not knowing

There are two different ways to know something. One way is intellectually, with the mind: thinking about things, reading things, hearing of things, consuming words. Most of our knowledge is of this sort. It is a secondhand knowledge, passed to us from another. And strictly speaking, such knowledge can only ever be a set of beliefs. You trust the source of the information and that trust is a belief.

The second way to know something is from direct personal experience. For example, when I stub my toe, I know it for myself, without anyone having to tell me. Even if I have no words for the experience, still I feel it, I know it directly. And though I might speak of this incident to other people, they will not feel the stubbing of the toe that I have felt. Of course, if they have, themselves, a memory of stubbing their own toe, they can sympathise, empathise. But still, this specific incident can only truly be known by myself.

And this knowing is not of the mind at all. It is not of words. It is of direct feeling, direct sensation, direct perception before the words come into being. It is in this sense that the enlightened state of consciousness is one of not knowing. By this, we mean it is not knowing things with words, with thoughts, with ideas, with beliefs, with all this intellectual mechanism; no.

Instead, the enlightened state of consciousness is one of direct awareness of what is; so direct, so much in the moment, that words have not yet come into being. And from this perspective, it is seen that all words: written, spoken or thought, are missing reality. They are a story about reality but they are not reality itself. And furthermore, those stories are never accurate. For what is, is forever changing and unique. Whereas words, thoughts are relying on memories, similarities, categories.

The enlightened state knows no categories. Existence is a continuous process, in time and space, whilst words divide up reality, ignoring details in order to categorise things; relying on memories to create a feeling of security that what is happening now has happened before. To the enlightened consciousness, this is not so. Every moment is unique, is a creation in itself, to be savoured fully, without the interference of a mind looking for repetition where there is none. And without repetition, there can be no knowing. How can you know the new? By knowing, we mean, this is something I have seen before. I recognise it.

All this drops away when we find our essence and look at existence from this perspective. Here there is no knowing, there is no recognition. Here everything is new, unknown, insecure and alive for it. For when we are knowing something, recognising it from the past, we are killing it. We are making it a dead thing. For the past is dead. Only the present moment is alive. And if we insist that the present moment is of the past, then we have killed it. And we feel not its vitality.

So drop the need to know, my friends. Become content with not knowing. And life will, at last, be alive.