History Page created 15th September 2008. Contents Knowledge & Being A Change in Being Secret Teachings Modern Transformation Knowledge without Wisdom

Throughout the ages, there have existed many diverse spiritual disciplines focused on self-work, and eventually transformation, as a primary means of attaining wisdom and liberation of various sorts. These mystery traditions are generally classed as "esoteric," which despite popular misinterpretation means inner, not necessarily secret or hidden. Whilst exoteric institutions often focus on external information and education through authority, these esoteric traditions rest upon a common platform: self-directed transformation to a more conscious being, a process that unites modern psychology, magick, yoga, alchemy, and virtually all genuine mystical and spiritual paths.

In the West, transformative disciplines ranging from Kabalah to Alchemy come under the banner of the Western Mystery Tradition, otherwise simply known as Western esotericism. In the East, the division between esoteric and exoteric appears much more seamless, and hence some of its esoteric traditions are already well known to the average person. Regardless of origin, and despite their varying maps of symbolic interpretation, the great majority of these esoteric systems of self-knowledge stand united in the goal of individual illumination and personal experience of the Divine. It would be misleading and naïve to state absolutely that they're all "doing the same thing", because the great body of esoteric wisdom is incredibly vast, diverse, and still expanding. However, when we examine the goals and tools of these traditions, we find many similarities, especially in their focus on liberation through transformation. The words, methods and precise details they use varies, but the goals fundamentally appear very similar: "making the unconscious conscious", "cultivating Will", "awakening from sleep", "overcoming the ego", "de-robotising", with the larger aim of attaining divine knowledge, gnosis, "Union with God," or "the uniting of the Microcosm with the Macrocosm."

But why transformation? Throughout all these traditions we find shared recognition that a persons default state of awareness is an illusionary trance, a walking sleep, a blind rule. In the same breath however, the inner divinity of every person is declared. We conclude then, that transformation is the struggle from sleep to awakening, the practical and necessary path of reducing ignorance, avidya, illusion and sleep: expanding, strengthening, and clarifying the individuals consciousness so that she can develop her own personal apprehension and relationship with the Divine, the Great Spirit, the Source, the empty fullness, the primordial Self. The mist must recede before the landscape can be seen; the mirror polished before the Light is reflected. Transformation is often related to other goals which are intimately linked: firstly, working on oneself to be able to help others, to heal a suffering world, and secondly, the evolution of consciousness, the expansion of humanity's collective wisdom. Different systems have their particular angles: the Fourth Way is specifically focused on the evolution of consciousness, whereas other traditions talk more about personal experience and knowledge of the divine mysteries: gnosis.

The concept of this series is that underneath the various goals and decorations of these diverse traditions, we find a common practical path for increasing awareness, harnessing attention, encouraging 'inner sincerity', de-robotising, recognising inner divinity, and hence transforming the dedicated "seeker," "initiate," or "patient." When one discovers this process in one system of self-work, and experiences a shift in Being, as opposed to just Knowledge, it becomes more easily recognisable in others. The transformation process common to all these schools is of primary importance to anyone dedicated to seeking more, for themselves and for the wider world. Exploring esoteric wisdom means tapping into a millennia-old chain of wisdom that has been taught and contributed to by each successive generation, ever since Paleolithic shamans first began penetrating the rich depths of the bodymind and its more-than-human relationships. Such wisdom has since quietly percolated through civilisation, under the glare of authoritarian institutions who were more concerned with authority-worship than individual illumination and transformation.

Large parts of this essay were, in particular, stimulated by the writings of G.I. Gurdjieff. G's work was particularly important to this subject because early in life he travelled far and wide to collect and bind various strands of esoteric wisdom into a comprehensive, but perhaps not complete, system for "awakening." G.'s life work involved revealing the depth and practicality of these teachings, whilst discarding much of the obscurity and noise that veils many previous incarnations of inner wisdom.

