Letter 2.3 You were not born free
Sorry Benoit but you were not born free.
People pretend to be born “Free” and to live in a free society. Take that with a grain of salt.
You were born in jail and this jail is your physical body. This is nothing new. Plato talked about it 2300 years ago. You only have to replace Plato’s cave with your body.
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Think of the newborn baby opening his eyes for the first time. He must think "What am I doing here? This is a mistake." He finds himself inside a body of which he does not have any control. What could be the purpose of those arms and those legs? He wants to go back where he came from. His only way to escape is to sleep and sleep and sleep again. He is fighting for the freedom he lost.
We get conscious of the world around us through our senses.
Our vision is limited between red and violet and that's very limited indeed. Some snakes go hunting at night because they can 'see' the heat emitted by their prey. Many animals have night vision. We don't. Our contact with the world is reduced to a very narrow window. If Aliens ever come to visit us they will think that we are 99% blind. How can you pretend to be free?
Our hearing is not much better: 8 octaves (at best).
You could make the same observation about what is most important in our life and does not have a shape, a color or a weight. We are living under the influence of many things that are not under our control. We need to sleep but we have no idea of what happens during our sleep. Are you sure that many decisions are not made during our sleep and implemented during the day? How can we be sure that we are not implementing during the day some decisions made at night?
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And there is worse. Much worse! Our brain also is limited.
Do you remember my letter about the tattoos? I told you that we have to adapt our thinking to the level of what we are observing. That was only a beginning. I wanted to prepare you for a more realistic view of the humain brain. Compared with our body, our human brain is very (very) primitive. Go back to my letter 1.3 The human brain. You could not answer a simple question: "If Mary's daughter is my son's mother, what is my relationship with Mary?"
Our freedom is not limited by outside constraints. Its main limits are the possibilities of our brain.
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Fortunately, there is hope.
Our limitations could be a handicap, but they can also be an opportunity. Look at what happened to animals with a poor eyesight. They develop their sense of hearing or their sense of smell. Trying to compensate for their handicap introduces them into a new world. Blind people develop a more acute sense of hearing.
Limited thinking in humans should be an opportunity to develop other possibilities. Could we develop Intuition? Consciousness?
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Would it be possible that thinking is nothing more than a way to develop consciousness and developing consciousness is our way to develop freedom?
Every problem could be a step on your way to freedom!
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