Dissemination of Knowledge

It is human nature to share what we know with others, and this is how we are initiated on the path of knowledge - by someone, most probably a teacher. We have a tendency to transmit what we know. Once you start gaining knowledge, the knowledge that really matters, you'd be delighted that you have found a treasure which only a few people know of and you'd rush to share it with all - your friends, relatives, as many people as you can get hold of.

What happens next? Whatever happens is very shocking and surprising to say the least. I will present here my own experiences with my own attempts at dissemination of knowledge. Later I offer some tips and tricks to effectively disseminate the knowledge you have gathered, if you wish so.

Path of Knowledge

Path of knowledge is about knowing and understanding the nature of existence and essence of our own self. It is a gradual dispelling of ignorance. On this path we seek truth. Not only that, we embody this knowledge and apply it in day-to-day life. In this article I will present my understanding of what this path means to me.

Layers of Ignorance

By Julia Molloy

All there is, is Experiencing. Its pure and perfect. Something interesting happens in the Experiencing - appearance of a Mind, the universal Mind, organizer of all experiences. Mind starts building structures - knowledge. The Self finds itself surrounded by structures. Structures hide the "what-is" or Presence and instead Self gets a "view" that is made-up, artificial. This view is nothing but knowing, knowledge itself. Mind presents that knowledge incrementally. While the structures are still forming, the knowledge appears incomplete and is seen as ignorance. It takes more experiences to complete the knowledge, which is done, but not before incomplete knowledge does its job - of causing suffering.

This incomplete knowledge is Ignorance. In essence, knowledge is ignorance. Mind is limited, it brings in immense amount of knowledge, still it remains incomplete. For a human mind, which is a part of the Universal Mind, the situation is even worse. Humans spend their whole life (or lives) under the spell of ignorance, well most of them do.

Afflictions of the Mind: Part-5.1 (Suffering)

By Fadia Afashe

Suffering - what, why and how.

We have briefly discussed suffering in previous articles. Here, as usual, we are going into the details of it. Suffering is a state of the Mind, characterized by the presence of thoughts, feelings, emotions, internal actions, memories and such mental objects, that are negative in nature. By Negative, I mean, having harmful or destructive consequences [1]. This state of the Mind is quite repulsive, the Mind wants to get rid of it. It is unwanted, unnatural. A person in this state is incapable of thinking correctly, acting wisely or speaking coherently. Such a person is often rendered inactive, but sometimes can also become violent or sick. 

The sensations and reactions caused by suffering are similar in nature to those caused by physical pain [2]. The body and the Mind tries to avoid it, run away from it. Often the Mind gets caught in suffering for days, months and even years. The suffering becomes habitual if not cured and one can spend his whole life in the grip of one or other kinds of suffering. Actually, the current state of humanity is mostly that of suffering, irrespective of classes. This is mind boggling. Man, being the smartest and most capable animal, should have solved this problem within minutes. But we see the exact opposite. The state of the suffering is seen as “normal” by the society, and unless it becomes violent and destructive, nothing is done about it. In extreme cases, the suffering becomes a recognizable mental illness and the person is thrown into isolation or is kept under sedative drugs. So, mostly people have no clue how to solve the problem of suffering.

Presence, Experience and Knowledge

By Salvador Dali

Experiencing as being

I'm very very sure of one thing - something exists. Actually that's all I'm sure of. I have no other knowledge, no other experience of which I’m so sure of. I'm going to define that "something" as Presence. Its merely a term I'm going to use for something that I'm so sure of. The Presence is going through a process, which I'm going to call Experiencing, and an Experience is then defined as an arbitrary slice of Experiencing. I can’t deny that there is Experiencing of Presence, however hard I try, and no one can. Denial or falsification is also an experience, and that makes it absolutely undeniable that there is Experiencing and/or Presence. What can be so convincing, so solid, so self-evident? So we are on a very firm ground here, it’s a good place to start, perhaps it’s the only place to start.

The modulations in Presence give rise to Experiencing. That's all there is, rest is merely details. Don't ask me what this thing called Presence is, and why are there any modulations or changes in it at all, how and why is this happening.... I have no idea. Grab a good book on Metaphysics to know what the great masters think about all this. I can assure you that nobody knows. Its paradoxical that something so evident and intimate is absolutely unknowable ! Well, welcome to the country of mystics, this is not your first surprise....