<\/p>\n|
<\/p>\n
\n Readers on <\/span>K<\/b><\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n
\n <\/tr>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n|
<\/p>\n
\nReaders are requested to
\nsend us personal experiences and impressions with K and his teachings.<\/font><\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\nOne cannot know what one has not experienced<\/tt><\/font><\/b><\/i>
\n<\/i>\u00a0
\n<\/font> \u00a0 Walter Witherspoon, NSW Australia.<\/font><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Before the
\noppressive pomposity implicit in that statement squeezes the
\ninterest out of you, let me ask a science fiction question.\u00a0 What, for
\nexample, does a man from Mars look like?\u00a0 If I had to describe him, I'd
\nsay he has a cabbage-like head, with an aluminum body, and perhaps
\nfourteen radishes for eyes.\u00a0 What do you think?
\n
\nWhatever it is, it is only an improbable congruity of things we know,
\nput together to make something we do not know.\u00a0 In the end, we do not
\nknow what a man from Mars looks like, or, indeed, if such exists.\u00a0 What
\nwe do know is the product of our own mind - an unconventional,
\nsurprising, sublime or grotesque product, to be sure - that tricks us into the
\ncommon human conceit of our capacity to know the unknowable.\u00a0 And what
\nis the unknowable?
\n
\nThe unknowable is the good life, the best one can be, peace, happiness,
\nlove, God, or whatever one wishes to call the Purpose of Life.\u00a0 Once
\nthe Purpose of Life is understood, presumably one can undertake to go
\nforward, by his own lights, to arrive safely there in his lifetime.\u00a0 As we
\nstrive to understand, we look around for an example of someone, anyone,
\nwho appears to have arrived.\u00a0 Even if he or she has not arrived, we can
\nsee, through the lights that emit from their lives and their
\nutterances, that they are farther along the path than we, and we can safely
\nfollow.\u00a0
\n
\nBut if we rely on our brains to seek, study, and work hard we shall
\nfail, because knowledge is frail and limited, although it is seductive.\u00a0
\nIn the West, the ancient Greeks pronounced \"Know Thyself\" as the code
\nthat would unlock The Purpose of Life.\u00a0 The Romans, on the other hand,
\nworshipped at the altar of \"Order\" as the Via Pacem.\u00a0 The
\nJudeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, which aggressively if imperfectly continues,
\ncries
\nout that we must \"Know God,\" and therefore His will.\u00a0 For many people,
\nnone of these worthy creeds delivers on its promise to establish
\nprivate, public, or eternal peace.
\n
\nIn the East, the pursuit of The Purpose of Life has taken different paths, some
\ndifferent and some familiar in the West.\u00a0 One guide that is not much known
\nin theological or philosophical circles in the West - although he is gaining in
\npopularity - and one that is better known in the East - although he rigorously
\ndisciplined and turns off the lazy - is Jiddu Krishnamurti.\u00a0
\n
\nI say \"disciplined\" not in the commonly accepted sense, but in the
\nsense, in his own words, that one has to find it through the understanding
\nof the contents of his own mind, through observation and not through
\nintellectual analysis or introspective dissection.<\/i>\u00a0 That is a tall order,
\nbecause the \"contents\" of our minds are the random access memory, not
\nthe hard drive, of the marvelous computers between our ears.\u00a0\u00a0
\n
\nI began this note by asking a science fiction question.\u00a0 In our sad
\nworld today, billions of people do not recognize the oxymoron inherent in
\nthat happy phrase, \"science fiction.\"\u00a0 Indeed, one need only to look
\naround to see that science, \"the knowable,\" and fiction, \"the creations
\nof our minds,\" is synonymous.\u00a0
\n
\nBut when one understands that science and fiction are not the same, and
\nthat fiction is merely what we think we know, a whole new path opens.\u00a0
\nThat is a path that leads us to the unknowable, and at its end is The
\nPurpose of Life.<\/tt><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
<\/p>\n\n
<\/p>\n
\n | |