To grow in the soil of knowledge

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge." - Albert Einstein, Theoretical Physicist, Philosopher, Nobel Prize Winner.

Science will never be able to reduce the value of a sunset to arithmetic. Nor can it reduce friendship to formula. Laughter and love, pain and loneliness, the challenge of beauty and truth: these will always surpass the scientific mastery of nature. How beautiful the leaves grow old as they turn from green to gold. How full of light and colour are their last days. If a tree can grow old with such wisdom and beauty, why is it that man remains so planted in the atmosphere of ignorance - unable to grow in wisdom? To grow in the soil of knowledge is his birthright: not to live in an atmosphere of enforced ignorance. Like the gift-giving love, serves the purpose of living; the soil of knowledge serve the meaning of life. The journey of life is about the journey within: Know thy self means that we become acquainted with what we know, and what we can do to gain more knowledge. Thus, know thyself: in great concerns or small, for this is all; and learn to plant knowledge when young to gain shade when old; but recognise that there is no limitation in time to grow in the soil of knowledge. However, remember: we can only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others try to make of us; and we gain knowledge, like plotted-plants, in proportion to the size of the box, which imprisons the roots. Lao Tzu said, "He who conquers others is strong; he who conquers himself is mighty." However, the truth is, he who conquers knowledge is the mightiest.

Knowledge

Men are more readily contented with no intellectual light; but wherever they are taught to acquire some knowledge in order to please others; they have most generally, gone on to acquire more to please themselves. Because, ignorance may be bliss, but it certainly is not freedom, except in the minds of those who prefer darkness to light and chains to liberty. The more true information we can acquire, the better for our enfranchisement. Knowledge is indivisible. When people grow wise in one direction, they are sure to make it easier for themselves to grow wise in other directions as well.

On the other hand, when they split up knowledge, concentrate on their own field, and scorn and ignore other fields, they grow less wise - even in their own field. There is, perhaps, one universal truth about all forms of human cognition: the ability to deal with knowledge is hugely, exceeded by the potential knowledge contained in man's environment. To cope with this diversity, man's perception, his memory, and his thought processes alter to govern the strategies for protecting his limited capacities from the confusion of overloading.

For example, we tend to perceive things schematically, rather than in detail. That perhaps is why, sometimes, it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers, which might be wrong.

Knowledge is, in every country, the surest basis of public happiness; the function of knowledge being, to transcend earthly experience, not to wallow in it. If we all did the things we are capable of, we would astound ourselves. Nevertheless, in a nation where the majority of citizens care not for knowledge, fear is the only noteworthy activity. Fools do not realise that a people without knowledge become a powerless people.

Society

A society that fears knowledge is a society that fears itself. They know not that knowledge itself is power. A baby has brains, but it does not know much. Experience is the only thing that brings knowledge and the longer you are on earth, the more experience you ought to get; but fools do not learn from experience. Nor do they know that, as our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.

The only way to lighten this circumference of darkness is in learning to know other things, and other minds, thereby becoming more intimately acquainted with the self and become to ourselves better worth knowing.

Thus, to conquer one's self is the best and noblest victory; whereas to be, vanquished by one's own ignorance is the worst and most ignoble defeat.

Our knowledge is either progressing or retrograding all the while; there is no such thing as remaining stationary in life. Even with animals, it is the same. In fact, there is a thing known as the 100th monkey effect: a phenomenon, which refers to achieving a sudden spontaneous and mysterious leap of consciousness when allegedly a "critical mass" point is, reached. It was Rupert Sheldrake, an English author, public speaker, and researcher in the field of parapsychology, who espoused his "morphic resonance" concept.

His theory of "morphic resonance" explains the increasing ease with which new knowledge is gained when greater numbers of a population acquire them.

Examples

The theory states: a paranormal influence can form a pattern of events or behavior that facilitates subsequent unconnected occurrences of the same.

Through a telepathic effect or sympathetic vibration, an event or act can lead to similar events or acts in the future or an idea conceived in one mind can then arise in another.

An example would be how gunpowder was, discovered in Europe and China almost simultaneously without reference to each other.

There are many such examples and the most widely quoted one is the 100th monkey effect. It goes thus:

The so-called "100th monkey effect" is a term coined first in 1979. The background of the theory is a story of a research project on monkeys done on the island of Koshima in Japan. In the 1950's the scientists on the island started to feed the monkeys in the island with sweet potatoes that they dropped on the ground. While the monkeys liked the taste, they did not like the dirt stuck on the sweet potatoes when dropped on the ground.

After a while, one of the monkeys discovered that she could solve the problem by washing the potatoes in water. She taught this to some of her monkey friends who adopted the same habit. Soon, this started to spread and more monkeys learned how to wash their potatoes.

After some time, a certain number of monkeys had learned the new technique, let us say a hundred, and all of a sudden all the monkeys knew how to wash their potatoes. It was as if they had reached a critical mass, which resulted in a breakthrough.

The most interesting part of the story is that this was not limited to the monkeys on this particular island. Monkeys in other areas that had no physical contact with the Koshima monkeys also adopted the same habit. The new knowledge seemed to spread purely from mind to mind.

While this particular story has been, well debated and allegedly discredited; many scientists believe, there is some truth to it nevertheless. Many times throughout history, the same things have been invented by different people, in different parts of the planet at the same time - without having, no knowledge of each other at all.

The telephone is but one common example with confusion about who is to be credited for this invention. Several people seem to have thought of the same thing at the same time.

Pattern

Thus, the idea is that when a behaviour or thought is repeated over-and-over, it creates a sort of pattern increasingly strengthened over time.

The pattern created becomes a part of a sort of memory bank, or the field, that is accessible to all; meaning that once something is learned it will get easier for the next to learn the same thing, and in the end, it might become an instinctive skill.

It also explains why humans have certain skills already at birth. However, in any nation where the people are, taught to remain ignorant; I suppose it is the follies of ignorance, which spreads from mind to mind as knowledge.

Wish all my readers a happy and healthy 2015.

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