From “A Daughter was born to us today” Pages from the diaries of Samuel and Daniele Widmer Nicolet.
This abstract is from Samuel’s diary. Libya. 29th March 2004.
Lao Tse had often said, that around those who understand the art of doing nothing, everything happens of its own accord.
In my life I have made this principle my own. Things must grow like trees, slowly, organically, integrally, otherwise they degenerate like a cancerous ulcer. Everything that thinking produces – most of what human beings have achieved – belongs to this type of growth. Politicians, generals, priests and ordinary people, all think that human difficulties can be solved through new ideas, that the human problem is an organisational one. It is not so. The really great human mistake which we, as yet have to overcome, was always and everywhere, the thought, that reason, the movement of the brain from one thought to another, that the way of the “I” would bring us further.
It is the perception of a still brain, the movement from perception to perception, the movement with and in perception which will help us further. Wherever one looks, with us at home (in the west) or here in Tripolis, in the Islamic world for example, one recognises no doubt, the well meaning attempts of human beings to create the right way of life in the sense that they create a system which everyone should follow. Every such attempt has failed, has ended up in a dead alley. Till now we have only produced errors because we have always chosen the way of thought, the way of reason, the way of systems and organisation, the way of security.
To go with perception means, to go with love. Till now human beings have not dared to take this risk.