What is Knowledge :- 10.11

06/03/2018
10.The Stages of Samadhi- 11.

In philosophical circles, certain schools of thinking tell us again and again that a thing as such can never be known because all thinking is through space and time and by the conditions of thought; therefore, there is no such thing as knowing a thing as it is in itself. We may feel for the time being we are satisfied with this kind of statement of the philosopher, because we know very well what actually he means.

We accept the fact that our minds are accustomed to think in a particular way only. There is a set, logical way of thinking, and we cannot jump out of this set mould of logical thought. So it is true that even when we are trying to think in a super-logical way, we are not actually freeing ourselves from the conditions in which the very thought is involved.

But, that there is something called the thing as it is in itself, and it cannot be known under the circumstances of the placement of the mind in space and time, is a subtle suggestion that it is possible to contact the thing as it is in itself – because one who knows that it is not possible to contact a thing as it is in itself, also knows that there is a thing as it is in itself.

This knowledge cannot be considered to be conditioned knowledge, because conditioned knowledge will never permit even the idea that there can be anything independent of phenomenal involvement. This is something about the philosophical difficulties involved in our attempt to free things from involvement in space and time.

But there is something which cannot be identified with location in space and time, and that is our own selves. However much, physically speaking, we may feel that we are involved in space and time, there is something in us, something we call ‘ourselves’, something that I call ‘myself’, the peculiar ‘I’ or the ‘we’ which thinks that there is what is known as space and time.

The consciousness of space and time is the crucial point here that one has to consider. The consciousness of the fact that there is something called space and time and that everything is involved in space and time, itself cannot be involved in space and time. This is a very subtle point. If we know that everything is involved in space and time, this knowledge of the fact that everything is involved in space and time should stand outside space and time.

Thus, our immortal rootedness, the pure consciousness that we are, is something which is not in space and time, because it is the knower of space and time, however much we may be forced to think that we are always in space and time.

To be continued ..