Of all important doctrines concerning equilibrium, this is the easiest to understand, that change is stability; that stability is guaranteed by change; that if anything should stop changing for the fraction of a split second, it would go to pieces. It is the intense energy of the primal elements of Nature, call them electrons, atoms, anything you will, it makes no difference; change guarantees the order of Nature. This is why, in learning to ride a bicycle, one falls in an extremely awkward and ridiculous manner. Balance is made difficult by not going fast enough. So also, one cannot draw a straight line if one’s hand shakes... "Change is Stability."

Change is stability, stability guarantees change.
The human nervous system and its creations are habitual.
Transformation is change;
release from the habitual, the fixed, the illusory, the hidden.

Knowledge & Being

The real problem is interior... The real problem is how to get people to internally transform. Global consciousness is not an objective belief that can be taught to anybody and everybody, but a subjective transformation in the interior structures that can hold belief in the first place, which itself is the product of a long line of inner consciousness development.

To understand what is meant by transformation, as opposed to just "learning" or "thinking", we need to re-define some terminology. Towards the beginning of In Search of the Miraculous, P.D. Ouspensky's introduction to the teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff, he mentions that "In almost every one of his lectures G. reverted to a theme which he evidently considered to be of the utmost importance but which was very difficult for many of us to assimilate." This lesson on the difference between, and relation of, knowledge to being was the core of this theme, and is vital to our understanding of transformation.

There are two lines along which man's development proceeds, the line of knowledge and the line of being. In right evolution the line of knowledge and the line of being develop simultaneously, parallel to, and helping one another. But if the line of knowledge gets too far ahead of the line of being, or if the line of being gets ahead of the line of knowledge, man's development goes wrong, and sooner or later it must come to a standstill.

We find similar messages in other esoteric schools. Bro. Jeremy Puma, a modern Gnostic, emphasises that to move from the default Kenomic state of directionless, meaningless emptiness, onto a Pleromic path of fullness, meaning and divinity, we need both Logos (reason/word) and Sophia (wisdom/being):

The Logos is Reasoned Information: scriptures, rites, rituals, myths, 'spells,' literally stuff that can be communicated with words. Sophia is our inner capacity to comprehend the Logos - this is why you need both. Every time someone in the Kenomic realm is exposed to the Logos, they have the opportunity to acheive gnosis provided they have also embraced Sophia. This is why so many people can read all this stuff and do all these rites and not have any real progress - too much focus but no way to apply it. On the other hand, if one embraces Sophia but neglects the Logos, one is simply spinning one's wheels in place.

Returning to G.'s particular interpretation of these ideas, he states that most people understand what knowledge (or Logos) means, and that we can grasp the difference between "lesser" and "greater" knowledge, that is, knowledge of different qualities. But what the majority lack, and what is key to understanding any process of transformation, is the role of wisdom, Sophia: being.

'Being,' for them, means simply 'existence' to which is opposed just 'non-existence.' They do not understand that being or existence may be of very different levels and categories. Take for instance the being of a mineral and of a plant. It is a different being. The being of a plant and of an animal is again a different being. But the being of two people can differ from one another more than the being of a mineral and of an animal. This is exactly what people do not understand. And they do not understand that knowledge depends on being. Not only do they not understand this latter but they definitely do not wish to understand it. And especially in Western culture it is considered that a man may possess great knowledge, for example he may be an able scientist, make discoveries, advance science, and at the same time he may be, and has the right to be, a petty, egoistic, caviling, mean, envious, vain, naïve, and absent-minded man. It seems to be considered here that a professor must always forget his umbrella everywhere.

And yet it is his being. And people think that his knowledge does not depend on his being. People of Western culture put great value on the level of a man's knowledge but they do not value the level of a man's being and are not ashamed of the low level of their own being. They do not even understand what it means. And they do not understand that a man's knowledge depends on the level of his being.

