What is Knowledge : Ch-3. Part-1.

Chapter-3. A Philosophic Outlook of Life


Part-1.


There is a way of thinking called philosophical thinking, which is a little different from the ordinary way of thinking.

What is the difference between philosophical thinking and the thinking we call 'normal' and 'usual' in our day-to-day life – the thinking of the office-goer, the thinking of the businessman, the thinking of the family man, the thinking of the busy man, and so on?

How does our normal thinking differ from this peculiar way of thinking we call philosophical?

What is the difference? If there is a difference, and evidently there is some, which is to be preferred?

The ordinary, prosaic, man-of-the-street way of thinking, or the philosophic way of thinking – which is better?

This can be known, if we know what the difference is between these two ways of thinking.



Previously, I mentioned that our thinking is almost entirely conditioned by sense perception.

We think as we see, as we hear, and as we sense in any form whatsoever.

Our mind is a kind of confirming authority over whatever information is given through the senses.

The only thing that the mind seems to be doing is that it synthesises the various information received from the channels of the sense organs – eyes, ears, etc.

The eyes see, but they cannot hear; the ears hear, but they cannot see.

Each sense can do only one thing; it cannot do another thing.


Swami Krishnananda

To be continued   ....