The mind, the heart, the Tao, being in tune, and Einstein

The problem, then, is that when we follow our minds instead of the hearts, we cage ourselves into concept; life becomes a series of false problems and false solutions; we exist like a lifeless formula on a lifeless page, living our whole lives 'out of Tao', as it were, or, in more modern, colloquial terms, we live continually 'out of whack', or 'our of tune'. Hence we are not at one with ourselves, nor the world, nor our destiny, and not just for some of our days, but even for entire lifetimes- lifetimes in which we are completely out of step with how we truly could live, and who we truly could be. I say 'could', because I am thinking that all of us, if we were aware enough to realize our highest potential, would want to attain that which we 'could' attain. And when we live falsely this is impossible.

Imagine a symphony orchestra composed of individuals with broken instruments, with no idea how to play them, nor even how to read music, and who have never in their lives heard a real symphony performed as it could be. All you would hear is a jumbled mish-mash of horrid, incommensurable noises, producing a chaotic cacophony of disturbance, when actually harmony and beauty are the truest possibilities if all people and instruments were ‘in tune’. And yet in our world everything is out of rhythm, and no one is trying to change it.

This can be explained from another angle altogether:

"In this world, there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body time. The first is as rigid and metallic as a massive pendulum of iron that swings back and forth, back and forth. The second squirms and wriggles like a bluefish in a bay. The first is unyielding, predetermined. The second makes its mind as it goes along. ...Each time is true, but the truths are not the same. ...In [the second,] acausal world, scientists are helpless. Their predictions become postdictions. Their equations become justifications, their logic, illogic. ...[Yet] in this world [i.e. the second], artists are joyous. Unpredictability is the life of their paintings, their music, their novels. They delight in events not forecasted, happenings without explanation, retrospective. ...It is a world of sincerity. It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy. ...For it is only habit and memory that dulls the physical passion. Without memory, each night is the first night, each morning is the first morning, each kiss and touch are the first."

Alan Lightman (Einstein's Dreams, paraphrased from pgs23-82)

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These excerpts on following the heart and aimless wandering are taken from unpublished chapters of

THE WAY OF WONDER, by Jack Haas