ON KNOWING

on knowing

Most of the people are ‘know-nothings.’ They go through a kind of education and pick up the most superficial information at random. The facts they gather to pass exams are not connected, linked up, seen, felt and the possibility of applying to anything, of creating something never arises.

Then they go around looking for employment. They find it and they are taught a specific, particular thing to do. It is specific, concrete bound and not fundamental, basic, deep, creative, challenging the mind to think originally and come out with real innovation.

It is a kind of very minimal work that is demanded. It is learnt fast and is as close to a robotic kind of work as can come.

True, these jobs are important in practical life and is usually given the name - “Skill”. But it is a compartmentalized work not creative work.

What is really creative work? How does that come about?

A passionate, creative work comes and flows from a real understanding of things.

Let us try to understand what a real understanding is.

A real understanding connects to reality. It is seeN. This does not happen automatically. One needs to think.

Thinking involves relating things to each other. First we see facts, collect facts - just facts. They are in the beginning just a collection. Then we start a process of looking for causal relationships, how one thing determines another, changes another, modifies another, influences another. This process is applied wholesale, this abstract understanding is integrated with all that exists and all that is known.

Thus to know means to hold the full relationships of everything to everything! This leads one to know everything, not all details, but in terms of fundamentals.

This is the full meaning of logic, of truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

This is a tremendous thing and gives rise to a precious, priceless feeling inside, a feeling of power, of almost an omnipotence.

It is like by understanding, relating things you have held the whole world as a UNIT and thus in the palm of your hand!

Great scientists, artists, singers, leaders, know this feeling!

It is very difficult to communicate it but it is there within - a flame it is, that burns, grow, absorbs, keeps relating and relating, seeing more and more connections, becoming more and more powerful.

One profound result of this kind of leaving (NOT ‘learning’ some compartmentalized operations and procedures) is that you get hundreds of ideas to do things.

You start applying your knowledge and this is the only true meaning of work way of life itself. How is it that when one sees things and relates things, one gets ideal to apply and create new products, services, designs, new ways of doing things. The word, the key word, is ‘invention’.

Knowledge, true knowledge leads to ‘invention’.

Invention brings in Man into the picture. To understand the phenomenon of light, at least some terms, is to come out with lenses to see bigger.

Seeing bigger is a power! Using electromagnetic effects to create a turning motion is a power. To fly in an aeroplane is a power!

It is a magical power unrivalled by any wondrous magic. It is almost a miraculous, a divine process and is felt as the highest ecstasy because Man is that, Man is powerful - literally!

That sweeping view of the world leads to numerous, almost infinite, possibilities!