G. repeatedly emphasises these points, again and again: firstly that our development can be roughly mapped on two interdependent lines, knowledge and being, and secondly that modern Western culture overly values knowledge, with little respect or acknowledgement of being. Translated into our Gnostic terminology, people sometimes recognise parts of the Logos, but rarely have the Sophianic appreciation (being) to nourish these seeds of potential. Gurdjieff goes on to make the same point as Bro. JP above, that both knowledge and being should grow in tandem, in balance and proportion with eachother, otherwise the larger growth process is compromised:

If knowledge gets far head of being, it becomes theoretical and abstract and inapplicable to life, or actually harmful, because instead of serving life and helping people the better to struggle with the difficulties they meet, it begins to complicate man's life, brings new difficulties into it, new troubles and calamities which were not there before.

The reason for this is that knowledge which is not in accordance with being cannot be large enough for, or sufficiently suited to, man's real needs. It will always be knowledge of one thing together with ignorace of another thing; a knowledge of the detail without a knowledge of the whole; a knowledge of the form without a knowledge of the essence.

Such preponderence of knowledge over being is observed in present-day culture. The idea of the value and importance of the level of being is completely forgotten. And it is forgotten that the level of knowledge is determined by the level of being. Actually at a given level of being the possibilities of knowledge are limited and finite. Within the limits of a given being the quality of knowledge cannot be changed, and the accumulation of information of one and the same nature, within already known limits, alone is possible. A change in the nature of knowledge is possible only with a change in the nature of being.

The message seems clear: modern man is drunk on his conceptual brain, lacking the feminine receptive wisdom of Sophia. In such a case, knowledge grows beyond being and creates abstract theories divorced from everday living. The development of being beyond knowledge, on the other hand, leads to a person who can do but does not know what to do, or how to do it:

Generally speaking, the balance between knowledge and being is even more important than a separate development of either one or the other...

The development of the line of knowledge without the line of being gives a weak yogi, that is to say, a man who knows a great deal but can do nothing, a man who does not understand what he knows, a man without appreciation, that is, a man for whom there is no difference between one kind of knowledge and another. And the development of the line of being without knowledge gives a stupid saint, that is, a man who can do a great deal but who does not know what to do or with what object.

G. also makes it clear that the gross oversight of Western culture, the elevation of knowledge above being, is fatal, because our level of knowledge is determined (limited or enabled) by the level of our being. With no change in being, we can still accumulate knowledge, but it is of a fixed quality and relevance, and it can only grow within pre-determined intellectual limits. To change the quality of our knowledge, to truly expand our horizons, we have to change the quality of our being.

A Change in Being

The recognition that being, as well as knowledge, must change to promote genuine inner growth, gives us the foundation we need to comprehend the essence of the transformation process. The various methods of self-work, ranging from meditation to breathwork to psychotherapy, all involve penetrating self-exploration precisely because the quality of being must grow for the quality of knowledge to flourish. Without any hard work on our being, without dedicated self-probing and inner sincerity, our knowledge remains limited and calcified. The current cultural focus on knowledge-accumulation as a sign of understanding, and concurrent ignorance of being, leads to a primarily exoteric stance of the sort which dominates todays most powerful social institutions. In this respect, modern science and institutionalised religion are very much aligned in their approach. This distinction between exoteric and esoteric positions is particularly useful:

Thus we have (putting it of course simplistically) two fundamental positions; the Exoteric literal religious-and-scientific position, which requires no transformation of consciousness, and is therefore accessible to the "average joe"; and the Esoteric "mystical" and philosophically sophisticated position, which is based on the transformation of the self and the understanding of the nature of reality.

A balanced focus on both being and knowledge leads to an esoteric approach, shared by many wide-ranging traditions of transformation. On the other hand we have the exoteric approach which, beneath the surface, has a few fundamental assumptions:

• Apart from sleep, all other consciousness is normal "waking" consciousness.

• Normal "waking" consciousness gives us free will and clarity of thought.

• Whilst awake, everyone lives equally in normal "waking" consciousness.

