Daily Meditation: Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Faculties, spiritual - alone can protect against psychic troubles

02/23/2011

You attend a talk given by a great scientist: he makes use of diagrams, charts and mathematical formulas so that you can follow his reasoning step by step. Unfortunately, diagrams, charts and mathematical formulas will not prevent this learned man, with all his well-ordered, clear arguments, from losing his head in other circumstances. For intellectuals may prove themselves to be highly methodical, disciplined and objective when it comes to their work, but outside of it they see nothing strange in living subjectively, in the disorder and turmoil of their passions. In fact, if you look at the statistics, you will see that it is among intellectuals that you will find the greatest number of the unbalanced and mentally ill. For the mind does not protect anyone from being unbalanced; quite the opposite even – it often indulges in all kinds of acrobatics that threaten its sanity. Life is not just made up of observations, measurements and calculations. Humans are not machines. There is only one way of facing life’s difficulties and unexpected shocks, of not allowing oneself to get swept away and destroyed by one’s passions, of discovering the true reality of things, and that is to develop the spiritual faculties.