our minds and their logic, we make ourselves the instrument of an instrument. That is why there is so much discourse about whether and to what extent machines with artificial intelligence could eventually dominate us. The mind is such a machine. We, who primarily define ourselves by our minds, fail to recognise that we are not recipe makers, but recipe users. Puccini said, ‘I don’t compose. I do what my soul tells me.’ Similar statements have been made by Einstein or Gandhi.

A classic example of a direct line to inner guidance is Joan of Arc (Jeanne d’Arc), who, as an 18-year-old, demonstrated her destiny with her incomprehensible decisions and predictions, and as a military leader (!) with her successful military leadership, and she did so consciously, obediently and tolerantly, i.e. not fighting for her own self-preservation. Joan never allowed her exploits to be attributed to herself, to her person, but always made it clear that she was a messenger of her inner guidance. (A distinction must be made: the voice that Joan heard came from ‘above’, from the spiritual soul, while the voices heard by the mentally ill, who are constantly incited to commit atrocities or self-harm, come from below.)

Regarding the connection with their inner guidance, which all mystics strive for, some great minds say the following:

‘Jesus proclaimed a great truth: “It is not I who do these works, but the Father who dwells in me.” When he said this, and when I feel at my work at my greatest creative power, I feel that a higher power is working through me.’ (Ludwig van Beethoven)
Abell, Arthur M.: Conversations with famous composers. Kleinjörl near Flensburg 1962

Similar things are reported about Thomas Alva Edison’s inspiration (light bulb), Niels Bohr (atomic model) or Goethe. Helen Schucman did not write the three volumes of ‘A Course in Miracles’ in the usual sense of an author, but rather as a secretary, writing down the dictation of her inner voice.

But in principle, everyone with spiritual experience is familiar with this form of communication: during meditation, they receive impulses from within: flashes of inspiration, warnings, hints, explanations, etc. Since questions are usually followed by answers, mostly in the form of a yes, spoken on taking a deep breath, you could say that there is a dialogue, even though the spiritual side is the one that answers. This contact is a classic example of the Johannine saying, ‘The Word became flesh.’ Today, prominent creative artists express themselves in this regard as follows:

‘Anyone who works in a creative way experiences something that is stronger-willed than themselves. … You can’t think up the really good lines, they come, they’re suddenly there. … My best lyrics were always wiser than I was.’ (SPIEGEL 18/2018)

Keith Richards received the melody of ‘I can’t get no satisfaction’ while waking up on a May night in 1965. Dave Steward (Eurythmics) reports that ‘his’ melody for Sweet Dreams came to him ‘out of nowhere’. Paul McCartney says that he heard the melody for ‘Yesterday’ in a dream. Paul Simon reports on the origin of his exceptional hit ‘Bridge over troubled water’:

‘I have no idea where it came from, it just came. One minute there was nothing there, and the next minute the whole line was there. … It came so suddenly. I remember it was better than how I usually wrote it.’
(nytimes.com/…/Upfront: PaulSimon/Oct.27,2010)

But you don’t have to be Ludwig Van or Keith Richards to receive the tremendous variety and power of the inner idea provider, because people experience it almost every day, they just don’t understand it as such.

How do these geniuses know that their inspirations do not come from their minds? Basically, everyone knows this. There are experiences in our lives where you immediately realise that they could never have been products of our minds, because they are completely outside our memory, our previous experiences and our horizons for solving problems. This was also clearly seen by one of the world’s greatest inventors, Artur Fischer, who invented, among other things, the Fischer wall plug. When he was asked about ‘his’ more than 1000 patent applications in an interview, he replied that inventing comes from the soul.

‘You should do what comes to mind and what you need. Invention comes from the soul. … We are part of creation, which is why we can interact with it and … be creative. That’s it.’

Leibniz said of himself:
‘When I woke up, I already had so many ideas that the day was not enough to write them down.’

Forward Harry Kane says about his countless goals: ‘My mind switches off completely. Then the goal. How it happens, I don’t know!’

