We live under the dominance of our mind and heart. We either emotionally thrust ourselves forward without thought, or think ourselves forward without emotion. Two types of people: those who have a forceful mind and those who can't raise themselves above the command of emotion.
Emotion people are the easiest to describe. Basically they are mentally lazy - can't be bothered to think deeply or even access the news, and if they do, they are infatuated with 'human-interest' stories, mostly about unknown people in despairing accidents of life. These espouse the cosmic wonder of love, to overcome all obstacles and deliver us into... whatever. But ask them what is love? They will tell you romantic gibberish, despairingly shattered by barbarians who cross the hills with guns and swords. This attitude even has national character. For reasons obscure, those who lived in the land now known as the USA, be they the modern residents or those of the American Indians, are the most obsessed with the fantasies of passion. Many Asian nations didn't even have a word for love.
The catastrophic danger for emotion people is the distinction between emotions that emanate from above or below the diaphragm. Without their control or instigation, they flood their being from chest emotions until found faulty, then flood their being with solar-plexus emotions of anger or despair, depending on whether they are introverts or extroverts.
Mind people are consumed by thinking through the outer world and their place in it. These are actually few in number, and in the main they have the edge over emotion people. They can plan, scope the landscape, anticipate dangers and are not so vulnerable to evil politicians who promise heaven to the desperate.
Once we engage on the spiritual path, these differences manifest. Emotion people seek ultimate freedom through what they can muster as a vague sense of 'Love of God'. Does it work? Some wise ones say yes, but I say, where's the evidence? From all I have seen that path looks like a grocery trolley of illusions from one's favourite spiritual supermarket. To be honest, I sense the lazy person's mirage of sugar without salt.
Mind people have a better chance, as they absorb the teachings, and practice with diligence the actions prescribed by the ancients of knowledge. So far so good. But they face a critical threshold.
After years of diligent concentration, mind people realise they have left their humanity behind, and this causes a hiatus. 'The Glass Bead Game' is a book devoted to this threshold and dilemma. But that threshold is for a later point on the path. In the first instance, a more subtle moment confronts the seeker, whether of the emotion or mind persuasion. And this is the threshold of which I wish to speak.
A point comes, despite all the flamboyant gestures we thrash about with on our turbulent path to truth, when something shifts within us. A moment arrives when we see through the world. Before that we were seeing objects of intellect or passion. But in a moment we drop between both these and see. What we see is the world of spirit, the entities crowding in and out, the pressure of elemental spirits - not in a cognitive way, but instinctively. It happens through sense, but more through the inner eye - a recognition.
And it is easy to see when another knows this world or not. But no matter how much one wishes to believe they indeed know this world, that is vanity. It simply happens as a result of two things: effort or nature.
Those whom this perception is revealed through nature have a difficult time, as they haven't actuated their realisation through inner effort, and typically this leads to isolation from others and the world. The inner strength and resilience is lacking, but they can build that - most famous mystics we know of, have belatedly build their inner core to withstand the dissonance of being. For this, unfortunately, they must endure what they perceive to be suffering, until it no longer is felt as suffering.
Those who have to work to achieve this realisational threshold, are in a better position, as they had to suffer and concentrate to get there. That anguish and focus, that dedication and committent, creates the inner strength to cope effectively with the transition. The realisation that they, from hence forth, 'know' the world around them from the back of their neck instead of the eyes and ears. They have one wonderful answer to everything - keep going until you no longer need to say keep going.
Either way, once this threshold is transcended, what one perceives up-front, is the force, not the thing.