• All knowledge can be attained through this default "waking" consciousness.

The esoteric position proposes a very different set of assumptions:

• There are many degrees of consciousness and being.

• What we call normal "waking" consciousness does not provide free will; it is a form of "sleep walking", a trance. It follows that what we call "thinking" is almost totally pre-determined "associative mentation."

• People can live in very different levels of consciousness, giving them access to very different qualities of knowledge.

• Certain knowledge about oneself and the cosmos requires higher or altered states of consciousness, which can be induced through methods ranging from self-observation to psychedelic drugs.

It is from these vastly different foundations that the methods of esoteric and exoteric traditions vary so much. It's important to remember that the above points are not just conceptual foundations, but physical and emotional realisations that must be experienced and felt for them to be understood. It is precisely because normal consciousness works as it does that self-awareness is required to penetrate and fully grasp these foundations. And to truly understand these foundations, one must see them in oneself. The goal of many esoteric traditions have therefore been to provide initiates with tools to occasionally, and then more frequently, shock them out of "normal waking consciousness," with its mechanical behaviours and responses, and into a deeper state of awareness; a more conscious being with access to higher understanding and a more authentic notion of "will."

Transformation to a more conscious being often begins with personal revelation: a change in mind, a glimpse of something more, a mystical experience, or just an over-riding sense that something is seriously fucked up. This revelation-transformation process has been linked by recent esoteric pioneers, with modern neurological understanding, to radical alterations in the wiring of the human nervous system. In Prometheus Rising, Robert Anton Wilson highlights the phenomenal role of revelation and transformation as the sole thread linking four of the most influential figures in civilised history:

Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus and St. Paul. What did these four men have in common?

As Aleister Crowley points out, "No point of doctrine, no point of ethics, no theory of a 'hereafter' do they share, and yet in the history of their lives we find one identity amid many diversities."

Buddha was an ordinary Hindu nobleman, and then he experienced a rapid brain change, after which he became a great Teacher.

Mohammed was a humble camel-driver, with no sign of exceptional intelligence or ambition, and then he experienced a rapid brain change, after which he became Teacher, Conqueror, Law-Maker and Prophet.

We hear nothing of Jesus (save a few fables) until the age of 30, when he experiences a rapid brain change, and puts forth a doctrine that is to overturn the Roman Empire and influence Western Civilization until the present.

St. Paul, who took the teaching of Jesus and turned it into a militant movement, suffered an extreme form of brain-change, of which he tells us that he was temporarily struck blind and lifted up into the heavens where he beheld things "of which it is not lawful to speak."

On all else but the experience of Illumination they disagree... Making every possible reservation about fable and myth, we get this one coincidence: A nobody experiences rapid brain-change (consciousness dilation) and abruptly becomes very much a historical Somebody. Much of the human race is still living on the legacy of these four bio-electrical "illuminations," for good and for ill.
(Robert Anton Wilson. Prometheus Rising, pg 155)

Jesus, St. Paul, Buddha and Mohammed all experienced particularly extreme forms of transformation.

The art of conscious transformation, initiated (in its modern forms) through willed attention to everyday situations and responses, represents the beating heart of all "inner" esoteric traditions. Such methods of awakening were transmitted through many different religions and cultures that are now idenitifed as Gnostic, Sufic, Buddhist, and so on. The previously mentioned divide between esoteric and exoteric approaches is rarely clear cut, but one can generally make out a common DIY approach in esoteric traditions, and a very different emphasis on scripture-authority in the exoteric lineage.