As I said, Einstein didn’t invent the theory of relativity, it was given to him. He received this idea, and his part was then, based on his innate talent and his studies of physics, to implement this concept, to give it form.

The fundamental physical and biological principles of our universe, such as gravity, osmosis, magnetism, electrodynamics, relativity, etc., were already there before we appeared on the scene, but the ego does not want to be satisfied with the user level, but strives to the principle level, it wants to make life. Frankenstein sends his regards.

Our apparent creative power, for better or for worse, is not genuinely a product of our thinking. Our ingenuity in composing rock songs, devising torture methods or building bridges over high gorges is not our own. It consists of inspirations from below or from above, from the ego of the instinctual soul or from the spiritual soul.

In his ‘Sorcerer’s Apprentice’, Goethe already sensed where it would lead if the attempt to separate from wisdom (‘heart’) and follow only the ego-will, fails because the ego has ‘forgotten’ the code for returning. Then ego, i.e. will, and logic have triumphed and led to a loss of control and terrible consequences. These can be nuclear, biological or chemical, but also droughts, hurricanes or other disasters. In any case, the apprentice not only strives for likeness, but equality with the ‘master’.

In his film 2001: A Space Odyssey, director Stanley Kubrick explored the theme of the ‘absolutisation of reason’: five astronauts are travelling in space to the planet Jupiter. They are in charge of the mission, while the universal computer HAL-9000 takes over all monitoring, maintenance and supply processes. One day, it reports an error by mistake, causing the crew to doubt its reliability; they therefore consider shutting it down partially. The computer picks up on these doubts about its self-attested perfection. But its programming does not include any self-awareness or self-criticism. Furthermore, it is programmed to achieve the expedition’s goal at all costs under all circumstances. Since it is the central control point for coordinating all decisions, its logic tells it that the astronauts who want to switch parts of it to ‘manual’ are preventing it from achieving this goal. Due to its programming, it begins to ensure the preservation (!) of its status and the continuation of the mission by – analytically and logically – therefore, killing one astronaut after another.

HAL is an ideal symbol for questioning the logic of our minds. After all, it also does everything rationally (!) to ensure its own survival, thereby destroying the very foundations of life on our planet – and itself. HAL’s logical behaviour symbolises how our minds interact with our environment. Like a pandemic virus, it cannot behave in a moderate way.

HAL9000.svg Creative Commons Reconocimiento 3.0. Wikipedia Commons.
Author: Cryteria. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

The activities of the mind are initially limited to dealing with the visible. It cannot create meaning on its own initiative, but is always only a tool for our impulses from above or below, for selfless help or selfish deeds at the expense of others. It does not know the truth about itself.

One of its central characteristics is to distinguish between good and bad, that is, to evaluate. This is the DNA of the ego, which does not know the constructive function of evil, which Mephisto openly expresses in the study (Faust I): ‘I am a part of that power that always wants evil and [thus] creates good.’ (See chapter 13: What is the point of evil?) Based on its everyday experiences, the ego cannot imagine being able to live in a dimension of only good. As long as we have no connection to our intuition, we rely on our intellect, and it regularly leads us sometimes to success, sometimes to failure, and thus further and further into the world of good and bad and thus further and further away from a way of life under the spiritual umbrella. With that, Mephisto has done his job of luring us into material obscurity. In the mass media, we regularly see how candidates in quiz shows fail when they try to answer questions with logic if they are unsure of the possible solutions. If they have chosen wrongly, they are annoyed because they have disregarded the principle that ‘the first thought is the right one’ (namely, the one from above), because they trusted logic more.

The ‘intuition’ control instance, colloquially known as ‘gut feeling’, plays a peripheral role in life, all too often in men. Since we are not consciously aware of our actual control instances, the driving soul and the spirit soul, in the background, we see our master in our mind. But when it is held to be the determining authority in our lives, it becomes a tool of self-destruction, because we do not recognise that it is in turn dominated, almost always by the instinct for self-preservation.

