Dialogues of Nodin and William

Natural Laws #1

(PD) Rembrandt - Philosopher Meditating

Larry Neal Gowdy

Nature is that which shines;

man's light is in reflection.

Nodin: Most every time I open my door to a visitor, before me stands a young man begging. If you are a beggar, please walk on sir, for I have no money to give you, nor would I have an interest in buying anything that you might be wishing to sell.

William: Forgive me for my intrusion, but I was told that a Nodin lives here, a philosopher of whom I desire to speak. I ask not for money or material goods, but only for the opportunity to speak with Nodin the philosopher.

Nodin: Tell me, by what means did you arrive at my name and location?

William: I have heard of your name from several individuals, but it was the market herbalist who described the location and appearance of your dwelling, that is, if you are indeed Nodin, and if not, please forgive me of my error and I will leave.

Nodin: No, you have found the correct house; I am Nodin, but I am most assuredly not a philosopher, not as what such a term might imply, I am but a man, nothing more. Nevertheless, what is it that you wish to speak to me about?

William: I have heard that you are with a knowledge of the natural laws, a knowledge that is not taught in the schools, nor discussed among the street philosophers. I desire to learn about the laws and how they might differ from what the popular scholars teach.

Nodin: I am an old man, without wealth, and possibly senile and illiterate as well. Gaze upon my appearances, and tell me, do I look like a man who would possess such a knowledge?

William: I am an excellent judge of character Nodin, and it is in my opinion that you do indeed possess a wisdom that is not shared among the town philosophers. If you were wealthy, and wore riches as the street philosophers do, I would not waste my time standing here at your door. I may be an unlearned man of too few years of age, but I do know that material wealth almost invariably mirrors an education of words, not an education of life.

Nodin: Very well, come inside, and we will talk, but I offer you no promise that I will speak of the things that you wish to learn. I voice no claim of knowing anything beyond what the most common of man already knows by heart.

William: Thank you Nodin, and I will sit here upon the floor, close to the door, so as to not further intrude into your home.

Nodin: Ah, a conscientious soul, quite a rarity. Please, tell me why you feel that sitting near the door is a favored location than sitting, say, at my dining table?

William: My memory is long, and I remember all who have been near the objects that I too have been near, and whenever I approach the objects I remember those individuals who had also been with the objects. My mind associates past memories to things present, and if the memory is a displeasing one, then my presence near the object will recollect displeasing memories. I do not wish to leave you with a direct memory of me when you later sit down at the dining table to eat. And too, since it is unhealthy for mind and body to eat while under duress, even more important is it for me to remain distant from the dining table. If my visit is not a pleasant one for you, I do not wish for the memory to affect your health.

Nodin: You never did tell me your name young man, and upon my hearing your words of wisdom and thoughtful consideration for the welfare of others, I am now interested in speaking to you by name.

William: It is William. I am the youngest son of the diagnostician.

Nodin: I am pleased to meet you William, and I am familiar with your father, who holds an excellent reputation as an honorable and just man. Though I have not before spoken to anyone in your family, I am familiar with your siblings, and I have observed you and your brothers since birth. Yours is an honorable family.

William: If you have observed me since a child, then why did you pretend to not know me?

Nodin: Forgive me for my old man's game, but it is profitable at times to feign ignorance, so that the true nature of another individual can be observed. Often, when an individual believes he is anonymous in a crowd, he might commit an evil deed while thinking his identity will not be revealed. The true spirit of a man comes to light when the man is with the belief that he can behave as his heart desires without fear of punishment. My hypothesis of man's nature, along with my perceived conclusion of your personality relative to your mannerisms, and the little experiment of my pretending ignorance, were performed to validate that you are indeed a man of honor. As you can now see, I am always with a quest for knowledge that can be verified as true, and my every thought has as its companion the passion for correctness. Now, tell me, exactly what it is that has brought you to my modest home.

William: The natural laws are what I wish to learn of, that people say you are well-knowledgeable about. If I knew enough about the natural laws to ask intelligent questions, then I would know enough to not have to ask the questions. So I must stumble with my words, and hope that you will have patience with my lack of knowledge.

Nodin: You do realize, that what you are asking about, is today a social taboo? The governing powers do not like to hear of an individual speaking of the topic, and if you should in time learn information about the natural laws, you must not speak of the information in public, else you will be shunned, and possibly attacked, by the scholars and common man alike.

