What is Knowledge : Ch-1. Part-1.

Ch-1. The Knowledge Situation.


Part-1.


The different classes which you will be attending in the Academy are supposed to represent the different needs of your psychological personality, which mostly receive scant attention from us on account of an overemphasis laid on certain needs only, due to the pressure of circumstances. For instance, when we are intensely hungry physically, we are likely to be clamouring for food and thinking only that aspect of our needs in a pre-eminent manner, notwithstanding the fact that it is not our only need.

And, many a time, we are prone to commit a dual mistake in this attitude of our life. Firstly, there is a proclivity in our mind due to which we are likely to channelise our attention wholly and exclusively in the direction of a particular necessity or pressure felt, as if that is the only thing that we need and there is nothing else that we want.

Now, this overemphasis on only a particular need of our life, to the exclusion of other needs, may have a dual background. There may be a partial consciousness in our mind of the presence of other needs also, even at the time of this excessive pressure felt in a given direction, but there can also be occasions when we may not be even aware that there are necessities in life other than the one under whose pressure we are operating now.

Intense passions, whether they are sensory or psychological, are examples of the condition when we totally forget the other aspects of our needs, and lay total emphasis on only one need. This is a specialty of an over-mastering desire of any kind.

Swami Krishnananda

To be continued  ...