Updated: March 31, 2025
I am the field and I'm also the knower of the field chapter 13 – Bhagavad Gita Upanishads and Brahma Sutras as well. Same idea, the field modifies itself into modes of knowing and experience. So we said the first mode of knowing is the witnessing awareness, the “I” experience. The second is what we call the mind, feelings, emotions, imagination thought, we did that yesterday. So today, the third mode of knowing intellect, by the way, these three, these modes of knowing also correspond to neural correlates in the brain. The reptilian brain mode of knowing is instinctive. The emotional brain mode of knowing is emotional and then the cortical brain mode of knowing is intellectual.
So the cortical brain, as I mentioned is only four million years old. And the other brains are much older. So we're more influenced by modes of knowing that have to do with instinct and emotion. But we give a lot of credence to rationality and the intellect because it's the basis of everything today, science, technology, internet, artificial Intelligence, and everything that that we take for granted is through a mode of knowing called the intellect. And yet the intellect does not lead us to truth. It may bring us closer, but it may also distance us because the intellect is based on subject object split.
And also the scientific models treat empirical evidence and rational thought as the only important modes of knowing. Just thought of a beautiful expression. From Blaise Pascal. The heart has reasons, that reason doesn't know but not withstanding that, let's see what the problems are with the intellectual mode of knowing. In fact, it's frequently referred to in the Upanishads as the razor's edge, the razor's edge because it can throw you into ignorance as well. This mode of knowing that we call the intellect. But again, the intellect is a modified form of consciousness that looks at logic, rationality and even what we call empirical evidence. So here are the problems with the mode of knowing that we call intellect. Number one, it is based on subject – object split, which is obviously artificial. Subject and object are movements of the of the holographic universe, the holomovement. And so both subject and object are mere temporary appearances in the mode of knowing that we call knowingness, which is the fundamental property of consciousness, knowingness, awareness.
So subject object split is obviously artificial. It helps us create technology and science but does not get us closer to truth. The other objection to this mode of knowing is the idea that empirical evidence is truth, what we call empirical evidence is a species-specific, perceptual snapshot. Boom, Higgs-Boson. Boom, you know, electron. Boom, proton. Boom, whatever. So every experience is a species specific perceptual snapshot that corresponds somehow to the brain as the instrument of knowing. And therefore there's nothing absolute about it. OK. It's a human construct for a human mode of knowing and experience. And obviously, even though the human mode of knowing and experience is the most advanced, so we think, in evolution, it's not the only mode of knowing. Which one is truth? And the answer is none of them because empirical evidence, again, points to the physicalist ontology. And of course, the limits of knowing are also what we call (and the modes of knowing are also what we call in philosophy) epistemology. So there are modes of knowing, there are species-specific modes of knowing empirical evidence is one flashpoint of mode of knowing constructed in a story called physicalism, and so on and so forth.
And therefore, the intellect can actually increase our ignorance, especially when it focuses on matter as the ontological primitive. And also takes that as truth. And then also believes that rationality is superior to other modes of knowing. So rationality and and the mistake of the intellect, sorry, rationality and subject-object split are frequently referred to in in wisdom traditions as pragyapradh. Pragyapradh, the mistake of the intellect. So what should be our practice as we explore this? Question everything that is considered truth. Question everything that is considered truth, because there is no truth that we can call objective. All truth is actually a subjective experience based on our divided mind, which in itself is a socially new hallucination. That's number one and number two, when you make choices, ask yourself, is it bringing me closer to the absolute or is it actually increasing my ignorance by focusing on the relative? Because the relative is ephemeral transient impermanent, and actually over as soon as it's experienced. Right now, as you listen to my voice, by the time you hear it, it's gone, by the time you look at me and by the time you look at me and recognize me, remember me, then what you recognize is actually the past.
That's why everything we experience is the past and then we project it as the present and the future. So that's it, my friends, for today. Practice this exercise. Question every so-called act recognize it's a relative mode of knowing and then focus on the abstract which is back to the Self. And when you make choices ask yourself, is this going to increase my ignorance? Ignorance means when I focus on one thing in particular, I ignore everything in general. And so that's why you know, everything we know is actually a reflection of everything that we don't know. OK, that's the third mode of knowing as consciousness modifies itself into experience and what we call relative and absolute..