THE BLIND-FOLDED DRIVER

What is the cause of the epidemic of fear and anxiety we see in the world today? We live as if a calamity were just around the corner, that every step we take might be our last. Why is this so? Has the world become more dangerous than ever before? Is time speeding up out of our control? Not essentially. It is because we are moving closer to the spirit, we are speeding up, more than ever before but we are blind to it.

Imagine a blind-folded man riding a motorbike on auto pilot.

He can't balance himself well nor can he control his forward movement because he can't see where he is going. This causes a particular illusion to arise in him the faster the bike goes - he doesn't so much believe that he is moving forward but that the air is rushing toward him at ever greater speeds and that it is threatening to engulf him. This causes a dreadful fear and anxiety for what will happen, for what he will lose, for the calamities and accidents and wars, famines and injustices that are coming towards him that he can't control.

But the blind folded man is the point of resistance for that air. He can't see what is behind or what is ahead but he feels he is present because of this resistance he gives to this air. This resistance is important for living in the world. That is how the man knows he is alive, present on that bike despite the fact that he can't see himself. But he can use this resistance to balance himself and to find his hands, which are the will that can take away the blind fold so he can see where he is going.

In ordinary perceptions and the thinking that arises from them there is no free will. We are taken for a ride out of our control and we feel we are headed for doom because our thinking, we suspect, is really a kind of death. But if we find the will to free ourselves of the blindfold of ordinary thinking and perception we see where we are going, we see what is behind, ahead and all around and because of this orientation we realise that our forward movement is the reason the air feels like it is rushing towards us. We realise that the air is really the spirit, that the driver, our souls, is seeking! We see that the bike is the physical instrument of this quest. We are moving forward seeking the spirit blindly!

We must become the drivers of our own destiny if we are to dispel fear and anxiety and we can only do this by freeing our will. When we can see what is behind us, the causes of our feelings, impulses and thoughts that live in our will and we unite this freely with the spirit that is ahead of us, then we are truly in control and free - we can enjoy the ride!

So you see...higher consciousness does not arise without free will. We need to find the hands of the heart to release the head from its blindness or we will grow more and more anxious and full of fear. Those who can see the truth do not fear.

THE GAME (my version of Herman Hesse's Glass Bead Game)

'Magister Ludi what is the goal of the Glass Bead Game?' said the postulant.

'To create a new science and art.'

'What are the rules?'

'There is to be no competition with others, all desire for reaching the goal will prevent you from doing so, and the end becomes the beginning.'

'What are the steps?

'The first step:

Remember that science only tells you about everything you see with your senses, these are sensations, feelings. It tells you only about what has 'become'. But this, you see, is only half of 'being'.

You must learn to will your thoughts out of you to meet what is 'becoming' without feelings. That is how you find the spirit. Then you shall know the counterpoint of everything thing - this is a new science.

The Second step:

Observe how the counterpoint makes an impression in you. Allow yourself to be moulded by the spirit in the world. This is the very essence of finding the Art in the game and the game is nothing without it. As long as you try to impress your self onto the spirit of things, you are wounding the spirit - or rather removing it from the things themselves so that they lose their objective truth!

Allow what has entered you to exist and die away without making any image of it. It is only from the silence that the new art is born.

The Third step:

Allow the warmth to fire your limbs to creative deeds - when you have reached this stage in the game you have brought science and art together.

'What is the glass bead?'

'You are the glass bead.'

'What do you mean?'

'A glass bead is completely individual and beautiful alone, but it can only contribute to the beauty of the game when it joins with other beads. The secret is this: it joins the other beads not out of desire, not out of competitiveness, but to create new games. Even so, it never loses its individual beauty and shape. What it becomes is what it was always intended to be. That is how the end becomes the beginning.'