Human Knowledge and Its Significance for Man and the Cosmos

To those who have real knowledge of these things, the philosophers and theorists are exactly like men who investigate a grain of wheat from the point of view of its value in the nourishment of human beings. There is a fundamental error here. The primary purpose of what lives within us in the form of knowledge, idea, truth, wisdom, is not that of enabling us to form mental pictures of the things of the external world. The process of forming mental pictures of the external world is just as secondary a purpose of knowledge as it is a secondary purpose of the grain of wheat to nourish human beings. Knowledge lives within us for another purpose altogether. It is there primarily in order that it may work and weave in our being. During our life between birth and death we accumulate wisdom, little by little. And at the same time we apply the wisdom thus accumulated in such a way that it can mirror the external world, just as we use grains of wheat for the purpose of nourishment. But remember, every time we use grains of wheat for food, we are depriving them of their essential and original purpose, namely that of bringing forth a new plant. In the same way, the wisdom we apply to the grasping of the world outside is a deviation from the real task of wisdom. It is a deviation because the forces of the True, the forces of Knowledge are not primarily there for this purpose.