William: I am not associated with any ideology or sect, and so I am not concerned of being spurned by peers. As for the knowledge of natural laws, I am as a loner, I search for knowledge for my own use, and what the world chooses to believe is the world's choice, not mine. I do accept the responsibility and burden of any knowledge possessed.

Nodin: Very well then, you have been given fair warning, and I will speak of it no more. Tell me, so that I will have a grasp of what system of logic you currently use; by what principles do you analyze knowledge?

William: I cannot say, for I am unsure if I use any principle at all, and if I might use a principle, then I am not conscious of it. To the best of my analysis at the moment, I simply retain information in memory, and I try to rationalize whether the information might be of a truthful nature or of an untruthful nature. Beyond that, I have no recollection of applying a specific principle to my learning of knowledge.

Nodin: Your honesty is well-received, and with the honesty it is recognized that you do apply principles to your learning of knowledge, that of the principle of correctness, and too, that you are indeed without a consciousness of applying the principles. Observe your memories, and tell me, was not your behavior of sitting by the door a decision based upon a principle?

William: Why yes, now that you speak of it, yes, I suppose that I did act upon a principle of not wishing to do anyone harm. But was not my behavior only an act, and not one of learning?

Nodin: Is not learning an act also? All things in the universe are acts, all are in motion of change, of being and becoming, all things are relative to all things else, and any principle applied to one act will naturally influence all other acts. But to answer your question more directly, your act of consideration for others, is a controlling factor in your search for knowledge. Your behavior is one of the foundations upon which all other acts are colored, and the foundation is your principle by which you learn. Without your principle of consideration for others' wellbeing, I would not have allowed you in my door, nor would I be speaking to you now. Do you see how your principles have affected your opportunities to learn?

William: Yes, thank you, it is an intriguing thought to consider how much knowledge might be gained or lost, depending on the individual's behavior. But I am still uncertain how such a principle of behavior might influence my analysis of knowledge.

Nodin: Your actions verified that your mind analyzed the knowledge it already holds, and you correctly physically applied the knowledge of how negative emotions can do harm to another person. Most individuals learn a knowledge, such as the one we are speaking of, of how negative emotions destroy the mind and body, but the individuals never apply the knowledge in their own lives. Knowing the knowledge about a thing, but not applying the knowledge, is as if the individual possessed no knowledge at all. Therefore, to me, your outward behavior signifies that you are of the rare souls that hold firmly onto the correct principle of rationalizing knowledge, and then applying the knowledge in one's life. In you, knowledge is profitable, but in most people, they could hold all the knowledge of all the world, and yet the individuals would still not be capable of using the knowledge.

William: I sincerely thank you Nodin, for already I have learned a new thing, a new way of seeing myself and how I think. I still must confess that I was not fully conscious of my using the knowledge of emotions when I chose to sit by the door, but I can now analyze why the decision was made.

Nodin: Of the primary natural laws, one is that there are two polarities to all things, a positive and a negative, an up and a down, a spiritual and a physical, an inward and an external, a creativeness and a destructiveness, and in-between the polarities are infinite degrees of how each polarity is expressed. It is each person's choice to choose the proper polarity of thought and behavior. One polarity will create, while the other polarity will destroy, and within the act of analyzing there are two polarities, of internal and external. The common man has chosen the external polarity for analyzing the world around him, while he uses the inward polarity for choosing behaviors, of which both are the destructive polarities.

William: Please, Nodin, explain to me what the differences are, between the external and the internal analyzing.

Nodin: For now, I will only speak of a small thing, one of which you can mentally associate to your own behavior. Your decision to sit by the door was an inward polarity of analyzing, one that used the self-created inward empathies of which you then related to external things, and your final decision was based not on what might profit you personally at the moment, but rather the decision was based on what might profit things external to you. Your decisions were proper and correct, and in agreement with one of the most primary laws of Nature, that of a form of creativity through altruism. Without altruism there can be no creativity, and without creativity there could be no Creation.

William: Aha, please correct me if I am mistaken, but then it appears, as I understand your words, that my choice of choosing properness of conduct, is in itself a form of a natural law manifested through my own behavior?

Nodin: Yes, what you have said is very close to a fullness of an explanation of the natural law. And tell me, by what manner did you arrive at such a choice and behavior?

William: Upon reflection, it appears that I chose the behavior because, inwardly, it felt proper, and by my being able to see the results of the behavior, I determined that the choice was useful to all things, and thus valid.

