Knowledge and Unlearning.
Knowledge is what we know or believe we know. That is some total of knowledge. We are made to believe that out knowledge can make us survive almost any situation. That is only partly true.
Knowledge anchors us to facts which are out of place. By very nature, knowledge is a fast depleting asset. It gets out-of-date very fast. It becomes the hurdle in fresh learning. Because when we already know we need not discover.
Knowledge often drowns us. We can not see beyond it. We are unable to learn because we are occupied with prior knowledge.
The Hurdle of Prior Knowledge
Knowledge is a belief not based on experience. It is handed down to us or picked up for want of something. We cling to what we have preserved in our minds as truth. To learn, we must scrap everything we think we know.
We must make a plunge without planning or expectation. This is a plunge into the river of experiencing. We must remove all layers of prior belief.
This is why the age-old question hounds us: who am I?
Are we just a bundle of ill-processed, accumulated memories expressing through habits?
To understand the mind and body is to understand the self. There can be no self-knowledge when we are wrapped in self-image.
An image once drawn can not be changed. It has to be demolished. Not any easy task. But that is the only way to progress. Unless that image is wiped clean we keep comparing the observation with the knowledge put up as image. It creates a hurdle we give a fancy name of learning curve.
The Swing Door of Learning
The learning curve is a misnomer. There is no such thing as a learning curve. The distance between the unskilled and the skilled is of one single step. Unless that final step is leaped, we remain vegetables not ready to be served. Either we know how to do something, or we do not.
Learning is different from performance. Optimum performance is yet another different plane. Performance may need time to practice. Learning does not.
Learning is not a slow evolution. It is a revolution that acts in leaps and bounds. True learning is a swing door process. Something can come in only if something else goes out.
Garbage in, garbage out.
But we repeat the same patterns of learning. Like meditators sitting on the banks of a river, we wait for peace to drop like Newton’s apple. Since we already think we know how it will happen, we have to wait forever.
Let us visit a practical example.
AI Example
Consider a writer who learned to use AI a year ago and has used it since. Is the usage optimum? No.
Everyone knows how to use AI. It chats, revises text, give suggestion on errors. All writers know it. So what is optimum usage?
One writer used to upload whole chapter for check after drafting. Today he uploads one paragraph at a time, consulting actively while drafting, not after. Making changes in real time. It is a small change and may affect performance greatly but that is not the point.
This is the difference between learning and performance. Optimum performance is a goal. It will never happen. When it appears to have happened, something will prove it wrong.
Three Steps to Transcending Ignorance
As we age, experiences accumulate as rigid ideologies. We lose the scope for anything new. When confronted with the new, we try to match it with existing memories and fail.
Every time we learn, we must start from scratch. We must discard the past completely to allow the present to be seen. Thus, the real learning involves three distinct steps.
First, we must know the boundary of our current knowledge.
Second, we must understand the sphere of our ignorance.
Third, we must transcend both when actually receiving new knowledge.
This final step is the most difficult. It requires unlearning how things were done in the past. There is no fixed formula. If there is one, people will catch it and sit like meditators sitting on river bank. That is an individual leap. One has to take that alone.
Without the leap, the knowledge becomes a fossilized belief akin to superstition.
Fossilization of Belief
Belief and disbelief are two sides of the same coin. A belief is a mere creation of the mind. It is a projection of a dream state, unexperienced and untraveled.
Disbelief is nothing short of belief. Both are reflections of the same thought. Thought is an accumulation that fills our emptiness.
We choose belief or disbelief to cover our void. Experiencing must wait.
We project ourselves as honest, forthright, or cosmopolitan. But we remain trapped in different layers of memory.
The Cosmopolitan
Let me quote a story by my favourite short story writer O. Henry. Title of the story is Cosmopolitan.
A man named Coglan claims to be a true cosmopolitan. He has no boasts of birthplace. He skips from continent to continent with ease. He boasts to be a cosmopolitan.
Yet, when his small hometown is insulted, he starts a fistfight. His cosmopolitan identity was just another belief. Underneath, his local conditioning remained untouched. His travels could not make an iota of change in perception of life and living.
Literal Belief
According to Sanatan Dharma teaching Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh (call them Gods if you like) are present in every particle. Every grain of sand and soil. every individual being including animal. There is a story of a disciple who saw God in all things.
A mad elephant approached, and the Mahaut warned everybody to run. Mahaut is the person who controls or drives the Elephant.
The disciple stood still, believing the elephant was God. There was no reason to fear God. The elephant tossed him aside, leaving him bruised and hurt. His teacher asked him why he did not flee.
He replied that there was no reason to fear the elephant. The teacher asked why he did not listen to the mahaut God’s warning.
We use literal beliefs to rationalize our irrational actions. Worshippers keep their armor of belief shining to fight the world. Yet they continue to worry and try to control everything.
Bottom Line
The education does not train us for living. Fifteen years of education does almost nothing to teach living. Schools have laboratories. But laboratories should have schools. The system does not groom individuals. Out of school, they fill files with records instead of observing and living.
On the contrary long training takes away the instinct to learn. They ask and they believe. A life built on belief is fossilized living.
Therefore, the trust in knowledge is not misplaced but stretching that trust to every situation is behaving like that person who saw God everywhere but was about to meet death instead of God.
Human life is meant for living. The living does not happen with knowledge. It happens with experiencing. The experiencing means testing the knowledge every day and every moment.
This is a challenge. But there is a greater challenge to life that we shall discuss in next chapter.