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