Mastery of Questioning
The third great working — and perhaps the deepest
There is in humanity something one finds nowhere else in the living world — at least to our knowledge. A capacity to ask: why does all this exist? Our primate cousins do not build temples, do not formulate philosophical systems on the nature of being, do not invent mathematics to describe the structure of the universe.
This capacity for questioning — this way humanity has of not being content merely to live, but wanting to understand — is, according to Universal Mechanics, one of our essential vocations within creation.
« Science alone is incapable of answering all questions and, despite its development, it never will be. »— Claude Lévi-Strauss
Three great questions, one direction
All philosophy, all science, all spirituality can be summarised in three fundamental questions. Where do we come from? — cosmology, particle physics, evolutionary biology, palaeontology. Who are we? — mythology, philosophy, psychology, neurology. Where are we going? — teleology, spiritualities, philosophy of history. It is here that Universal Mechanics inscribes itself, modestly, among thousands of attempts at an answer.
Fear is one of the great engines of this questioning. The fear of death, the fear of the unknown, the fear of an indifferent cosmos. The first religions were perhaps born of this fear. The first philosophies probably too. But something remarkable happens as this working advances: as answers arrive — even partial, even provisional — fear recedes. And in its place, something else begins to settle. Curiosity. Wonder. And increasingly, gratitude.
From anxiety to ecstasy
The resolution of questioning is the condition for accessing happiness. Every metaphysical question still unanswered creates physical discomfort in humanity. As long as this remains, man must face the challenge of these questions: he will work tirelessly to elucidate the absolute, infinity, time, God, death. When humanity has resolved its existential questioning, it will be able to access a life of serenity, peace and absolute happiness — what the great mystics have always called ecstasy, nirvana, beatitude.
