BENGALURU: Does wisdom lie in the accumulation of much knowledge? If one may ask, what is it that you are seeking? “I have gone after different things at different periods of my life and what I have sought I have generally found. I have gathered much experience, and have had a rich and varied life. I read a great deal on a variety of subjects, and have been to one of the eminent analysts, but I am still seeking.”
Why are you doing all this? Why this search, whether superficial or deep? “What a strange question to ask! If one did not seek, one would vegetate; if one did not constantly learn, life would have no meaning, one might just as well die.”
Again, what are you learning? In reading what others have said about the structure and behaviour of human beings, in analysing social and cultural differences, in studying any of the various sciences or schools of philosophy, what is it that you are gathering? “I feel that if only one had enough knowledge it would save one from strife and misery, so I gather it where I can. Knowledge is essential to understanding.”
Does understanding come through knowledge? Or does knowledge prevent creative understanding? We seem to think that by accumulating facts and information, by having encyclopaedic knowledge, we shall be set free from our bondages. This is simply not so. Antagonism, hatred and war have not been stopped, though we all know how destructive and wasteful they are. Knowledge is not necessarily preventive of these things; on the contrary, it may stimulate and encourage them. So is it not important to find out why we are gathering knowledge?
“I have talked to many educators who think that if knowledge can be spread sufficiently widely it will dissipate man’s hatred for man and prevent the complete destruction of the world. I think this is what most serious educators are concerned with.”Though we now have so much knowledge in so many fields, it has not stopped man’s brutality to man even among those of the same group, nation, or religion. Perhaps knowledge is blinding us to some other factor that is the real solution to all this chaos and misery. “What is that?”
In what spirit are you asking that question? A verbal answer could be given, but it would only be adding more words to an already overburdened mind. For most people, knowledge is the accumulation of words or the strengthening of their prejudices and beliefs. Words, thoughts, are the framework in which the self concept exists. This concept contracts or expands through experience and knowledge, but the hard core of the self remains, and mere knowledge or learning can never dissolve it. Revolution is the voluntary dissolution of this core, of this concept, whereas action born of self-perpetuating knowledge can only lead to greater misery and destruction.
“You suggested that there might be a different factor which is the true solution to all our miseries, and I am asking in all seriousness what that factor is. If such a factor exists and one could know and build one’s whole life around it, a totally new culture might well be the outcome.”Thought can never find it, the mind can never seek it out. You want to know and build your life around it; but the ‘you’ with its knowledge, its fears its hopes, frustrations and illusions, can never discover it; and without discovering it, merely to acquire more knowledge, more learning, will only act as a further barrier to the coming into being of that state.