Of course not everything plastered with the overly-abused esoteric label can provide 1) an understanding and 2) tools for transformation. With increasingly expanding levels of information, authority and control over the last several thousand years, esoteric information has repeatedly been imitated and then vomited out as conceptual rubbish through misunderstanding, or re-interpretted by authorities with the goal of social control. Any teaching is easily mystified or confused when it becomes popularised among a larger group of people who do not understand its foundations. Like all forces, when these teachings enter a larger sphere of participation, they can easily loose their life, becoming rigid and fixed. In todays information-flooded world especially, it is difficult to differentiate between confused teachings, faux-spiritual jargon, egotistic gurus and genuine esoteric work. Along with teachers who are downright deceptive stand teachers who claim various forms of enlightenment, but have received watered-down teachings that can do very little to assist the dedicated seeker. The result tends to be a lot of weak yogis and stupid saints.

The original methods of genuine esoteric schools were aimed at triggering awareness and then transformation in initiates, often through a death-rebirth rite where the initiate died to her former self, and was reborn anew. Today, most of what we call religion appears primarily employed to give people "something" (anything) to believe in, to maintain some dogmatic nuts "religious" sense of worth, and to create easily controllable groups joined together through emotional excitation. Too much emotional work in a group without any individual illumination unfortunately often leads to feelings of superiority, the emergence of authority figures, and a "herd mentality." While many churches and religious organisations carry out a lot of important social work, "religion" on the whole has been misinterpretted as merely exoteric study and emotional faith, ignoring the esoteric teachings concerned with a transformation in being.

Secret Teachings

The largest problem for the transformative arts, today and throughout history, is that religious teachings based on exoteric knowledge and worship of external authority inevitably suppress esoteric alternatives, becoming violent and hostile towards them. The early Gnostics were hunted down and killed by the emerging Christian church, as were many thousands of other "heretics" centuries later, during the Catholic Inquisition. It is through this process of patriarchal religion supporting authority that much of what we have left in the way of religious teaching is exoteric: unconcerned with changes in consciousness or being, believing that normal consciousness is sufficiently "awake", and that all that is needed is the right knowledge from the correct authority.

The process of transformation outlined in various traditions old and new is based on inner transformation, not simple emotional or conceptual stimulation, precisely because our normal state of consciousness is, prior to self-directed awareness, very limited, no matter what thoughts pass through it. In this state, 'thoughts,' 'desires' and 'ideas' continue to happen to a man; he can do very little except mechanically react to external events. Unfortunately, the illusion of free will and choice remains.

It's again worth re-iterating that some traditions fall between exoteric and esoteric, and that many mystery schools were also involved in scholarship and exoteric education. In fact, nearly all esoteric traditions study some scriptures or texts, but primarily as a means to greater understanding, not as an end in themselves. One reliable way to distinguish genuine transformative teachings is their "discover it for yourself" attitude, an approach that is discouraged by most exoteric institutions.

Since their repression by mainstream authoritarian religions, many esoteric, occult, alchemical and magical orders resorted to obscuring and hiding their inner transformative core through poetry and complicated symbolism. This kept them out of the Catholic spotlight, and also kept everyday people from picking up parts of the teachings and spreading nonsense. Many scholars misunderstood these symbolic complexities as a fault or failure on behalf of the mystics, but their reasons for propagating such obscurity were often purely practical:

The esoteric philosophies ... functioned more or less openly in ancient society, [but] later passed almost completely from public view. This circumstance should not be interpreted as a decline of plan or purpose. The esoteric schools remained as a powerful force for the regeneration of human institutions.

Those who do not understand the spiritual sciences question their use of unusual symbols, myths, and figures employed to conceal the essential teaching. Let it be remembered that these "clouds" were no part of the original doctrine, but were made necessary by intolerance and bigotry. The use of indirect communication was based entirely upon practical considerations... The "veils" which concealed the arcana of the Mysteries were not employed to cover ignorance, but to protect wisdom, and in Europe it was protected for a thousand years.
(Henry L. Drake, taken from the Foreword of The Secret Teachings of All Ages, by Manly P. Hall)

Since the emergence and translation of many Eastern esoteric texts into Western understanding, their original transformative meaning has been re-discovered by Western seekers. For example, Tim Leary comments in The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead that:

