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.

10. Repression

The essence of repression is conflict. By repressing a part of the universe that is not to his liking, man creates a worldview that is at odds with the real world as well as the worldview of his fellow repressing individuals.

His repressed version is under threat of contradiction from the other realities that differ from it, and he must use conflict as a means of protecting his personal illusion. Conflict may come in the form of overt force, various manipulations, passive aggressive victimhood, or other techniques that are destructive to the world that the repressing man feels alienated from.

Repression is the ego’s way of creating a fictional history that further binds man into a cycle of more repressing and being repressed. Repression is self-perpetuating and requires more repression to keep the repressing ego alive. The repressed man is not able to see the world independently of his ego, and his dependence upon that ego forces him to produce more repression.

In the end, repression creates nothing but victims. For his ego to coexist with others, man must repress those outside of himself, either overtly through force or covertly through his passiveness. But those victims of repression are only the outward manifestation of the ultimate victim of repression – the repressing man who can never be peace with his own nature. See page 42, Being and the End of History.

“We never see that we are the total environment because there are several entities in us, all resolving around the ‘me,’ the self … This separation is the beginning of conflict, inward and outward.”
J. Krishnamurti

9. Human Destructiveness

The dilemma is escaped only by those willing to discard
personality.
Norman O. Brown

Thanotos, Freud’s death instinct, is essentially the drive in man that makes him destructive. As pointed out in the past post, thanatos is the creator of man’s illusory ego, the falsehood whose only purpose is to create conflict between man and his universe. That ego is the illusion that seduces man into believing that he is something different than the environment that he pollutes, the enemy that he kills, and the companion that he controls and dominates. Man’s destructive ego is the false impression that fools man into believing that he is a victim or a victimizer. When we look out at our world with its wars, terrorists, murders, and rapists, it is Thanatos that is the origin of the destructive actions of mankind.

Above all, there is the destructive emotional damage that man does to himself because he identifies himself with the fictitious ego. He serves two masters, his own nature and the higher authority that judges his ego, telling him how he needs to act to have a historical ego of real value. Civilized man, with his authoritarian character, obeys the rules of those who offer him a sense of specialness, denying the direction that is within his own heart – the spiritual guide of his own nature.

Civilized man places all of his trust in external masters, his family, a dictator, a professor, or a social group, but regardless of his commitment, there is something within him that opposes his unnatural enslavement to external authority. The opposition between his external authority and his inner nature results in the stress and tension of constant conflict. Man’s obedience to authority, as opposed to the freedom of his own nature, is the source of his experience of anxiety, experienced as guilt in the direction of his past and as fear in the direction of his future.

See page 130, Being and the End of History.

8. Death Wish

“The dilemma is escaped only by those willing to discard personality.”
Norman O. Brown

Thanotos, Freud’s death instinct, is the creator of the ego. It alienates man from nature and his own natural self by giving him the sense of being special. Specialness, in turn, exempts man from the laws of change that dominate all of nature, giving man the hope for an individualistic immortality. The trees and rocks of nature may come and go because of their lack of specialness, but historical man will live on because he has a special self – the ego that was ironically generated by his will to die.

The specialness in man’s ego allows him to transcend the boundaries of space and time. Man has a body that belongs to nature, obeying its laws of growth and decay in time, but man’s individual ego is separate from his vulnerable body, existing unchanged as his body ages and becomes frail. The ego of man is immortal and ageless because it is special, being exempt from nature and her laws.

However, man’s sense of specialness is the product of thanatos, his destructive wish to kill his natural self. The sense of being something apart is really alienation, the nightmare of isolation, fear, and guilt. Because he is special, man experiences a sense of regret for a past that shouldn’t have been and a fear of the future that might be. Because he is special and the father of himself, he must bear the responsibility for a guilty past and a fearful future.

See p. 127, Being and the End of History.

7. A Womb of Your Own

Human history begins in caves.
Norman Brown

The historical man is alienated from the womb of the universe, and his passionate desire to reunite with it can only take the form of the possession of dead matter. Freud saw man’s desire to be the master of his mother’s womb as a substitute for being a part of that womb. In order to be the master of the mother’s womb, he needs to become his own father, the king of a realm that includes the mother and the nurturing heaven that was once his rightful home. Man’s creation of an ego that is separate from that universe means that he must use ownership and control as a substitute for union.

But only dead things can be owned and controlled. Living things are self-willed and violate our rules of ownership. Being absolutely deterministic is the essential requirement of property. The very act of “owning” something means that it is subject to our will and is therefore without a “will of its own.” The ego can only own dead matter as a substitute for a living universe that he longs to be a part of.

See p. 120, Being and the End of History.

6. Systems and Experience

Systems, philosophical or political, are all about the denial of being. Systems are the rules to which a ‘becoming’ person must conform in order to achieve the wisdom that the system promises. It is the achievement of the adherent’s future, an ideal that he can attain by mastering the system’s directives.

‘Being,’ on the other hand, cannot be systemized; it has no form or structure. In order to experience being, man must face time stripped of things from the past, including the recipes and algorithms that make up a system of thought.

Systems, like all things that enclose, are barriers to which things are confined – boxes within which we must confine our thinking. Philosophical systems that we create in our minds are barriers for our minds, confining that great organ of adaptation that needs openness to exercise its full potential. Systems are replaced in time by new systems because all systems are barriers that put the mind in conflict with its experience. See p. 168, Being and the End of History.

“We think that we will be able to live happily, creatively, if we learn a method, a technique, a style, but creative happiness comes only when there is inward richness, it can never be attained through any system.”

J. Krishnamurti

5. Self-less Man

The Self-less man has achieved a utopia, a paradise on earth where there can be no conflict and where the emotions of guilt and fear are never experienced. Beyond his inner experience, the world may appear like a hell-on-earth, filled with terrorists, wars created by rigid dogmas and doctrines, and the pervasive selfishness of the people of character and personality; however, to the Self-less man, these are just a part of the experience of the moment and this experience can be observed without the conflict, hate, guilt, and fear that overwhelms the lives of the well-defined selves.

The Self-less man has returned to the Garden of Eden the only way that anyone can – by letting go of his Self with its history and promise and its guilt and fears. Man’s place in paradise is where “becoming” has ended and all he has left and all he needs is “being.” See p. 233, Being and the End of History.

“Dissolve me into ecstasies.”
John Milton, Il Penseroso