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.

2. Fear of the Unknown

Man is alienated from the universe by his unwillingness to accept the unknown. He craves for security and certainty in his life, but finds himself in a world that is inherently uncertain. If he accepts the great unknown that is his nature, man experiences “being” in the world, but if he turns his back on Nature, he assumes the burdens of conflict and anxiety as he struggles to “become” something in the world.

Western civilization’s relationship with Nature is that of alienation. Western man considers himself apart from Nature, a superimposition of something grand atop something that is mundane. He believes that civilization progresses while Nature remains quaintly “very natural.” Western civilization measures its members by the distance they have traveled from the “natural state.” He measures his wisdom by how much of the unknowable that he knows.

Western civilization, more than others, is dominated by the myth of guilt and redemption, and, like a carrot on a stick, the repressed and enslaved man of western civilization seeks redemption and scorns the temptations of freedom in order to obtain a reward in heavenly eternity. Man’s goal is a paradise that is apart and alienated from the unknowable Nature and is the product of the knowing mind.

The mind divides itself into the high and the low – the high being the security, the permanent entity – but still remaining a process of thought and therefore of time.

J. Krishnamurti