The Tibetan Book of the Dead is ostensibly a book describing the experiences to be expected at the moment of death, during an intermediate phase lasting fourty-nine (seven times seven) days, and during rebirth into another bodily frame. This however is merely the exoteric framework which the Tibetan Buddhists used to cloak their mystical teachings. The language and symbolism of death rituals of Bonism, the traditional pre-Tibetan Buddhist religion, were skillfully blended with Buddhist conceptions. The esoteric meaning, as it has been interpretted in this manual, is that it is the death and rebirth of the ego that has been described, not only the body. Lama Govinda indicates this clearly when he writes: "It is a book for the living as well for the dying." The book's esoteric meaning is often concealed beneath many layers of symbolism. It was not intended for general reading. It was designed to be understood only by one who was to be initiated personally by a guru into the Buddhist mystical doctrine, into the pre-mortem-death-rebirth experience. These doctrines have been kept a closely guarded secret for many centuries, for fear that naïve or careless application would do harm.

Carl Jung, a pioneer of the West's modern transformative tradition, psychoanalysis, was one of the most important figures in bridging the psychological and transformative meanings of Eastern and Western esoteric traditions. His "first love" was Gnosticism, an ancient Western esoteric tradition that he found mired in the archetypal symbolism of the collective unconscious. Jung later became immersed in alchemical literature, highlighting its role as the bridge between ancient Gnosticism and the modern psychoanalytical discipline. A German Sinologist named Richard Wilhelm later sent Jung a translation of an Eastern alchemical treatise, to see if he would write a psychological commentary:

This work, subsequently known as The Secret of the Golden Flower catapulted C.G. Jung into the very midst of alchemical themes and interests. His studies disclosed that Chinese alchemy, just like the alchemy of the West, deals primarily with the transformational symbolism of the human soul... "The Chinese Connection" thus revealed to Jung that alchemy is based upon universal archetypal principles which are of equal relevance to ancient Gnostics, Taoist wise men, and modern psychologists.

Modern Transformation

Within the last century or so, the efforts in comparative religion, the growth of psychological models, and the syncretic study of mysticism and transformation have reached new heights. Due to the apparent decline of Church authority, the emerging freedom of thought and speech associated with democratic Enlightenment principles, improved scientific understanding of the human bodymind, and finally modern information availability, esoteric teachings have experienced a further renaissance. Modern authors, aimed with a vast chest of esoteric information and new research into man and the universe, have been able to further penetrate through the obscurity of many previous teachings. To some extent, the cat has been let out of the fucking bag!

Thanks to pioneers such as H.P. Blavatsky, G.I. Gurdjieff, Aleister Crowley, Aldous Huxley and Timothy Leary, the original transformative meaning of many spiritual traditions has been realised and re-iterated back into modern understanding. With new scientific research (most notably in physics and neuroscience) these teachings have also been expanded and improved upon in ways unimaginable to previous teachers. Tim Leary was among the most important modern pioneers in this respect, for his work combining this knowledge and more into a comprehensive 8 circuit model of consciousness, and also for his recognition that psychedelic drugs are high potency brain-change agents for inner transformation. The result today is that we have unprecedented access to valuable transformational teachings, free from obscurity and authority.

Warning: the ape is never far behind!

Knowledge without Wisdom

The re-emergence of transformative wisdom seems to have occurred at a key time, as our civilisation faces its own forced transformation to a more sustainable existence, while we as a species are confronted with the massive potential for Conscious Evolution. Despite obvious and diverse manifestations of problems cropping up all around us, there is still little understanding of the need for internal transformation amongst the majority of people. The general population tend to unconsciously espouse the exoteric commandments: we just need the right tools, the right authorities, the right punishment, the right energy source. Never mind examining the minds of the people who design the tools, the people who reign the violence, the people whose character structures continously shape the world around us, in a self-perpetuating spiral of mechanical behaviour! Never mind that!