Nodin: So then, do you now understand what principles you use when learning? Does not your reasoning require the verification of the accuracy and usefulness of a thing being learned?

William: Ah, yes, I believe I am beginning to grasp a portion of what you are pointing to, that my principle of learning is to verify the knowledge as to how it relates to what is observable. Oh Nodin, I will require days of contemplation before the concept settles well in my mind, but the present moment is already elated of a new discovery, and most entertaining is that the discovery was found within my own self.

Nodin: Such are among the natural laws, of which principles are derived, and the natural law that creativity is a necessity for Creation to create, and thus creativity is good, it is upon that goodness that we judge our own thoughts and behavior as good or bad.

William: Oh, but Nodin, the philosophers and scholars have told me that it is impossible to know what is right or wrong, that there is, in fact, no such thing.

Nodin: Did you not tell me before that you observed the benefits of altruism?

William: Yes, I did indeed say as much, and yes, I myself have observed the effects.

Nodin: And tell me this, of the philosophers and scholars, how many of them know of the ill effects of negativity?

William: I would think that all of them hold the knowledge, for after all, the knowledge has been well-known and documented for thousands of years.

Nodin: And please tell me further, of all the philosophers and scholars you have met, how many of the individuals behaved as you did when you sat by my door? Do the men apply the knowledge in their lives, or have the men merely memorized words?

William: Oh, and with regret I must admit, that I have not witnessed any of the philosophers or scholars behaving with a consideration for anyone else. Some men are more compassionate than others, but as a whole, none exhibited a true caring of the emotions that they create in other people.

Nodin: Then who are you to believe, the philosophers and scholars, who themselves know of the knowledge but refuse to apply the knowledge in their own lives, which means that the men do not truly believe their knowledge true, or are you to believe yourself, who has verified the knowledge by experiment and implementation?

William: I see what you mean, and I must admit that I feel an uneasiness inside, that I must choose for myself which to trust, the words of men who have proven to not believe in their own knowledge, or for me to trust my own knowledge that I have verified as true.

Nodin: Such is one reason why you were given the warning to not publicly speak of natural laws, for if you speak of a thing not in agreement with the philosophers, and you speak of what can be verified as true, then you will meet the resistance of those individuals who prefer to believe in the philosophers' words. The uneasiness you now feel, it is an emotion, one that craves for deliverance, and for the common man who has no firsthand knowledge as yours, he has no opportunity to choose between belief and verification, for his only choice is already limited to believing in the philosophers, and he must choose to attack your words so as to alleviate the gnawing emotion. Better it is to allow man to live within a comfortable emotion of belief, which allows health and peace of mind, than for you to try in vain to make choices for man by forcing new information upon him. If your choice of behavior was proper to sit by the door, maintaining a distance from my dining table, so as to preclude the possibility of harming my future emotions, then so is it a proper behavior to keep some knowledge a good distance from man.

William: That is a difficult pill to swallow Nodin. How can I yearn for the properness of altruism, while I yet do nothing to alleviate the destructive knowledge among man? Is that not a contradiction of behavior and choice?

Nodin: Teach by example, not by empty words. Did you not knock upon my door? Are you not here now, listening, thinking, and learning? There are likely thousands of old men as myself, who enjoy a useful discussion, and of whom all individuals of good heart can approach for information. You contacted me of your own choice, I did not force you to listen, but rather you have made all the choices, and such is how it must be for everyone, they must decide to make the choice for themselves, no one can make the choice for them.

William: Why yes, Nodin, of course, I agree, but still I have the question, that should not profitable knowledge be made available for anyone who might be searching but is not able to find a kind ear to speak with?

Nodin: The information is available, it has been available for thousands of years, the knowledge is in books that can be found in most every mercantile that sells books. If the public has refused the knowledge for thousands of years, knowledge that was written by numerous masters of natural laws, then by what rationale would I be capable of convincing myself that yet another author's words would miraculously be listened to? Would I not be foolish to believe myself unique and somehow capable of accomplishing a feat that men of much greater talents were not capable of?

William: I see what you mean Nodin, and though I understand and sympathize with your words, still my heart feels saddened that man has chosen to trust in man, and not in Nature.

Nodin: The decision, whether to trust in man, which was created by Nature, or to trust in Nature, which created man, is the choice that we all must choose for ourselves. To learn of the Nature-based logics, it is quite necessary to accept Nature as the teacher.

Dialogues of Nodin and William - Natural Laws #1