5 The vision of the the bicycle wheel

John woke up after a deep sleep. He received lessons in his dreams again. He saw a bicycle. When he saw the bicycle in his dream, he felt that this was an educational dream. He felt, as so often, a loving presence behind him to the right. That was his spiritual teacher. He had a man’s voice, but John never saw his face, only heard the voice. He had visions in dreams often, after which this teacher would explain the image that was shown to him.

He saw the front wheel of the bicycle, separate from the bicycle. John had repaired
bicycles before and knew how such a wheel was put together. The voice said, “Look closely. The wheel consists of an axle, spokes and a rim with a tire around it. For the lessons you are learning now, we will only use the axle, the spokes and the rim. These symbolize the reasoning of every mind. The axle is the inside of the wheel, where all spokes start. The rim is the outside of the wheel where all the spokes end. The axle symbolize the inner core of every spirit. “The I”. The edge symbolizes the human behaviour in the world they can touch. Each spoke represents a series of causes and effects: from A follows B, B causes C, and C causes D, and so on. The first moment of choice, the very first cause of an action, deep inside, is the point of attachment of the spoke to the axle. Through a chain of logical cause-and-effect steps, behaviour eventually arises that can be observed by others. The point where the spoke is attached to the rim.”

John understood what the teacher was talking about. During meditations, he had often seen this process but could not find human words for it. This dream would help him
explain these things to other people. He decided that he would write these things down so he wouldn’t forget. John had often done that with learning in dreams.

The teacher continued with his explanation. “Logical reasoning, in which A, B, C, D and so on form a chain of causes and effects, can be called linear reasoning. After all, the spoke is a straight line. This reasoning is also a kind of straight line in the mind, from the first cause to the last effect. You can apply this image to many topics. Human consciousness is just one example. The sciences are another example. Every topic within a science has a first cause and a final effect. The wheel can serve as a figurative example. The axle is the first appearance of all the things we know. The rim is the final state of all the things we know. Sciences as well as spirituality reason like this. According to many religions, everything comes from God and returns to God at the end.”

The teacher continued his explanation. Imagine a simple drawing of a bicycle wheel. Now you place the texts A1 at one spoke near the axle and the Z1 at the end of the spoke near the rim. That is a logical, linear process of reasoning. Now place characters on the spoke next to it A2, B2, C2, D2 to Z2. That is another logical, linear process of reasoning. If you now look at the similarities between A1 and A2, you can draw a line between them. A line from the first to the second spoke, close to the axle. You can continue this line of thought to the next spoke A3. If you go around the whole wheel like this, you end up at the first spoke again: point A1. This creates a circle, a circular reasoning. Circular reasoning does not follow the chain of causes and effects, but the chain of similarities it is associative reasoning. This is how emotions, the human subconscious mind works.”

After John woke up, he wrote down the dream. It provided a good way to summarize his knowledge.

A small poem came to his mind:

Add the laws of cause and effect
to the laws of association
and we build a new nation