The Inexhaustible Patience Of The Spider

Dear Reader,

The world of ego has once again loomed large, this time in eastern Europe. Particularly now, this is a time to seek inspiration.

The story of Robert the Bruce and the spider is famous. Robert was crowned King of the Scots in 1306 AD and eventually led Scotland to victory and gain Scottish independence against the English. But things weren’t always so sunny for King Robert, and that’s where the spider comes into the story. After suffering defeat against the English, Robert was forced into hiding. Legend has it that when Robert’s spirits were broken, he took refuge in a cave. While sitting in that cave, he noticed a small spider attempting to weave a web.

The spider tried and failed over and over again. Each time the spider fell, it climbed back up to try once more. Finally, the spider’s silk took hold, and the spider managed to spin a web. By observing this and reflecting upon it, Robert the Bruce was inspired to see himself reflected in the spider’s struggle and ultimate success. Thus Robert found the strength to return and fight the English despite overwhelming odds.

Thus we can see that inspiration and vision go hand in hand and they can be wonderful aids towards success. It is the antithesis of the kind of personality that calculates and constructs for himself another kind of web that can prove to be his downfall. Therefore, we should gain heart that true and sustainable success is achieved only when we go inwards to seek help via our connection to the One that is the creator of our lives, and not rely on our limited ego.

In fact, there is perhaps another dimension to this story of Robert and the spider, and a dimension that Robert might also have seen and reflected upon. That is, the fundamental and self-evident truth that the spider is intrinsically capable of creating its own home by producing silk as the material and then utilising its in-built knowledge to actually weave the web itself. Surely, Robert's second inspiration gained from the spider would have been that the tools were within himself to accomplish his objective.

In fact, we can discern a third inspirational and visionary thought. That the spider, by being able to practically create from within itself, is in a small way effectively demonstrating the capacity of the Creator of the universe. And in this Creator - in the Vedic literature of India - lies the compelling story of the origin of the universe, of how the universe emanated from the Creator. This great story is more simply replicated in the scriptures of other religions, too. When studied properly it will be seen how much it agrees with modern science - except that modern science came later! Much later!

Thus, there must be great meaning in life; a purpose to everything. Science acknowledges a great intelligence pervading the universe, so why do we mostly live our lives as if in doubt about this great Truth?

For all humans, our ability to utilise vision - by which I mean not merely physically 'seeing' - is a major factor in enabling us to grow spiritually. And it starts at a very simple level. 

Cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman clearly states that our educational system gets into gear at a very early age to condition us to think objectively, which is actually a limiting perspective. [My note: In fact, it may well be that Homo Sapiens' preoccupation with objectivity may well have been the cause of the demise of the so-called Neanderthals, who may well have been a race that thought in terms of pictures and feelings - perhaps a more creative species.]

Hoffman also points out that no matter how we tend to want to hang onto Darwin's theory of natural selection, science now gives this a zero probability as a truth. But as it seems to be a 'nice interface' it remains engrained in our conditioned psyche. And that is the trap that today's humans are facing. They are getting more and more deeply entrenched in the 'nice interface' to get us to where we think we want to get to. 

Hence why this pushbutton age is so popular and addictive - we are told we do not need to know why nor able to perceive what goes on within our I-pad communication systems because there is a 'nice interface' that takes away that necessity.

When I started in computing in the mid-1960s that was far from the case. Programming a computer then meant that quite frequently I would have to get down to the machine level to work things out and write/modify code without the use of easy interfaces. That way, we understood the problem in a more beneficial way. We became better problem solvers, in my opinion.

Please look at this image and answer the question it asks...

In our 'normal' world of objective reality, we would of course only want to know about the left-hand image - the solid version of the table.  But in the world of total reality, the wooden table is composed of atoms. And we know that each atom has a nucleus which is a collection of particles called protons and neutrons. Protons and neutrons are in turn made up of particles called quarks. And each atom contains space. The whole universe, whether 'solid' or not, contains space.

So what causes a table of atoms (including space) to 'hang' together? What causes the universe to work so harmoniously in all that space? It is energy that is the apparent missing factor here, or what we might call the Creator's Love.

All this causes me to recall that when I was a teenager I decided to read a book to instruct me about electricity. The opening phrase of that book will always stand out in my mind. It said: "We do not know what electricity is." For me, electricity is part of the Creator's Love.

Things are not quite what they seem, are they? Our objective reality keeps on a certain road and only by employing a different form of vision can we start to discern the 'real' reality. Do we need to know this 'real' reality in our daily lives?

Well, let us say that if we were to take more note of it then we might start to bring a search for more spirituality into our lives as we realise that 'solid facts' are not what they purport to be. In fact, for many years science has recognised there's more to this world than physics, hence the development of quantum theory. Science is slowly finding what was known in India thousands of years ago.

The individual might simply follow modern science if he wishes, but having realised that apparently solid objects contain much more than we realised then we should soon come to the realisation that the human being - all life - isn't really solid either. And thinking back to the legend of Bruce and the spider we can recognise from our own experience that inspiration is a reality, and yet it is not solid. Some people would also say that love is a reality too, yet physics could never explain it.

Our perceptions - or at least in the way they have been trained in the education process (as Hoffman states) - cause us to go down alleyways that often come to a dead end.

One outstanding example of educated (trained) perceptions - just like the 'natural selection' theory - concerns history. It was not that long ago that we were taught that man did not appear until 4004 BC, and after that was calculated, archaeologists and historians of that time tried to fit all history it found into that time frame. That includes the age of the Giza pyramids, which are still only officially dated to the 3rd millennium BC but clearly go far, far back into ancient history - way before 4004 BC. 

Restrictive thinking went into the investigation of the history of India too, and that has taken a long time to correct. It would seem that India's meaningful history goes back to as early as 40,000 BC and perhaps earlier. 

We have also been conditioned to think that anything man-made that is complicated - mechanical or otherwise - is the preserve of the last few hundred years. Yet late in the 19th c. there was an object uncovered from the sea around Greece (as part of much other history also uncovered in that moment) that has only in the last few decades been found to be a piece of advanced engineering that has now been dated almost certainly to 205 BC.

This object has been called the Antikythera Mechanism, perhaps based on a development by Archimedes, who died shortly before the time of the making of this object.

But this mechanism is actually only a simple example. There are many fine intellects that have 'known' that the Giza pyramids had some greater function and principles of construction that exceeds anything we now know. We also know that in very ancient times there were flying machines. Some of them are clearly engraved on Egyptian monuments.

Taking into account that the world is not what we thought and is moving rapidly towards a changing situation of a nature that will be quite different to what we knew even 20 years ago, I suggest our perception - our vision - needs to accommodate this change and welcome it. It is leading to a time when the objective thinking that has led to the invasions of other countries and indiscriminate killing will cease. And many other good things besides.

'I cannot believe that God plays dice with the cosmos' - Albert Einstein

Thank you for reading this.