Extrato de KINGSLEY, Peter. Reality. Inverness: Golden Sufi Center, 2003, p. 97-98
Greeks considered it quite normal—almost a commonplace—to compare mortals with leaves. As Homer had stated repeatedly, well before the time of Parmenides, the human race is as short-lived [96] as leaves that now are growing on a tree and a moment later have been blown away in swirls by the wind.
This is the eternal perspective, the divine wisdom that Greek poets at their best were able to touch and convey: in reality all our wonderful experiences and great ordeals amount to nothing.
And from the divine point of view all our intelligent decisions [diakrisis] are nothing but indecision. Every choice we ever make stems from the lack of any true ability to discriminate. What for us is discrimination is the exact opposite for Parmenides; is what keeps us spinning around in a daze. And what Parmenides means by discrimination [diakrisis] is total madness to us.
The difference in perspectives could hardly reach deeper, or be more paradoxical. And yet it’s very easy to understand. The decisions we make, the only type of decision we are familiar with, are always between one thing and another; between something and something else. But the decision that the goddess is facing us with is between everything and nothing—which is a completely different matter.
It makes no sense at all to our usual restless thinking, to what Parmenides calls our “wandering minds.” But one thing should be quite clear: there is nothing even remotely rational about this decision, this choice between two paths.
Rationality is the first thing to go out of the window, because the choice we are being asked to make involves saying yes to absolutely everything we see or think or hear. It demands a state of total alertness, complete acceptance. There is no time to discriminate, no room to be reasonable.
And there is not the slightest reason to go along with this choice that the goddess is urging us to make. Having divine logic on her side has never been enough for her to convince anyone, because only one single factor will ever persuade us. [97]
This is the silent awareness, nurtured in stillness, of how all our careful decisions are nothing but avoidance of that one crucial decision the gods have been waiting and waiting to see us make for thousands of years. (2003, p. 97-98)