Thursday, July 21, 2005

Understanding 4 Dodo Twins

A Story


'Father Giovannil I cannot understand how you can calmly stay here instead of returning to Europe, at least to your own country Italy, to give the people there if only a thousandth part of this all-penetrating faith which you are now inspiring in me:
'Eh! my dear Professor,' replied Father Giovanni, 'it is evident that you do not understand man's psyche as well as you understand archaeology.

'Faith cannot be given to man. Faith arises in a man and increases in its action in him not as the result of automatic learning, that is, not from any automatic ascertainment of height, breadth, thickness, form and weight, or from the perception of anything by sight, hearing, touch, smell or taste, but from understanding.

'Understanding is the essence obtained from information intentionally learned and from all kinds of experiences personally experienced.

'For example, if my own beloved brother were to come to me here at this moment and urgently entreat me to give him merely a tenth part of my understanding, and if! myself wished with my whole being to do so, yet I could not, in spite of my most ardent desire, give him even the thousandth part of this understanding, as he has neither the knowledge nor the experience which I have quite accidentally acquired and lived through in my life.

'No, Professor, it is a hundred times easier, for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle" than for anyone to give to another the understanding formed in him about anything whatsoever.

It is a hundred times easier, for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for anyone to give to The DODO Twins the understanding formed in HIR about anything whatsoever.


Not only is it impossible, even with all one's desire, to give to another one's own inner understanding, formed in the course of life from the said factors, but also, there exists a law that the quality of what is perceived by anyone when another person tells him something, either for his knowledge or his understanding, depends on the quality of the data formed in the person speaking.


A revaluation of all values.


"Before that meeting, I was a Hu-mYn wholly engrossed in my own personal interests and pleasures.

I was always occupied with thoughts of how best to satisfy my needs.
'Formerly, it may be said, my whole being was possessed by egoism.

All my manifestations and experiencings flowed from my vanity.

The meeting with Father Giovanni killed all this, and from then on there gradually arose in me that "something" which has brought the whole of me to the unshakeable con-viction that, apart from the vanities of life, there exists a "some-thing else" which must be the aim and ideal of every more or less thinking Hu-mYn, and that it is only this something else which may make a Hu-mYn really happy and give hir real values, instead of the illusory "goods" with which in ordinary life hir is always and in everything full."

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