A Pointed Hat

Flashing lights, smoke, the speed of the hand: God himself can be made to appear in a box and then to vanish again. Such is the ambition of the brain, the powers of which are really limitless. The time will come when the human brain will have the power to create a universe - and then find that it has nothing or no one to live in it. The physical world itself is a kind of magic - it can be manipulated to perform all kinds of tricks to satisfy our curiosity or ambition. And all the time the human soul - the real human being - looks on and wonders at the emptiness: the flash, the thunder, the lights, the smoke. We live in a world which is a great magic box and the master magician is the one who can use the brain to its greatest capacity.

In contrast there is life - life which conceals its mystery and its true name, which disdains to perform tricks. Life which has no answers in a crystal ball or a spread of cards, which does not ask you to bow to the authority of a pointed hat. And whereas the tool for magic is the brain, the instrument for an understanding of life is the inner being, the hidden self, which creates an atmosphere of calm and stillness around itself, capable of becoming a true reflecting surface - a surface on which the mysteries of existence can be revealed.

The dilemma is, we need solutions. We need an answer to the problems of population, resources, ecology. So do we produce those answers out of the magician's box? The temptation is always there: GM foods, stem cells, nuclear power - because we can do it, and because the logic of the world demands it, we will do it. But will the human soul be satisfied? No, because it sees a shrinking world, a mechanized universe created in the image of the magician's brain, and it sees no place there for itself. This is why systems deriving only from the brain are always guarded by structures of power and protected by authorities - their products will not serve life. Life itself, by contrast, which hides its authority and its true name, waits only for the inner self to waken in the human being, to divulge its secrets and offer a world in which the soul can be at home. Create a universe yet be a slave, unless the Being who first created you, gives you the grace which to the world he gave, before its magic danced the morning through.

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