Molding oneself psychologically is nothing but focusing on objectives to be reached by effort through conscious stimulation. Molding oneself, even though it may be seen as perfecting, correcting, or transforming oneself, in short, involves a process in which the conscious struggles for affirmation. It defines priorities, proposes action, monitors itself, and, in time, gets what it wants. The problem, however, is that the human mind is more effective the more focused it works. This gives it a hard limitation: for effectiveness, it has to concentrate on specific ends, it has to focus the action. Thus it triumphs, but triumphs in a reduced part of its scope. With time, the effort becomes a habit, conscious action becomes automatic, opening space for new focuses to be defined. But time is limited for it… In short: it can mold itself, but in a molding that defines its prominences, the highlights that are most important to it—and it has to resign itself to its own limitations, knowing that it will necessarily have to deal with an uncomfortable and atrophied part of itself.
Category: Notes
Most Modern “Discoveries” Have Nothing to Do With Discoveries
It is curious to note how most of the modern “discoveries” have nothing to do with discoveries. In the field of psychology, it is hard to find anything relevant that is not already outlined—and often better outlined—in the works of Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, not to mention the oriental texts. But Dostoevsky’s “polar bear challenge,” or Nietzsche’s observation that “the best ideas come by walking,” rather than being immediately grasped by intuition, had to wait a century for them to be properly validated by idle experimentation. The misery of this time is that it demands that everything bear its distinctive stamp; otherwise it is worthless. So it seems that efforts are directed more at stroking a collective vanity than at widening the extent of what can be called man’s knowledge.
The Best Decisions Come After Long Meditation…
The best decisions emerge after long, albeit shapeless, meditation, which is slowly concentrated to a point where it violently spills over into an impulse that, by volitional action, is immediately allowed to flow out: it materializes in this impulse, and continues to bear fruit. Intuition, taken in the Jungian sense, when developed, is capable of manifesting itself laden with a certainty that surpasses reasoning. It is the flash of a precious faculty. To go against it, in these cases, is to squander it. That is why patience in important decisions is right—but sometimes the most profitable thing is to have the courage to follow the intuition.
The Western Specialist
I reread Patanjali’s sutras, this time commented by an Indian mystic. What a difference! What an abyss separates him from the master doctor specialized in metaethics and philosophy of language! I lack words… The mystic’s concise comments are intended to facilitate the practical understanding of the sutras; they aim, in short, to uncomplicate any ambiguity they may contain in the work. The confrontation with the master doctor is heartbreaking… It seems that the Western specialist puts himself in an intellectual distance that borders on stupidity. He isolates himself from what he analyzes, draws endless comparisons, as if he were aiming for perfect knowledge of the etymology of the words studied, but indifferent to grasping what they represent. He loses himself in an irrational subjectivity, because it is simply absurd to cut the link with reality from a serious study. It is the scientist who knows the technical details of an experiment whose purpose he ignores, the meditation expert who has never meditated. The three hundred pages of commentary to my Yoga Sutra teach less about yoga than Crowley’s one-line summary: “Sit still. Stop thinking. Shut up. Get out!”—a summary which, I bet my right arm, never crossed the master doctor’s mind.