The relativisation of intellectual powers – in contrast to HAL-9000 – is shown in the film ‘Forrest Gump.’ The IQ-impaired hero has neither the ability to think analytically and synthetically nor to differentiate logically. Nevertheless, he performs amazing feats in the Vietnam War, in sports, in business, etc. He risks his life to rescue comrades under artillery fire because, in accordance with his mind, he does not properly recognise the danger and therefore does not show any inhibiting fear. He knows that he is a person with an unusually low level of intelligence and yet he does not develop any sense of inadequacy because he accepts and submits, so he does not struggle and does not resist, whereas the mind fights against everything (see HAL) that goes against its self-image. The mind is unable to comprehend the powerful truth ‘Do not resist evil!’. Gump plays table tennis at the highest level without the slightest game intelligence, without technical-tactical interference from the mind, so only from the gut. Wealth means nothing to him because he cannot grasp its significance, so he does not accumulate anything. He talks and behaves naively like a child who has no hidden agenda. He just accepts all the vicissitudes of life as they happen. It does not matter to him why his childhood friend only comes back to him after a long time, i.e. he does not get jealous and does not judge, so he does not selfishly divide into good and bad – for him. As for the mind functions such as fearing, hoping, hating, judging, worrying, etc., Forrest Gump does none of these. The functions of analytical thinking are suppressed by the dominance of soul power. The terror of the instinct for self-preservation with its anxious and angry thoughts is thereby decimated. Reacting to reproaches, as a typical activity of the mind – actually of the ego behind it – is alien to him, as far as his friend’s behaviour towards him is concerned, for example. He spontaneously walks a long way without a goal. He does not follow his own ego-will. This suggests that will is a fundamental characteristic of the ego, which is the opposite of ‘Thy will be done’. Self-will, that is, the striving to overcome the difference between the goal set by oneself, is another word for ego.

The chestnut lives and develops without its own will; it does everything that needs to be done and does not decide for itself. It acts according to the principle ‘Thy will be done’. Since humans have two programmes, they are forced to constantly choose between their animal will and their spiritual will. I have only fulfilled my destiny when I no longer want something, but leave the wanting to my soul. Only then do I live the principle ‘Thy will be done!’

Forrest Gump is a modern version of the Dummling fairy tales. In these forerunners and motivators (here the Brothers Grimm), the overcoming of logic by the power of the soul is represented in the stories with the simpleton: ‘The Golden Goose’, ‘The Three Feathers’, ‘The Bird Greif’, ‘The Queen Bee’. In these stories, the simpleton, in contrast to his brothers, who act selfishly, logically and calculatingly, is contrastively endowed with human qualities. He is compassionate, honest, has a good heart (!), kisses the outwardly repulsive toad (!) and protects and saves from human threats. The point of the fairy tale with the simpleton is always to achieve the ‘Kingdom of God’, that is, spiritual consciousness (see Chapter 22). The film ‘Matrix’ calls it ‘Zion.’ What these and other sources have in common is that they mean a better world – first individually – that is spiritually controlled.

If we let the mind run free, it can only lead to disaster. The state of our planet is an impressive example of this. A spiritual person, who puts the mind in its place because they focus first on interacting with the spirit soul and use the mind as a tool for this, curbs the influence of the animal soul and leads a fulfilled life.

‘Do not rely on your own insight; remember Him in all
your ways.’ (Proverbs 3:5)

Many people can relate to this when they base their actions on their gut feeling. It is predominantly women who have this closeness to intuition. The outer human being cannot invent or create anything with his mind, but can only implement an idea or inspiration. In most cases, he cannot distinguish whether the inspiration comes from below or from above. The analogy between the mind and the computer, which is scandalous for the ego, but appropriate, reflects its possibilities and limitations. The great results that human action can produce are – as with the PC – the processing of the mind based on ideas and concepts. These control the processor, which, with knowledge (in the memory) and its linking abilities, produces important and powerful models, developments, processes, simulations, calculations, etc.

