Daily Quote, Thursday September 3, 2009.

Good morning everyone,

It's taking that little bit longer for the sun to rise now, but it looks like it will be nice again. :-)

Here is today's quote:

Knowledge is always accompanied by ignorance.

A great many scientists in the West have gone into the question of the brain. They say that we are using only a very small part of the whole brain. We can observe whether this is so in ourselves, for it is part of meditation to find out—for ourselves—whether the whole brain or only a very small part is operating.

Now, thought is the response of memory which has been stored through knowledge; knowledge is gathered through experience. That is, experience, knowledge, memory stored in the brain, then thought, then action. This is our pattern of living, and the whole process is based on this movement. Man has done this for the last million years. He has been caught in the cycle, which is the movement of thought.

And within this area he has choice. He can go from one corner to the other and say, “This is my choice, this is my movement of freedom”—but it is always within the limited field of the known. And knowledge is always accompanied by ignorance because there is no complete knowledge about anything. So we are always in this contradictory state: knowledge and ignorance.

A Timeless Spring, p 163.

Here is my reflection.

It goes on from yesterday's conversations, the idea that in knowing the other, rather than understanding the other, we only use a very small part of our brain. The part of the brain that is memory is limited, binded by repetition into a narrow channel, caught in a snapshot of time. So why is it that we only use a small part of our brain? Like yesterday, if we were to see the other in his or her 'otherness' that would be to understand him or her, which in turn would involve a disolution of the 'me'. So we only use a small part of our brain because that it what allows for the continuance of the 'me'.

It is mistake to think of the mind simply becoming large by accumulating more knowledge. To understand the other doesn't come from finding more data about him or her.

So the 'me' can only be as long as the mind is small and only tiny part of the brain is used: knowing instead of understanding. To know something is easy, it just takes memory and a small part of the brain; to understand and use the whole brain is arduous. Only using a small part of the brain barely requires attention at all; using the whole brain requires total attention.

Best wishes

Robert