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ArtistSpanish Baroque.Once a disciple asked Al Ghazali, "What is the biggest miracle of the world? - It's a man who fails to see its miracles!" he answered with a sigh. No dirt, no artifacts.
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Self-ignorance is a truly amazing thing. It may be the greatest wonder of the world we live in, though nobody has yet thought to charge admission.
A man will travel three thousand miles to see a waterfall, climb a mountain to admire the sunrise, and spend twenty years studying the habits of a beetle, yet remain entirely unacquainted with the fellow who accompanied him on every expedition.
I mean himself.
This is convenient, because the stranger within us is troublesome company. He remembers things we have carefully forgotten. He laughs at our explanations. He knows precisely why we dislike certain people, and his explanation is generally less flattering than ours.
We say, “I am angry because that man is a fool.”
The stranger says, “No. You are angry because he resembles you.”
Naturally, we throw the stranger out.
But he owns the house.
I once imagined enlightenment would be a magnificent affair involving trumpets, celestial bookkeeping, and perhaps a committee of angels presenting a certificate embossed in gold. Instead, I suspect it is closer to discovering that the thief you have been pursuing through the streets has been wearing your trousers all along.
Human beings possess an astonishing appetite for knowledge provided it concerns something else.
We measure stars we shall never visit. We name extinct reptiles. We calculate the age of stones. We argue about God with such confidence that God himself might hesitate to interrupt.
Yet ask a man why he wants what he wants and presently the machinery begins smoking.
“Because I chose it.”
Why did you choose it?
“Because I wanted it.”
Why did you want it?
At this point philosophy becomes an act of aggression.
The ancient teachers understood the joke. They kept pointing inward, and humanity kept looking over their shoulders to see what they were pointing at.
We built temples.
They pointed again.
We wrote scriptures.
They pointed again.
We invented elaborate doctrines concerning the precise theological significance of their fingers.
Still they pointed.
Perhaps that is why the wisest people often seem amused. They have discovered that the universe has hidden its greatest mystery in the one place nobody thinks to search: directly behind the eyes of the person doing the searching.
And when at last you turn around, there may be no thunderbolt.
Only laughter.
For the final miracle is not that we know so little about ourselves.
It is that the thing we have spent our whole lives looking for has been doing the looking.
