I used to think I was
special. Of course I am - everyone is by the way, nobody is exactly the same -
but for a long time I seriously thought I was one of a kind. Looking back, this
was a result of my childhood environment more than anything else. Scandinavia,
and my cherished motherland in particular, seem to have a keen and effective
ambition to quench any desire to separate yourself from the mainstream
collective. Thus it wasn’t until I significantly and wholeheartedly expanded my
own personal world that I found other people with a more genuine similarity to
myself. More so as I simultaneously expanded my mind, I found that my tribe had
more members than I ever thought. Thankfully though, we are still fairly hard
to come by. Reading in On the Origin of
Species how Charles Darwin would wander the gardens of familiar castles and
draw conclusions about evolution based on everyday observations and comparing
them to his experiences on travels around the world, instantly reminded me of
my own description of this natural curiosity that drives everything I do, (see ‘Just a Rock’). Finally, here is a person who thinks like me! Sad that he has been
dead for decades. Watching Cosmos on Nat Geo about a year later, brilliantly
educated me about how these amazing individuals looked at the world with this
intuitive curiosity and questioned how things work. From Newton with his apples
to Cecilia Payne who deciphered the composition of stars by looking at the
light they emitted. I realized that they, like Darwin, were also likeminded
people who managed to transcend the dogmas and convictions of their respective
paradigms and reach new enlightened levels. And not only that, they also
managed to pave the way for the rest of the world to join them and thus reach a
higher level of enlightenment. Despite obstinate resistance from their peers,
they stood their ground and eventually effected real and everlasting change.
Recently a documentary
in the series Ancient Aliens on History Channel made a great comment about this
type of people. Calling them prophets, they stated that these people have
appeared throughout history, spawning new fantastic thoughts that helped carry
our species further up the evolutionary ladder, step by step to where we are
today. Their theory was that they might have had help from extraterrestrials
feeding them information previously unavailable to humans. I wouldn’t go that
far, but it seems clear to me that these prophets definitely had some special
skill to quiet their minds, take an objective look at the world around them and
driven by a natural curiosity make fundamental discoveries that revolutionized
their respective worlds. Ancient Aliens used Einstein as their prime modern
example and rightly so. Here is a man who has completely changed the field of
physics and thus also our entire world view. And according to the documentary,
Einstein’s famous relativity theory was spawned in a misty German street where
he observed how the light of a street lamp was being blocked by the mist
surrounding it, and thus he realized that light travels at a certain speed
which in turn led him to discover and share relativity with the world, which in
turn have jetted Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku and other great contemporary
thinkers in exciting new directions. But just like Darwin, Newton and Payne,
Einstein came to these groundbreaking discoveries through everyday observations
driven by his natural curiosity and with the help of these he changed the world
and brought humans a step forward in our evolution. The more I think about
these people and what they did for the species, the more I believe that these
thoughts are what’s really important and where my focus should actually lie. I
mean, furthering human evolution, changing the way people see the world,
educating about truth, how the universe works, and on the way perhaps
discovering new “truths” that encourage other people to look in other
directions and further evolve the human psyche, can there be any cause more
important than that. I don’t believe so. We have to keep evolving, otherwise we
will certainly perish over time. Sure, our modern world needs a lot of quick
fixing, but thankfully there are numerous people willing to dedicate themselves
to these causes. I think my talents are better spent here, writing this stuff
in whatever form it eventually ends up in. In other words, I have found a new
mission. Maybe these thinkers didn’t have aliens whispering in their ears,
rather they had their intuition and the ability to listen to it, see the signs
the universe threw at them and follow it. So in a sense they were being guided,
but not by aliens, by the universe, gently pushing them down their personal
legend and the road taken leading us all forward in the process. Prophets
indeed, yet I call them by another name as I will eventually get to.
These long dead
legends as well as their contemporary heirs, feel more like kindred spirits
more so than any person I met for a long time. Thankfully I meet more and more
and each of these fellow thinkers who have managed to look beyond social
stigmas, religious doctrines and general human dictation, absorb my ideas and
help them grow larger, and for that I am truly thankful. In many ways they are
my audience, but hopefully I can also reach other groups and give them tools to
look at the world in the same way. The hope is to eventually find an outlet
that will enable anyone trapped in the noise of the mistuned rhythms of
society, religion and tradition a chance to drown out the sound pollution and
listen and feel the universal clockwork slowly ticking away.
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