Socrates and Plato - Track 1503

So let us see there are five words given – seized, understood, comprehended, held and possessed. Now these five things are done in regard to what? Meaning and value of substance and life-movement. Now each word is a difficult word in which meaning and value, every object that you see, you always have to ask this. It will have a substance and it will have a life-movement. Anything in the world, this is generally true of everything. There will be substance and there will be life-movement. So whenever you say I am understanding something it will always be understanding of a substance and understanding of the life-movement. Now every understanding has again two aspects there will be a grasp of the meaning and grasp of the value. When you see a diamond you first of all understand the meaning of a diamond, a glittering stone shining stone that’s the meaning of it, it’s not the same thing as the value of it, what is the value of the diamond? Not only the cost of it that is not the meaning of value. Value is always understood in the terms of satisfaction, the happiness and joy that its possession gives you. When you ask what is the value of it, it means the degree of satisfaction or happiness, or joy when that object when possessed gives you. So sometimes you may understand the meaning but not the value. A crow might pick and fly away, it has no value of the diamond. The crow has felt it is a thing which can be eaten and if it could be eaten it had a value otherwise it has no value but for the princess the value of diamond is not because it can be eaten or not eaten. The value of the diamond is measured by her in terms of the inner joy that comes out of the possession and the beauty that it imparts to her body when she puts upon her body that is the value for her. Now you can see that in the process of understanding anything how many elements are involved, there is a substance, there is a life-movement, there is the meaning, there is a value and when this substance and life-movement, meaning and value are seized, understood, comprehended, held and possessed, when all these happen together then you can say you have now begun to be illuminated. Anything short of it is not illumination. You know in this field there are three very important words – information, knowledge and wisdom these are three very important words in this connection, information, knowledge and wisdom. We very often speak of these three words it is only if you are a philosopher you try to think about these three words and try to understand the inner significance of these three words.

What is basically information? Information I’ll tell you very briefly so that the mind is at rest as I use these three words. Information is any process by which some kind of disclosure takes place. You know disclose, ifthe door is closed it is closure, if slightly open there is a disclosure. Now when you open the door, even slightly something that is inside the room becomes perceptible, it’s a disclosure and whatever we receive by way of the disclosure can be called information, this is the easiest definition of information. Any process by which disclosure of an object takes place is information. Knowledge is not merely disclosure of an object. Very often we say education is not an accumulation of information that is to say education is not piling up of disclosures it is said that education is a process of knowledge and further it is said that true education culminates in wisdom, not only knowledge but also wisdom. The educational process should be such, it does not merely inform you but makes you a knower then finally makes you wise then the education process becomes complete.

Now what is the difference between information and knowledge? Knowledge is the collection of ideas and interrelationship of the ideas and their value, this is knowledge. Where there is no ideation, where there is information many human beings who read so many books there is lot of information. Himalayas 29000 ft high, an information but what is the meaning of a mountain, what is the idea of a mountain, how it is related with many other ideas, the ocean and other kind of topographical details of geography and so on and then what is the value of a mountain? Unless you have these together you don’t have knowledge of Himalayas, these are the minimum things that you require to know the Himalayas, it’s not enough to know that Himalayas is 29000 ft high, it’s a disclosure of some kind. Good, fine, nothing to combat, nothing to criticise about it but that is not knowledge. For information or for any kind of state of knowledge to come to mean, you should have ideation, interrelationship of ideas and the value of the interrelationships then you can say I have now known. Wisdom is even deeper than this. Now between the knowledge and wisdom is illumination. I spoke of these terms because I would like to make a distinction between knowledge and illumination and illumination becoming wisdom. You will study this. Next time when I come we shall reflect on this, it’s a very good exercise so that ideas become very clear in your consciousness and you will tell me and at least this first paragraph you will read three, four, five times and find out any defect if there is any and next time when you come, you tell me how we can improve upon it. Alright, good exercise.