Ordinary people enter life without even knowing what it is to live, and at each step they have to learn how to live. And before knowing what they want to realise, they must at least know how to walk; as we teach a tiny little child how to walk, in life one has also to learn how to live. Which people know how to live? And it is through experience, through mistakes, through all kinds of misfortunes and troubles of every sort that gradually one begins to be what is called reasonable; that is, when one has made a mistake a certain number of times and has had troublesome consequences from this mistake, one learns not to make it again. But there is a moment, when the brain is developed enough and you can use the reason, well, reason can help you to reduce the number of these mistakes, to teach you to walk the path without stumbling too often.
The immense majority of human beings are born, live and die without knowing why this has happened to them. They take it… it is like that; they are born, they live, they have what they call their joys and their sorrows, and they come to the end and go away. They came in and went out without learning anything. This indeed is the immense majority.
There is among them a small number of people called the elite, who try to know what has happened to them, why they are upon earth and why all that happens to them happens. Then among these there are some who use their reason and they find a way of walking properly on the path, much faster than the others. These are reasonable beings.
Now there is a handful — a big handful — of people who are born with the feeling that there is something else to find in life, a higher purpose to life, that there is an aim, and they strive to find it. So for these the path goes beyond reason, to regions which they have to explore either with or without help, as chance takes them, and they must then discover the higher worlds. But there are not many of this kind. I don’t know how many of these there are now in the world, but I have the impression that they could still be counted. So for these it depends on when they begin.
Now there are beings, I think, who are born and whose rational period of life may begin very early, when they are very young, and it may last for a very short time; and then they are almost immediately ready to set out on new and unexplored paths towards the higher realities. But in order to set out on these paths without fear and without any danger, one must have organised his being with the help of reason around the highest centre he consciously possesses, and organised it in such a way that it is inwardly in his control and he has not to say at every moment, “Ah! I have done this, I don’t know why. Ah! that’s happened to me, I don’t know why” — and always it is “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know”, and as long as it is like that, the path is somewhat dangerous. Only when one does what he wants, knows what he wants, does what he wants and is able to direct himself with certitude, without being tossed about by the hazards of life, then one can go forward on the supranational paths fearlessly, unhesitatingly and with the least danger. But one need not be very old for this to happen. One can begin very young: even a child of five can already make use of reason to control himself; I know it. There is enough mental organisation in the being in these little tots who look so spontaneous and irresponsible; there is enough cerebral organisation for them to organise themselves, their life, their nature, their movements, actions and thoughts with reason.[…]
Do the laws of Nature follow the law of human reason?
Oh, no!
Then how can we explain so many laws of Nature by human reason ?
Because human reason is higher than Nature.
Nature is infrarational. The laws of Nature are infrarational laws. So when men come along and tell you, “But what do you want, it is the law of Nature”, as for me, it makes me laugh. It is not worth being a man, it would be better for you to be a monkey or an elephant or a lion. The laws of Nature are infrarational.
This is the only superiority that man has, his having a reason, and when he doesn’t make use of it he becomes absolutely an animal.
That’s the last excuse to give: “What do you want, it’s the law of Nature!”
25 May 1955
