There are levels of being in a man—higher and lower. Generally, we can understand a higher level of knowledge in a person, but we cannot understand a higher level of being. There is a distinction between levels of ‘knowing’ and ‘being’. We can realise that someone knows more or less about a certain subject and hence we can assess his or her levels of knowledge. But to be able to assess someone’s level of being is true growth. One’s knowledge is important, but one’s being is more important.
When one is filled with superstition and primitive belief, their being level is low. Just as there is right and wrong knowledge, so too there are right and wrong states of being. A person may be good and yet have wrong knowledge; a person can be bad and yet have good knowledge. Hence, one has to work on ‘being’ more than ‘knowing’.
Working on one’s being involves realising that there are mechanical and magnetic centres in us. Our perceptions affect the quality of life. They are distorted because the energies of our being are low. Our energies can be high when there is love, wonderment, joy and contentment. Working on them increases the quality of being. Then you can receive the finer vibrations of life. But when we are filled with jealousy, anger and hatred—which are lower energies—we operate with less awareness. Due to this, we become mechanical and an automatic pilot in us takes over.
One also has to understand that there is a distinction between knowledge and understanding. Knowledge is conceptual and understanding is existential.J Krishnamurti says the word is not the thing and the description is not described.Understanding happens through the evolution of being. Where there is no love, kindness or compassion, you gain only knowledge if you read the scriptures, but when your being evolves, it comes to you as understanding.What we think we are, is not what we are. There are many aspects of self.
There is this body which is the acting self; then there is an emotional self, a thinking self,a functional self and a fundamental self (Being). When one has the discipline to observe, an ‘observing self’ emerges. This self observes how we work, talk to others and ourselves in the dimension of feeling and dealing. These are all aspects of us under scrutiny without judgement but as pure observation.When the observing self is crystallised, we observe anger and do not get carried away by it; we observe jealousy and do not get carried away by it.
When there is an incident of anger, you start seeing the anatomy of it. The incident is one thing; the thought of it another. The thought can be cool or hot. The hot signifies anger. By observing, you will find that the hot thought is a trigger from a mechanical centre. As you observe, you realise that anger is not only a thought but also mechanical carrying some sadness of the past. That sadness is a result of not learning to be happy at the moment. One not being happy is because one is caught in the concept of having
a reason to be happy and not learnt to be happy without a cause.
Swami Sukhabodhananda is an international management spiritual & corporate guru