True Understanding: The Mead of Immortality
The answer to “what is the point of life” is so hard to give, because it doesn’t come pre-packaged in any of the usual forms we get answers in- this answer doesn’t sound like something; it doesn’t look like something, it doesn’t taste like anything, nor does it smell like anything. It doesn’t have a texture. It doesn’t come in the shape of a thought that echoes through your head.
It is something that you just have to experience, in a “new” way of experiencing- a new way of “feeling”, perhaps- this answer of all answers is never an “object” apart from you, or a sensation apart from you that you gain “knowledge” of in that manner; It is something you feel with none of you, and therefore ironically with all of you, in a greater sense than most people are prepared to realize. When people do as the Allfather did, and let the self give way to the Self, the mortal to the immortal or timeless, they have this experience; they know the Great Runa. Then that person Understands.
But what is Understanding? Is understanding the state or mind you have after you hear and comprehend a mechanical explanation for something? Let’s begin by asking a question.
What is honey? Is honey a chemical, something that can be described as a collection of chemicals and atomic bonds between various elements? Can we say what it is by referring to its origin in a honeycomb, or the purpose bees have for making it? “Honey” is none of those things; it is not mere chemical composition; it is not its origin nor is it what it was made for.
Honey is sweetness. Honey is the taste of honey, and the effect it has on the mind of the person who experiences it. Honey is golden, sweet nectar that flows and gives energy, helps life into life. It is sweetness. “Honey” is not a static chemical compound nor a honeycomb; “Honey” is a name we give to a dynamic event, to the occurence of sweetness that happens when we put it in our mouths, to the emotional reactions we have in that sweet moment, to the memory of that sweetness. That is honey, and this understanding of it is the Mead of immortality.
When people try to make a purely mechanical explanation of things, they are actually not making an explanation at all, for they are removing the object to be explained from the realm wherein understanding takes place, and banishing it away to a mechanical, unconscious, and incomprehensible place. They are shunning their duties to the Godly mind and spirit placed in them by Allfather and taking refuge with the Giantish forces below, which are enemies of consciousness and understanding; they are oafish and wicked to the last.
Notice that you are not consciously aware of the mechanical operations of your brain that keep you alive and breathing every day; you don’t have to consciously will yourself to “live” or “breathe” or to make your heart beat. The Mechanical world, inside of humans and outside of them, is not a world where the light of understanding shines. It is the realm of Giants, barely conscious or unconscious natural forces that operate quite mechanically. It is also not a place that can be used as a stage for understanding what greets our minds everyday, the things we sense and feel.
If a person wanted to explain what a smile was, they could say “it is the movement of certain muscles in the face, after electrical signals come from the brain, due to certain stimulus”- and this person may be totally correct in their brilliant mechanical analysis of smiling; but they have failed to explain what a smile was. A smile is joy.
I do not say that a smile happens because of joy, or that smiles are “functions” of joy, for in the same way that water is not a “function” of a river, smiles are not functions of joy. Rivers ARE water. Smiles ARE joy. It is not electricty or nerves which are manifested when a person smiles, but the Wyrd of joy.
A person can see this in every aspect of human life- what is a sailboat? You could say that it was wooden pieces assembled with rigging and sails, and you could quite accurately explain the entire blueprint of the ship. But what is a ship? Is it just the sum of its parts? For all those who have ever dropped a sail and glided across the open water, this is not even a question- they already know that a ship is more than just parts.
A ship is freedom. I do not say that a ship helps us to find freedom, or helps us to move about in a more free manner; I say that a ship is freedom. It is another manifestation of the human desire to fulfill their deepest nature- a nature that is free in every respect.
The ship, along with the propellor, the saddle and the wheel, are freedom. Once you release yourself from the need to describe them only in materialistic terms of structure or textbook function, and you fly, or ride, or sail, you enter the realm of Understanding, a final dimension that most accurately fulfills these creatures and which is the perfection of whatever mechanical causes and effects led up to them. For us humans, gifted with the capacity for understanding by the Allfather, this perfection is the Truth about things, that we humans were meant to comprehend, declare, and celebrate.
Understanding never takes place in the purely mechanical, unconscious reaches of the brain- and reducing everything to a purely mechanical model denies the Truth about human beings, and by extension, the world- there is something holy and sublime animating us and this creation, the spirit of Ond, the very awareness of Wyrd- and our understanding and enjoyment of all things is only a fraction of its understanding and enjoyment, though it could in no manner understand or enjoy without us. Reality relies on us to be complete, and completes itself in all things, including us; the Gods need us as much as we need them; all things are together a whole.
As I said before, understanding takes place in the full conscious experience of humanity, in the engaged mind, the emotions, the senses, but more than that, in the greater “sense” that is beyond the heaps of sensory input.
Some may say that no “sense” is beyond those heaps, but those same people would be in grave error- for no person IS the objects of eye, ear, nose, tongue, or touch. There is something sublime and bornless which forever knows those things but is not those things, even if it cannot be seperated from them in the complete circle of Reality.
Whatever is going on in the “incomprehensible depths” of the human or reality- the realm of Hel- is only the domain of the Gods and the Helrune or mystic who journeys down there- and most importantly, those who journey all take the light of understanding with them- and they go to find the light in the deep- a light which is the same as the light of the original world of understanding they left, but now they can see it anew, in a radical new way.
Notice that the mystic never enters the Underworld without a burning purpose and without taking the light of understanding with them, to show the way- they travel like the messengers of consciousness penetrating the below, like the mind of Allfather plunging into the depths, to Hel, where he could speak with the Volva, tapping the universal memory of all knowledge.
The Helrune, the mystic, they all carry the items or objects they need to make their return, their memories, their magical tricks, all to hold back the incomprehensible darkness; and notice that no mystic ever remains in the Underworld, in the dark depths; the mystic must return and re-enter into the comprehensible world of light and understanding, carrying the wisdom won from below back “up” to the world that needs it.