The dependence of the computer on its programmer and then on the user’s decision corresponds to that of the human being on the input through education, training, public opinion, professional experience, etc. and on the ‘programmers’ – spirit soul or instinct soul. In the story of creation, these two aspects of human life are symbolised by the two trees of paradise. (Theology deals with such questions as, for example, ‘Lord, is it you?’ ) Depending on the decision, the mind then produces achievements in both good and evil, from industrialised mass murder to the moon landing.

Since the sources of the input are two different ones, i.e. from ‘above’ or from ‘below’ – in the language of the wisdom scriptures ‘good’ and ‘evil’ – the human mind consistently produces not only the beneficial variant but also the murderous one: the knife for cutting bread is immediately followed by its use for stabbing; it automatically turns energy generation through nuclear fission into bombs of mass destruction; it uses financial algorithms not only for granting loans to promote the economy, but also for the fraudulent profit maximisation of speculators such as cum-ex. It is extremely offensive to the outer person that his mind is reduced to an enforcer function. Since he does not want to look behind the person’s surface (the Latin origin of the word is ‘mask’), he attributes the achievements and victories to himself, instead of looking behind them and encountering the inner polar control. ‘Look what excellent bread I have baked,’ says the stove to the baker.”

Animals do not hope, hate, torture, torment, condemn, or worry. All these are functions of the aggressive and fearful human mind, which is dominated by ego self-preservation. It obeys the part of the self-preservation programme that sees danger in every ‘you’. He comes to the conclusion that the evil is the person, not their self-preservation programme. He does not recognise this control of the other person, nor his own. Because the ego prevents him from recognising the control behind it. The Cain principle, that human coexistence is based on existential fear and anger to ensure survival, is depicted by Kubrick in ‘2001’ in the opening sequence:

A horde of early humans live in a cave near a watering hole. Through unconscious inspiration, the humans receive an impulse that leads them to think. From this, they begin to use bones lying around as tools. When another horde turns up one day, also wanting to get to the water, an argument develops. The newcomers want to get to the source, the others want to defend it. The next step of the thinking process, driven by self-preservation, is to use the bone as a weapon in order to not lose what they have acquired. The leader of the cave dwellers kills the competitor in single combat.

Trying to reach God by thinking with the intellect has never worked, otherwise the infinite number of sermons in the past would have changed something qualitatively in the ‘thin layer of civilisation’. Reflecting on God does not lead to knowledge, even if theologians do not want to admit it. They don’t know anything about what they say about God, what his will is, what he does, what he is. They can’t know it, it’s all just assumptions. They talk about God, actually only about their own conception of God, because they have no individual experience with God – neither about the ego nor about the inner guidance, inspirations, the ‘father in me.’ It is about individual experience and is not accessible to a scientific laboratory experiment. Just reading a hundred books about tennis does not make you able to play tennis. Just reading a hundred books about honey does not make you able to taste honey. The Bible therefore contains invitations to have your own experiences. However, you can use your mind by acquiring knowledge about meditation, which leads to opening the channel to the spirit soul.

The mind forms ideas and images of what we see: It sees a number of war refugees on television and turns it into a threat scenario without ever having met a refugee. Only the mind can create anti-Semitic beliefs without ever having been in contact with Jewish men or women.

‘The most dangerous worldview is the worldview of people who have never looked at the world.’
(Alexander von Humboldt)

The mind wants to tackle problems – on the earthly level – and not consult the soul about what it should do and whether it should do anything at all. Jesus did not concern himself with any of the political, economic or social problems of his people; he did not address the disadvantage of women nor fight the causes of hunger or disease. Nor did he react to the yoke of the Roman occupation. He only ‘looked up’ to feed the crowd. He did not heal the lame man either. He only told him that his sense of inner potency had healed him (see chapter 22).

