Knowledge is a State of Mind

  

Moreover, entrance and exit, descent and ascent, are characteristics of bodies and not of spirits -- that is to say, sensible realities enter and come forth, but intellectual subtleties and mental realities, such as intelligence, love, knowledge, imagination and thought, do not enter, nor come forth, nor descend, but rather they have direct connection.  For example, knowledge, which is a state attained to by the intelligence, is an intellectual condition; and entering and coming out of the mind are imaginary conditions; but the mind is connected with the acquisition of knowledge, like images reflected in a mirror.

(Some Answered Questions, p. 106)

            It is generally assumed that knowledge is something that human beings generate by and within themselves.  Obviously every individual does develop his or her own intelligence through their own efforts. But knowledge, like light, is a manifestation of reality and an already existing quality through which every individual may illumine his or her consciousness.  In this view, knowledge itself is something with which both our intellect and heart, humanity’s two main organs of intelligence, may attain.

            We often speak of “acquiring” knowledge like it was some sort of material commodity, a position reflecting a now common commercial way of looking at all things where human beings start out poor and empty and are in need of filling.  There is a good deal of truth to this view, of course, but ‘Abdu’l-Baha speaks above of the human intelligence "attaining" a state of knowledge via direct connection.  Thus real knowledge is not to imbibe and consume learning, but to move through various states of knowing by direct connection with different levels of reality.  Baha’u’llah, quoting an Islamic tradition, wrote: "Knowledge is all that is knowable.” (The Kitab-i-Iqan:185)  Thus within each state of knowing the knowledge manifested is of that state.  One “acquires” that knowledge because one is in that state.  The knowledge is a manifestation of that state; is the state itself.  Higher states are unknowable to one in a lower state and thus its knowledge is not knowable to him.

            I have said that for human beings Reality presents itself to us as three levels, spirit, mind and matter.  These correspond to the three modalities of knowing, heart, intellect and senses, each of which has a direct connection with Reality on its own level.  Heart, intellect and senses, in turn, correspond to the three aspects of a complete education today, divine, human and material.  All these powers are within the human reality, as Baha’u’llah writes: “Likewise, reflect upon the perfection of man's creation, and that all these planes and states are folded up and hidden away within him. Dost thou reckon thyself only a puny form, when within thee the universe is folded?” (The Seven Valleys:34) 

            Historically, the three aspects of education have been three stages of education, material, human, divine, which today are being rolled up into one education.  As all evolution is of "spiritual man", no matter how embedded in Nature humanity may have been early in its history, and as all education, according to ‘Abdu’l-Baha, is toward divine education, “which is the goal of education”, so, too, the evolution of knowledge is toward that of the sacred and the heart, which is not just the intuitive but also the unitive level of knowledge, both the ground and the goal of all developments in knowledge.  The heart’s knowledge—that is, the higher aspect of heart discussed in The Wonderful Heart (January 12)--is knowledge of the divine or sacred by “direct connection” through a special faculty of knowing resident within it.  Knowledge of the divine means perceiving the creation as composed of “signs of God” (i.e. the essential forms).  Every created thing has a unique sign of God within it which animates its life and generates and guides its development.

            In its higher aspect, the heart is the organ of a knowledge that completely transcends all other powers and knowledges of the soul.  The light of the heart illumines all other faculties, for it is the seat of the spirit.  To escape the polarity, duality, dichotomy, and antinomy that is characteristic of intellectual consciousness we must not only return to this sun of knowing as it is manifest in the child, “except ye be converted and become as little children,” but also combine the heart with the intellect to achieve “light upon light.”  Thus intellectual polarities become structural poles of consciousness, essential parts of something larger, complementary aspects of an epistemological unity rather than contradictory views, as they are for the analytical intellect. 

            There is a difference, too, between the intellect’s and the heart’s primary means of knowing.  While most knowledge obtained by the intellect enters from outside through dialogue, reading, instruction and learning, knowledge of the heart enters and wells-up from within.  Thus it is from a higher dimension. Sacred knowledge enters the human world through a religious faculty, whose seat is the heart.  This faculty puts humanity in touch with a sacred dimension of the creation.  As Baha’u’llah writes, quoting another Islamic Tradition: “Knowledge is a light which God casteth into the heart of whomsoever He willeth.” (The Kitab-i-Iqan: 46)  This knowledge is cast upon the heart and the mind then sees this reflection, as in a mirror; as one leading philosopher put it “the numinous informs the rational from above”—“above” meaning “from within.”  In relation to intellect only this reflected knowledge from the heart enters the mind from within.  Thus, the human reality is described by ‘Abdu’l-Baha as a “luminous light-seeking essence.” (Baha’i World Faith: 371)

            Education is what is brought out of students, or, from the other side, what students pour forth of themselves in their interaction with the world, with others, and with knowledge.  What one brings forth of oneself is one’s education.  The new frontier of education is the spiritual or divine.  This is the bringing forth, the educing, of spirit, meaning each human essence in its essential form as a special sign of God.  Divine or spiritual education is the manifest unfolding of higher human nature itself.  We must transcend ourselves to attain this new state, which is awaiting our arrival. 

            In a previous post, I discussed three terms: progress, transformation and transcendence.  Just as any knowledge that is discovered was already “there”—“there” meaning in the world or in ourselves; which is really the same place--to be discovered, so transcendence is there to be experienced.  I mean that one cannot transcend into nothing.  The state that transcendence lands one in must be "there" as a potential to be experienced.  The fetus progresses through innumerable changes and transformations in the womb.  At birth, the fetus transcends the womb, but transcending the womb (i.e. birth) lands him in the world, not in nothingness.  A transcendent state is the telos, the purpose and the meaning, of the whole prior condition.        

            Yet, though the human spirit, as the Universal House of Justice reminds us, aspires toward transcendence, and that state of transcendence is already within waiting to be unveiled, that spirit cannot, by its own power, achieve transcendence.  Rather, that aspiration must be directly connected to a higher power that lifts the spirit out of the first condition into another.  The human spirit's everlasting quest for transcendence can only be realized by connecting with a transcendent message originating from a transcendent dimension, namely, the Word.  Thus divine education must be built upon the Word.
           I have said that the heart puts us in connection with the sacred realm.  We must explore this state of mind and its knowledge next.