Of Mouse And Maze

Of Mouse And Maze

You’ve heard it told, perhaps sometimes as a joke about how stupid mice are. Once there was a mouse, and he lived in a maze, in total darkness. He learned his way around in its tunnels and chambers, and soon he could zip his way through them without running into the walls. One time he was running down a long tunnel, and he ran smack into a hard wall that had not been there before. When he got his senses back, he discovered it was a big rock, and he could jump right over it and continue down the tunnel. The next time he came down that tunnel, he didn’t run into the rock, but he remembered the pain of hitting it, so he slowed down and checked to feel if it was there. It was, so he jumped over it and continued. The next time, and every time thereafter, he just ran down the tunnel, jumped over the rock, and ran right on. The joke was that you can take away the rock then, and the mouse will still continue to jump at that point, for ever and ever after.
Some time later the mouse was running down a tunnel, and he ran into another rock. Soon he was jumping every time he came to that place too. One time he ran into a new rock, and since that always reminded him of the other times he had run into a rock, he just jumped. This time he hit the roof. That knocked him silly too, but when he recovered, he found he had to go around that rock. Pretty soon he was running all over his maze, jumping some places, and going around others, looking for the corn room or the water root. He had a clear picture in his little mousey mind of what his world looked like, where the tunnels ran, and where the obstacles were.
As the joke goes, at that point you could take away all the rocks, and the mouse would continue to jump and turn. You could actually take away all the walls to the tunnels too, and the mouse would still continue to run down the lanes he knew, and jump and turn, searching for the corn and water he could as well go directly to, if he were able to respond to the reality of his situation, and not his perception of the picture in his mind. There is a point at which it is no longer funny, but rather horrid to watch the mouse, driven by hunger and thirst, running through the complicated series of endlessly repeated jumps and turns to negotiate a maze that exists only in his own mind. That is what people mean when they say, Kafkaesque.
The mouse’s world, as he thought he knew it, was only an image in his mind. Though he was only a mouse, and had only a mouse’s mind, he was living in an illusion. Do you suppose that a man’s mind is different, even if the maze in which he lives is much more complex? This is exactly what the Eastern religions mean when they say the world is all maya, illusion.
There are no borders. Yet by arming a line, and behaving as though there was a border, we create the illusion of a border there. Dramatized by men with guns, and by walls of stone, it creates the reality we must live in, illusion or not. Enlightenment is what is meant by seeing the difference between the illusion and the dramatization, and observing that what you are actually looking at when you think about the world you live in are only, as the mouse’s, pictures which you carry in your own mind, a virtual image like a computer game in your mind, in which you run and jump and turn, pursuing challenges and prizes, confident you know the nature of the reality around you.
If the collection of pictures we call our mind is something more than just accidental sparklies in a blob of nerve cells, might we carry them with us for long periods of time, spiritually speaking? How long have you been collecting the pictures that make up the image you have of your own existence and world? How long have you been jumping over rocks that have worn back to sand a million years ago? How long have you thought it simply natural to salivate when you hear a bell, or want to fight when you hear “Born To Lose”?
If you take a lesson from the mouse, and you seek to discover where in your own image of the world you are jumping over rocks that are not really there, how might you go about it? If you are looking to find the rocks in your path that make you jump in the dark, how do you tell when you are jumping in response to a picture, or turning, or yelling and running out? Every time you try to look closely at such a moment, and try to see if there is really anything there, what you see first is a picture of running into a rock some time ago, and being knocked unconscious. That knocks you out again, in a way. At some point, you recoil from the pain and shock of those memories, and you don’t look there any more. You do not see that you jump, you do not remember why you jump, and you are unable to look into your own mind to find the answer to that question you don’t want to ask. So you jump. Yes, that is Kafkaesque, and Hesseous as well.
Knowing it happens, that it must self-evidently and certainly happen to every mouse and man, gives you the edge, the ability to deliberately look for ways to accomplish freedom from the maze. There are lots of people out selling maze maps and flashlights, and some of all that works better than others. Ultimately, the light has to come from you, of course, and it quite certainly can. Speaking as though a prophet, John Lennon said, “No guru can see through your eyes. It’s all in your mind, y’know.”

James Nathan Post
www.postpubco.com

Qur'an et al.

I have just been watching a program I enjoy on our public access TV channel. It is readings from Qur'an, most of it sung in its own language, with beautiful scenery and the faces of people, filled with light. Though I don't understand a word, it is so elegant and so beautiful. When I was in Christ, I spoke in tongues sometimes. Though I am no longer of the Christian religion, sometimes I still do. People do not understand what it is. Like one willing to be hypnotized, you give yourself up to the spirit, and things sometimes well up from within you. You do not understand the words, but they speak to the soul, and the soul responds, and you may weep knowing you are saying something very real and very holy. My soul responds to the words of Qur'an that way and I very much enjoy just listening to it, like Bach or Brubeck.

Sometimes they read passages in English, and I always think if they were read to a group of spiritually conscious Christians or Jews without their knowing what they were, they would find themselves saying again and again, "Amen! That is wisdom, that is beauty, that is the God I know in my heart." It causes me grief therefore to see how badly some Christians and some Muslims misunderstand the message of the prophets, and miss the spirit, and find reason to hate and oppress and kill each other in the pages of the books they have made idols of, each only an image of God, graven in symbol on papyrus wrapped like mummies. We are awash in spleen, and unless we find a way to open our minds beyond those books, and open our hearts to that spirit and to each other, then we are soon awash in blood.
James

"Thank You Jesus, But No Thank You."