The mind needs input or inspiration, like a PC. It is neither good nor evil. It is like a hammer that can be used to drive in nails or break skulls. The tool is not evil, it depends on the control, on the programme. In this respect, it depends on my consciousness. The crucial element that distinguishes humans from animals is that they have two programmes and can choose between them, between above and below, between animalistic self-preservation and divine willingness to make sacrifices, between love of friends and love of enemies. Through their decisions, they produce either animalistic or divine content. We can, for example, charge our minds with love or with fear and hatred when dealing with the refugee issue. The outcome of the latter can be seen in the raging anti-Semitism since the 11th century and then already towards the end of the 19th century, which the Nazis quickly took up and then fuelled even more. Countless Germans have thus charged their consciousness with fear, greed and hatred of Jews and then perished in the hail of bombs on German cities or at the front. The Hindus call this link between cause and effect karma. But the everyday person is not aware of this connection and the possibility of choice it contains.

If the (unconscious) decision in favour of xenophobia has been made, as is usually the case with animals, the mind processes animal fear programmes into resentment towards refugees and tempts people to set fire to refugee homes, to hatred of foreigners and to further functions of the self-preservation instinct such as fear, narcissism or megalomania, which ultimately lead to civil war and war.

The mind can decide whom it wants to serve: ‘…choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve’ (Joshua 24:15). It can evaluate experiences and draw conclusions in terms of truth based on experience. It can draw conclusions from its experiences in relation to what it has been given (e.g. education). This enables it to begin to see through the surface.

The mind reproduces animal (99%) or divine initiated results. If the former is the case, it uses its logic to process fear, inferiority and hatred programmes into resentment towards refugees or into hounding them. However, the more we get into the habit of not reacting to unwanted thought attacks, even though no one originally taught us how to do so, the more we receive inspiration from our intuitive source.

The mind cannot stop worshipping (‘leaders’) or despising (‘subhuman’) other people on its own, today for example as a follower, or as a shitstorm and/or as a right-wing extremist. It cannot recognise the hand in the glove on its own initiative and thus look behind the appearance, because it was born into the world of appearances and was further strengthened in this view by education and training. So he can’t get out of the treadmill. But almost only through severe life crises, usually through severe and most severe losses, he gets impulses (‘turning points’) and thus gets the chance to ask questions and search for meaning (see chapter 10).

A central feature of the mind is, as already mentioned, the distinction between good and bad, the evaluation. It cannot refrain from categorising everything around it as good or bad, which is purely an ego function (see Chapter 3). Our mind cannot provide us with truth – only the soul power can do that from within – but it always tempts us into superficial judgements about what it then considers to be the truth. This fact is illustrated by the behaviour of HAL or also the Chinese Parable by Hermann Hesse:

A farmer had a prized mare that ran away. The neighbours came to offer their condolences. ‘You must be very sad,’ they said. But the farmer replied, ‘Who knows?’ A little later, the mare returned with five wild horses. The neighbours came again, this time to offer their congratulations. ‘You must be very happy,’ they said. The farmer just replied, ‘Who knows?’
The next day, the farmer’s son tried to ride one of the wild horses. He was thrown off and broke a leg. ‘Such bad luck,’ the neighbours said. ‘Who knows?’ the farmer replied again.
A few days later, officers came to the village to forcibly recruit soldiers. They took all the young men except for the farmer’s son, who, because of his broken leg, was not fit for military service.
(Hermann Hesse: Chinese Parable. In: Legends.)

People who fill their everyday lives with negative content, with accusations, insults, quarrels, intrigues, horror films, crime thrillers, shoot-em-ups, fantasies of fear and worry, etc., will get back from life what they put into it. It means that her life will be shaped to an ever-increasing extent by resentment, discord, meanness, fear and worry. If, in the shitstorm, the senders of the countless hate e-mails knew what they were ultimately doing to themselves in terms of poisoning themselves, they would hold back a great, great, great deal.

The alternative is to no longer allow only worry, fear and anger to fill my thinking from below. It is laid out in me that I can consciously decide whether I hate, reproach, condemn, worry, etc. or not. At least the potential is in me for the guidance of my spirit soul. My mind belongs to me and I do not belong to it.

