Thursday, September 10, 2009

Daily Quote, Thursday September 10, 2009.

Good morning everyone,

Still bright and sunny, if rather chilly. No more short pants after this weekend I expect. :-)

Here is today's quote:

The danger of knowledge.

Psychologically, inwardly, is thought necessary? One must understand this question very deeply. Man, through millennia upon millennia, has been caught in this pattern. And in this pattern there is never freedom, because knowledge, being limited, can never bring freedom. We need absolute freedom to find that which is eternal—obviously—freedom from all attachment, which means from all knowledge.

So knowledge, though necessary in a certain direction, is the most dangerous thing that we have inwardly. We are now accumulating a great deal of knowledge, about the universe, about the nature of everything—scientifically, analytically, archaeologically, and so on. And that knowledge may be preventing us from acting as total, complete human beings.

A Timeless Spring, pp 163-164

Here is my reflection.

This quote is a nice segway into the first audio recording that we'll be listening to in the study group on Sunday. In this, Alan Anderson points out the way that knowledge fragments and multiplies. Gaining more knowledge inevitibly brings more fragmentation: we divide the known (the world, consciousness, etc.) into small and smaller pieces, creating expertise in more and more, and smaller and smaller, areas.

Universities do this and so do corporations, the first in their search for students to take courses and the second as they look products to market. Knowledge is also becoming less concentrated and so you also see this fragmentation taking place across the internet with blogs and websites on some many different things.

If we specialise to get noticed, how can me become complete human beings? Is the link between knowledge and recognition killing us as human beings? Is it stopping us from being in relationship, which first of all means to be alone, or, as K also puts it, an individual: indivisable, unfragmented?

See you on Sunday! :-)

Best wishes

Robert