An excellent thought

I read this today: "I feel like my conscious mind is a waiter working in a bar, slipping knowledge sandwiches through a slot to the "boys in the back room," and getting theorems back from time to time.

I am as much the boys in the back room as the waiter." (by T. Gaffney, a mathematician)

I spent the morning chatting to a random woman about Sai Baba (she was on her way to India, for a worshipping session) and the notion of spirituality, destiny, responsibility, the ego (or the self), consciousness and free will. Though I was sleepy and it was far too early in the morning for this kind of conversation, it was interesting, and it beat having coffee alone in the airport lounge, in any case.

There seems to be some consensus between what she was saying (or what she is saying that Sai Baba is saying), what the Buddhists are saying and what this mathematician guy is saying: that the mind works in layers, and that most of the good stuff is produced in the back room, ie. the unconscious mind, which is then either acted upon or vetoed by the conscious mind. And, apparently, and according to all these, we have some kind of mad, paradoxical free will, a free will we use in a limited capacity. Which kind of makes sense. Anyway, there you go. The quote made me laugh.

By the way, I got Bruce Lee.