Trusting in the workings of the mind means uncritical acceptance of its limited scope. Inspiration from the soul means breaking down these limitations. Nothing that comes only from the mind can be absolute truth: what was valid yesterday may be different today. What has been confirmed as truth through constant experience did not come from the mind. The dominance of the intellect is broken by intuition from the silence created by meditation.

Generally speaking, our view of the world is a product of the instinctual soul. That is why Buddha, Moses, Mohammed, Krishna, Jesus, Nanak, Lao Tse and their followers tried to tear open this veil of consciousness and draw attention to the spiritual level of the world – in the glove.

Due to his ingenuity and talent, Einstein could have nevertheless calculated as he liked. It was only through flashes of inspiration that he was able to expand his previous horizons. It was his intuition that helped him to the groundbreaking idea of relativity, which he then elaborated with his mind. He himself formulated it in such a way that, after preliminary considerations, he ‘had to write down his “theory of special relativity one morning in 1905 only in the form of… symbols”’ (Weigelt, G.: Quantensprünge des menschlichen Bewusstseins. P. 144)

Two thousand years of biblical exegesis confirm the sobering fact that without an intuitively guided experience, as in the case of Job, it is impossible to develop spiritual insights. That is why life constantly offers severe crises as opportunities to try out such admonitions as love of one’s enemy in the Sermon on the Mount.

Statements about the divine are no substitute for direct experience of the divine. Those who seek to grasp the truth intellectually, as theologians do, turn the words of the Nazarene on their head: ‘I can of myself do nothing.’

Interestingly, Orthodox Christianity refrains from sermons in this context and replaces them with liturgical singing, sometimes only by the priest and sometimes in antiphony between him and the congregation. This is intended to achieve a kind of trance (reduction of intellectual activity), which in turn is supposed to facilitate access to the soul. The Islamic Sufi dervishes practice something similar with their whirling dances, as do Buddhists with meditation.

In the practice of spiritual living, dethroning the mind leads to the situation that when any problems arise, one does not first look to the mind for a solution but first to the problem solver. Later, the mind comes into its own to organise the indicated paths in a practical way. This means that I place myself in a state of mental calm, deep relaxation and meditation and ask for guidance. Only later should the beneficial function of the mind begin, which deals with the implementation of the solution steps received. For the mind is not the captain, but the pilot of the ship of life, who receives and implements, when founding a company, raising children, giving legal advice, treating patients, reading wisdom scriptures, loving enemies, etc. In this respect, the mind is, paradoxically, both a prison and a liberator from prison. What has been proven to be the truth did not come from the mind, but through it.

In his literature, Wolfram von Eschenbach describes the path from the mind to the soul: in the Castle of the Holy Grail, during his second encounter with King Anfortas, Parzival draws the consequences from his mistake (of the mind!) and this second time, through the intellectual evaluation of his spiritual experience (with the heart), he now asks the question of compassion (!).

Not relying on reason does not mean giving up thinking, it means exchanging interdependency and leaving the guidance to the spirit soul, as demonstrated by Joan of Arc. Reliance on intellectual judgement alone has been a mistake for thousands of years.

2 thoughts on ‘7. Forrest Gump and the human mind’

Claudia says:July 10, 2021 at 8:07 pmEdit Hello dear Mrs. Seidel, thank you very much for these heartfelt thoughts on the film ‘Forrest Gump’ After reading Mr Lang’s blog post, I was immediately encouraged to read your review as well. Wonderful. Yes, I also firmly believe that more and more people are thinking about this topic and at least trying to make a change. Because if everything were fine, we wouldn’t be dealing with these issues and looking for the reasons behind them. It all sounds so obvious and so simple I just wonder why humanity has taken the other path of selfishness too blatantly. But well, we can’t change that anymore, but each soul for itself can steer against it and I wish and hope that there will be more and more.Best regards,Claudia WieneckeReply

jlang says: November 2, 2020 at 10:30 am

Hello Claudia
Thank you for your kind response. I read your review and think it is great. It enriches my understanding of the film. You see not only with the intellect, but also with the heart well. Best regards, Jürgen Lang