11. Knowledge

“Knowledge is not comparable with intelligence, knowledge is not wisdom.”

J. Krishnamurti

Philosophy in the West, at least since the time of Plato, has been all about knowledge and the static, inflexible world where knowledge works. Plato believed that true knowledge could only be about things that did not change (and therefore could not be of this world). In this regard, Plato’s shadow has been cast over Western philosophy down to the present. Alfred North Whitehead was correct in his observation that all Western philosophy is but a footnote to Plato. The philosophy of Plato and the West is about knowledge and therefore does not allow for change.

Each perspective on knowledge in the West branches into its own “school” of rigid believers willing to commit themselves to conflict and wars for the “rightness” of their truths. Philosophy in the West is the wisdom of knowledge about eternal truths, and, since wisdom and intelligence are of the moment and not eternal, Western philosophy fails to give us wisdom and intelligence. Instead, the knowledge of Western philosophy causes conflict and suffering between the knower and his world.

Knowledge is all about “becoming,” the making of war on the “being” of the present. Absolute knowledge, like all absolutes, is an authority that we must follow and conform to.