It seems precisely that we have Knowledge, most visibly manifest today in modern technology, way beyond Being (humanity), that the situation remains as it stands. Wherever one looks, the world bubbles with massive amounts of knowledge, being put to use with the most minute amount of wisdom. Our hierarchies are headed by the biggest idiots among us, whilst the brains and creativity remain locked under control. Even when knowledge is used effectively, it often only serves a small priveledged elite. In the third millenium, humanity has the power to fly to the moon, and yet half of humanity lives on under 3 or 4 dollars a day. The beauty of the sub-atomic world has been breached, and yet we are surrounded by countless examples of mindless violence and war. The power of the atom has been harnessed, but because the being behind the knowledge was not sufficient, it was turned into a weapon of mass destruction and used to annihilate two cities.

This is the cumulative result of information beyond humanity, power lacking brains, knowledge without wisdom. All the "why's" and "how's" aside, the situation remains as thus:

The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

But still, the majority of all modern teaching, scientific and religious, is dominated by the exoteric perspective which says that this isn't the individuals concern: we just need the right politicians, to kill the right terrorists, to establish the right laws... It is only the unrelenting radiance of gnosis, the personal element underlying all esoteric thought, that taps each of us on the shoulder and whispers: you have a personal responsibility to the world around you, and to your own divine nature.

We have returned full circle, to the role of Knowledge and Being. We have the knowledge and tools to create paradise, but we don't have the understanding to use those tools without forgetting ourselves and fighting eachother. Gurdjieff goes on to elaborate the concepts of knowledge and being in relation to "Understanding":

In order to understand ... the nature of knowledge and the nature of being, as well as their interrelation, it is necessary to understand the relation of knowledge and being to 'understanding.' Knowledge is one thing, understanding is another thing. People often confuse these concepts and do not clearly grasp what is the difference between them.

Knowledge by itself does not give understanding. Nor is understanding increased by an increase of knowledge alone. Understanding depends upon the relation of knowledge to being. Understanding is the resultant of knowledge and being. And knowledge and being must not diverge too far, otherwise understanding will prove to be far removed from either. At the same time the relation of knowledge to being does not change with a mere growth of knowledge. It changes only when being grows simultaneously with knowledge. In other words, understanding grows only with the growth of being.

In ordinary thinking, people do not distinguish understanding from knowledge. They think that greater understanding depends on greater knowledge. Therefore they accumulate knowledge, or that which they call knowledge, but they do not know how to accumulate understanding and do not bother about it.

And yet a person accustomed to self-observation knows for certain that different periods in his life he has understood one and the same idea, one and the same thought, in totally different ways. It often seems strange to him that he could have understood so wrongly that which, in his opinion, he now understands rightly. And he realizes, at the same time, that his knowledge has not changed, and that he knew as much about the given subject before as he knows now. What, then, has changed? His being has changed. And once being has changed understanding must change also.

G. goes on to offer a psycho-biological explanation of the difference between "knowledge" and "understanding," which can also be easily translated into the terminology of Leary's 8 circuit model:

The difference between knowledge and understanding becomes clear when we realize that knowledge may be the function of one center [D.B.-The Conceptual center]. Understanding, however, is the fuction of three centers [D.B.-Physical, Emotional and Conceptual centers]. Thus the thinking apparatus may know something. But understanding appears only when a man feels and senses what is connected with it.
...
In the sphere of practical activity people know very well the difference between mere knowledge and understanding. They realize that to know and to know how to do are two different things, and that knowing how to do is not created by knowledge alone. But outside the sphere of practical activity people do not clearly understand what 'understanding' means.

This point becomes abundantly clear in learning something like a martial art. A black belt (lit. one who has gone before) martial artist can show a student every single technique needed to reach his grade, but the student would not be anywhere near black belt level after seeing them. Writing them all down and watching the videos every day would still be a long way from the grade. Even being able to perform the physical movements is nowhere near enough. The movements are only techniques, knowledge; behind the techniques are necessary body movements, styles of motion that take years to set down, along with the psychological mindset, the being, which serves as the master and director of techniques. If the master is not home, the techniques are weak, mis-used, and lacking any spirit.

