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Brian Hodgkinson, The Essence of Vedanta

Chapter 2: Knowledge and Ignorance

Two kinds of knowledge

 

'What is knowledge?' asks Arjuna in the Gita. Krishna replies that it

is to know the field and the knower of the field (XIII, 1-2). What

does this strange answer mean? The field refers to everything that

can be perceived, in the widest sense of perception. In short, it is

everything that is knowable. Thus all that may be experienced through

the five senses and all that can be imagined, thought, felt or

otherwise experienced inwardly is included in the field. But then if,

as Krishna says, knowledge also means to know the knower of the

field, then that would also be amongst the knowable, so that would be

part of the field too. The solution of this dilemma is that the

knower of the field is not knowable. How then can one know something

which is not knowable? This question goes to the heart of the

philosophy of Vedanta…

 

The distinction that Krishna makes, however, between the field and

the knower of the field is quite different from all the distinctions

… It is not a distinction between outward empirical knowledge and

inner introspective knowledge, nor between knowledge from experience

and non-experiential, or a priori, knowledge, nor between empirical

and logical, or analytic, knowledge. All these are within the field.

 

If we look more precisely at Krishna's answer, we find that the

Sanskrit says something like `to know the field and the knower of the

field, that is real knowledge.' In other words, he suggests that

there are two kinds of knowledge, a higher and lower. The latter is

simply to know the field, the former is to know oneself as the knower

of the field. This is confirmed elsewhere in the Gita and throughout

Vedantic literature. As the modern Vedantist Nikhilananda wrote,

`Self-knowledge is vital. All other forms of knowledge are of

secondary importance.' They cover more or less everything that we

would call knowledge in the Western world.. Psychologists and similar

investigators of the mind, or psyche, might object on the grounds

that they study and discover knowledge of the self. But do they?

Their field of investigation – the phrase is significant – is the

contents of the mind, of the emotions and of the imagination, however

deeply they penetrate these. How can the Vedantist be sure of this?

The reason is that the self is not to be discovered by looking into

the mind, but by finding that which is itself aware of the mind, the

knower of the field.

 

The contrast between higher and lower knowledge is strikingly put in

the Katha Upanishad:

 

`God made sense turn outward, man therefore looks outward, not into

himself. Now and again a daring soul, desiring immortality, has

looked back and found himself.'(The Ten Principal Upanishads, pg. 33)

 

The passage does not simply refer to the five senses turning outwards

to the spatial world. The 'sense' that turns outwards includes the

sense of inner experience, thoughts and feelings and so on, for these

are 'outside' the perceiving or knowing of self. The 'daring soul' is

the man who wants real self-knowledge, who wants to know the knower

of the field.

 

Brian Hodgkinson, The Essence of Vedanta,

Arcturus Publishing Ltd., Canada, pg. 17-19