Sep 26, 2022
The Only Point in Seeking Knowledge is to Get Rid of the Need to Seek it
A radical approach for those who like to cut the BS.
“Knowledge has nothing to know. The insentient can never know, being insentient.
Therefore no one knows anything. All beings stand established as pure consciousness.” — Atmananda Krishna Menon, Atma Nivriti
It is for this reason that knowledge is meaningless to anyone, especially those who seek it.
It is only through this means that we truly satisfy our hunger for truth.
Knowledge is not a thing. If by knowledge we mean things that are known.
All knowledge takes us to the absolute knowledge that we can not name.
It is that from which all things come, and that from which all things that are known are a half — or — limited knowledge of.
As wiser men have said many times before me, if you want the knowledge of anything, know that with which knowledge is known.
That knowledge is the essence of Advaita Vedanta. It is another way of saying, to recognise the nature of being alive.
All love, truth, beauty, wisdom, intelligence are expressions and pathways towards the same essence. — And are expressions of it. That which we refer to as our Being.
Once we see this clearly, anything that adds to our bank of knowledge is of no use to us.
Like all things that are useful until they are not, we lose this desire for more knowledge and we begin to contemplate its source.
Ask Yourself: What is the essence of the world?
The only thing present of the world that we can all agree is there, is experiencing. Could there be anything else other than the experience of the world?
What is the essence of experiencing?
All there is to our experience is perception. Even thought and memory is somewhat an internally replicated sound or image, which too, are perceived by something.
Thought and perception are the only two facilities that we can distinguish and are the only thing present when the mind is active.
If thought and perception have ceased, where is the mind?
Therefore we could say the essence of experience is thought and perception and the totality of thoughts and perceptions are the mind.
What is the essence of the mind?
What we are really asking is, what is the essence of thought and perception?
If our thought and perception are made of whatever the mind is made of, then what would the mind emanate from?
All we need to do is look at what is present before a thought and what is left when the thought has comes to an end.
We notice that the mind does not sustain itself, simply because the mind has vanished and we are still there, experiencing.
That is to say, we do not vanish when a thought or perception comes to an end. Neither do we vanish while we go to sleep, even though in some cases it appears that way. (More on this in a future article, follow to see it)
This is important to see, simply because it must then be sustained and maintained from and within something else.
A cloud appears in the sky. The words appear in the screen. The stars appear in space. The waves appear in water. The wind appears in the air.
The mind appears, in what?
Whatever it appears within, it must be what we are essentially. If it wasn’t what we are, then that would mean that our mind comes from outside of us. Which goes completely against the facts of our experience.
Ask yourself, what is there when a thought comes to an end, and what is there before I think my next thought?
Close your eyes for a moment. Ask yourself the question:
Who is it that is hearing this thought?
Notice that, whatever is hearing it, was present before, during and after the process of thinking.
It was already there, even before anything else took place. It was conscious, prior to there being anything to be conscious of.
That is pure awareness or consciousness. — (Synonymous in my writing)
It is all that is present in the process of thinking and perceiving. Therefore it is all there is to thinking and perceiving. How could it be anything else?
Where else could a thought come from?
If you are experiencing the thought, it must come from you. And you know that you are conscious. It is the only true fact we can state other than that we exist, and are real.
Could a thought come from somewhere other than that which thought it? Not the statement or idea it entails, the raw and fundamental substance that it is made of. Not from a biological or neurological point of view.
The challenge with a conventional scientific mind can be that we are so used to testing and experimenting with objective tangible facts. This is the double edge sword of a philosopher.
All philosophers should be more like scientists, and all scientists philosophers.
From the point of view of true science, which is always the most direct and experiential truth that is not just true for us, but true no matter who else tests through the same experiment.
We will always see that a thought, liken to sound in the air, is compressed consciousness. Consciousness that takes the shape of whatever we are thinking.
Thoughts are made of pure consciousness.
So if we are to take this into our pathway, expect going outwardly instead of inwardly, we see that everything is contained and sustained by pure consciousness.
consciousness is also that which knows or is aware of all objective knowledge.
The knowledge of consciousness alone, that which is alive, is pure knowledge. It is knowledge itself.
Consciousness is pure, unconditioned knowledge.
If you understand these words here, it is because you have unconditioned to a point where you are capable of seeing that fundamental source of pure knowledge, which is usually difficult to recognise given the number of concepts and ideas we have about ourselves and our experience.
The rigid and objective concepts and ideas that like to make reality and truth complicated usually tend to veil words like these.
This is one of the reasons the practices of meditation are given.
This knowledge could also be seen as the essence of meditation.
This is known in the Indian traditions as “the end of knowledge” or “beyond knowledge” — meaning, to go beyond traditional knowledge and to know that from which all objective knowledge is known and sourced.
So, why search or desire any knowledge at all? Simply because, we don’t really want to know anything. The quicker we find a path to end knowledge, the better.
All the Love and Wonder,
Saja.
