We should all become detectives. Having the great Sherlock Holmes as a model.
We are all living in a great mystery, meaning that the portion of what we don’t know and are not aware of – is much much greater then what we do know and comprehend. And not only that, things begin: to get fertilized, incubated, or become pregnant – all in the in the great unknown.
But we don’t live like that, we ignore the great unknown and relate only to what falls within the boundaries of what we already know.
The proportions between the known and the unknown is like the classic example of the iceberg, what caused the titanic to sink is the 9/10 of the ice berg which is below the water.
And so we live in a world of symptoms and end results, while the world of reason, meaning and being – remains sealed in the great unknown.
So, we must become detectives, although we are standing in the known, our eyes should be searching, watching and observing, intently, for signs, signals, traces – that the unknown has left in the known. (Like in nonverbal communication; when a sudden shift of eye contact is a signal about possible disturbance in a conversation, or a silence when a response is expected, or a phone conversation that was done between friends once a week, and all of a sudden the frequency has dropped to once every three week, technical excuses should not be welcomed… only core reasons which are mainly to do with the ”dark side of the moon” of the relationship).
One of the disappearing examples of great experts in the field of following trails are Native American trackers who track trails and traces (of an unknown person that walked here), which would lead them to whom they are after.
Detectives are not needed for what is known, for that there are clerks, administrative and technical staff. Detectives come to the world to find truth (in their case it is the murderer, or the person who committed the crime), which mostly is in the unknown, but in order to find it in a conversation, one must look for signs in the seen, like: what doesn’t fit, what doesn’t belong, contradiction, oppositions, and above all: paradoxes, all could be entry ports, secret passage ways, leading corridors – into the dimension of the hidden truth.
Conversation is the main arena upon which such discoveries could happen, and the detective tools in this mission of salvaging the truth from the unknown – are: persistent questions, penetrating dialogues, and an ear to sense what is missing.
Here are some highly intelligent observations of Conan Doyle (who was very spiritual) on being a detective creature in this world (recommended, not to skip 😋):
Sherlock Holmes and Watson
“Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, the Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”
― Arthur “It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important “To a great mind, nothing is little,’ remarked Holmes, sententiously.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarletnt.”
“Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?’
‘To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.’
‘The dog did nothing in the night-time.’
‘That was the curious incident,’ remarked Sherlock Holmes.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, Silver Blaze
“You see, but you do not observe.”
― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Scandal in Bohemia.
“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle; Corrections and Editor Edgar W. Smith; Illustrators, The Hound of the Baskervilles
“My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people do not know.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.
“My mind,” he said, “rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four
Gabriel