As a rule, when people realize that they do not understand a thing, they try to find a name for what they do not 'understand,' and when they find a name they say they 'understand.' But to 'find a name' does not mean to 'understand.' Unfortunately, people are usually satisfied with names. A man who knows a great many names, that is, a great many words, is deemed to understand a great deal -- again excepting, of course, any sphere of practical activity wherein his ignorance very soon becomes evident.

This habit of findings words, of thinking one understands through merely labelling a phenomenon, represents the exoteric spirit manifest: claiming that we can understand anything as we are now, without any change in consciousness, any change in being. General Semanticists, pioneers of modern self-understanding lead by Alfred Korzybski, were essentially screaming the same message in a more modern dialect: "The map is not the territory!" Words are not the things they describe, our models are not the territory they point to, the menu is not the meal!

Many people live in a walking sleep where words (knowledge) appear more "real" than the things they actually describe. And so people fetishise abstraction over existential fact. Many people refuse to explore racism or talk to people about it, but are immediately infuriated when someone says a racist word. Many religious people claim to follow moral and high words, but their actions and interactions barely resemble the compassion these words are supposed to communicate. People willingly kill each other over words, ignoring the existential territories these maps point to. This is not the behaviour of a mature intelligent species. This is the behaviour of a species that has not yet come to terms with its powers of, in this instance, abstraction. Korzybski suggested a system of self-awareness that cultivated Consciousness of Abstracting, a method for highlighting the difference between models and territories, knowledge and understanding.

"But what you can get out of a book is never it. At bottom," Dr Robert added, "all of you are still Platonists. You worship the word and abhor matter!"

"Tell that to the clergymen," said Will. "They're always reproaching us with being crass materialists."

"Crass," Dr Robert agreed, "but crass precisely because you're such inadequate materialists. Abstract materialism- that's what you profess. Whereas we make a point of being materialists concretely- materialistic on the wordless levels of seeing and touching and smelling, of tensed muscles and dirty hands. Abstract materialism is as bad as abstract idealism, it makes immediate spiritual experience almost impossible."...

"But even the most concrete materialism," Vijaya qualified, "won't get you very far unless you're fully conscious of what you're doing and experiencing. You've got to be completely aware of the bits of matter you're handling, the skills you're practicing, the people you're working with."

"Quite right," said Dr Robert, "I ought to have made it clear that concrete materialism is only the raw stuff of a fully human life. It's through awareness, complete and constant awareness, that we transform it into concrete spirituality. Be fully aware of what you're doing, and work becomes the yoga of work, play becomes the yoga of play, everyday living becomes the yoga of everyday living."...

"Psycho-physical means to a transcendental end," said Vijaya.
(Aldous Huxley, Island, pg 149)

We communicate, trade and live in symbols. These symbols remain rogue units until the consciousness behind them, the being of the user, understands the territory behind the map, until the user accurately and consciously pays attention to the pre-verbal spatio-temporal landscape which sits comfortably behind all interactions, of which our symbols are only conceptual-artistic abstractions; ripples upon an infinite ocean of experience.

The way that can be spoken is not the real Way. The name that can be named is not the real Name.

Our brains constantly utilise models and symbols to project structure and order over the ever changing territory of human experience. When these maps are accurate, we can calmly appreciate their usefulness - they help us to honestly understand. An inaccurate map, whether created through logic, emotion or intuition, is just a fancy piece of paper referring to an island that has long since been submerged under water. Thus we can also say that being is not only the ability, but vitally the humility, to discard maps and re-vamp them, whenever needed: to always pay attention to the path instead of getting lost in the representations and illusions of our unconscious perceptions.

In the next part of the series: The necessity of self-work; all minds are vulnerable; the possibility of will; death and rebirth; analysis and synthesis; tools for transformation. Read Transformation Part II now.