In the beginning of this thread it was very chaotic. There were dozens of people posting every day and most of them were materialists or atheists venting their frustration at religion. There were a couple of bible thumpers who were hammered into silence by a rather vociferous and aggressive atheist majority. There was absolutely no chance in hell these 2 groups would find any kind of understanding. Zero.
There was another small minority who I will call the Seekers. The seekers are people who refuse the reductionism of the atheists/materialists, they refuse the dogmatism of both science and religion, and seek a more dynamic, deeply personal approach to the question of divinity. I was one of them.
As the years passed, the balance in the thread shifted. The troll posts became less and less while there were more and more quality posts. A few atheists, agnostics and seekers tried to battle it out, debating a wide range of topics: religion, science, spirituality, aliens, psychedelic drugs, music, mystical experiences, philosophy, consciousness and consciousness research and many more.
This was the time where I looked at myself and started to see that I was little more than a fraud. Here I was, fiercely defending spirituality from the attacks of the material reductionists, often frustrated at them for not getting what was so clear to me, praising direct experience over intellectual knowledge. But what about me? The main personal experience I had was that one time I experienced the Kundalini Awakening. This was all I could use to back up my point of view. But that was 30 years ago....what about now?
During this time I decided that it was time to "walk the talk", and so I started a daily practice of meditation. Most definitely one of the best decisions in my life.
During the last year or so, the atmosphere in the thread changed. The usual posters were now a few materialists and a handful of seekers. The discussions were for the most part civilized and revolved around the topic of science, spirituality and how consciousness fits in both. There was a distinctive change in quality in the posts, but also in myself. I no longer got frustrated and irritated by the occasional troll posts (well, at least much less than before 55) and only focused on trying to convey the essence of spirituality in the best way I could. This is where my meditation practice came in handy.
Among the seekers there was a fervent individual. A very rational and educated person who would debate everyone else into the ground by the sheer number of lengthy posts promoting his map of reality. I won't name him to preserve his privacy. 😄 At first, I considered him a sort of "ally" for the seekers. We had the same "opponents" after all. Lately however, another dynamic started to emerge and become clear: he was a scholar and not a seeker.
What is the difference?
Scholar:
Focus: Acquires and accumulates knowledge through formal study and research.
Tools: Relies on data, evidence, logic, and critical thinking.
Strengths: Deep understanding of specific fields, expertise in analyzing information, ability to identify and solve problems within their area of study.
Potential Limitations: Can be focused on details and miss the bigger picture, may prioritize theoretical knowledge over practical application, limited understanding of human nature and emotions.
Seeker:
Focus: Understands the essence of things, seeks deep insights and meaning beyond intellectual knowledge.
Tools: Relies on experience, intuition, empathy, and discernment.
Strengths: Offers sound judgment, guides others with practical advice, sees complex situations from multiple perspectives, promotes peace and well-being.
Potential Limitations: Cannot always explain their intuition logically, may not have formal academic credentials, their advice may seem subjective or anecdotal.
It became evident that he was the epitome of the scholar. He would post very long and verbose posts, almost always heavily sprinkled with quotes from his bible, outlining what his teacher teaches about this or that topic and how wrong everyone is who doesn't see the truth in those teachings. Total intellectual rigidity. A bit like the bible thumpers we all know.
He and I started to drift more and more apart, at least philosophically. The main point of contention being that direct experience trumps intellectual knowledge. He would not concede that there are levels in awareness and understanding of consciousness, and this belief created all sorts of distortions.
The same way I gave up hoping that materialists would "see the light", I also started to lose hope that he would understand. The more I thought about it, the more it became clear that there was a qualitative gap between our points of view. I could see his position because I've been in the same place, but he couldn't see mine. In fact, he got so confused as to where I stand, that he even called me "religious", a "hater of books" and a hater of my ego! 😄
So, what is this all about? Qualitative gap? Levels of awareness/consciousness? Levels of understanding?
I picture it a bit like a tree. A tree grows in 2 directions: horizontal and vertical. On the horizontal line we find quantitative knowledge, on the vertical line qualitative knowledge.
Let's see this in more detail with some examples. If we look at our own personal evolution, we can detect several "jumps" in understanding: from child to adolescent, to a more mature understanding. These jumps are always connected to an increasingly wider and more inclusive awareness and understanding of the world and oneself. As a child our world is very small. We only care about ourselves, our body and our needs. A little older, we expand this world to include others. At first our immediate family and gradually friends as well. Then we discover our sexual nature and a whole new world opens before us. The previous levels of childhood are still there, but like the growth in a tree, new rings are forming around the core. Each new ring incorporates the old one and goes beyond it. The tree grows.
Let's take these 4 jumps or steps as we are all familiar with them.
A - early childhood/"My world is whatever I need",
B - late childhood/ "My world is my family and friends"
C - adolescence "I'm a sexual being",
D - adulthood "I'm finding my place in society"
(Please note: this is not the only way to categorize development. This is not meant to be a psychological treatise, but is simply a way to pave the road for my main point)
Each new step is a new level of branches on our consciousness tree. Once we set foot on a new level, we are forced to learn as much as possible about this level in order to navigate it successfully. This then is the horizontal knowledge we need in order to deal with the challenges of the new level.
For A it will be learning to get that toy by pointing at it or screaming. Making yourself heard when you're hungry or when you are in discomfort. Everything revolves around you and your needs.
For B it will be learning how to get emotional gratification, feeling safe and loved. Lots of new boundaries are explored here. Everything revolves around "How far can I go?" and "Which behavior brings be benefits, which one will get my in trouble?" What is accepted and what not?
For C it will be learning how to navigate the world of mating, how to present yourself in a way to facilitate it and relate yourself to people outside your close family and friend's circle. We all know how difficult and stressful this learning process is!
For D it is learning how to be a productive and valuable member of society.
We have now identified vertical growth (various developmental levels) and horizontal growth (the knowledge accumulated on a specific developmental level). A refusal to acknowledge the existence of such levels and stages is for me as ridiculous as the flat earth madness. Funnily enough, it's one of the few topics most materialists and seekers seem to agree on. Not all though...
Now, most people will "climb" this tree of consciousness to a certain level. Our world here consists of strategies to get our physical needs fulfilled (A), our emotional needs fulfilled (B), our sexual needs fulfilled (C) and our social needs fulfilled (D).
Some people however, develop a new kind of need, a need for meaning (E). This new need comes with its own set of challenges and with its own new level of understanding. Just like all previous levels, it transcends and includes the levels that preceded it. Questions like "Who am I?" and "What does it all mean?" become central. New questions receive new answers and new answers are then incorporated into a new framework.
What has all this got to do with the scholar and the seeker?
First of all, there is a qualitative difference. The seeker is just a person who has climbed onto a higher branch of the consciousness tree and is now expanding the horizontal knowledge on that level. It has to be said that the jump from A to B to C to D all come quite naturally and effortlessly. You grow into them as part of your natural development as an individual. Jumping from D to E however (or man 3 VS man 4 [Gurdijeff]; or first tier VS second tier [Ken Wilber]), is much more radical and requires more of a conscious effort. E is neither required nor necessary to survive in our society, hence it is not pursued by many.
The scholar is a person who is firmly established on the mind level and has explored and mapped this level in great detail. Whatever unknown there still is out there, is believed to be made known by simply more horizontal knowledge on that level.
The seeker however, knows that more horizontal knowledge will not provide or insure that qualitative jump onto the next higher branch. The seeker knows that holding on to that horizontal knowledge is the very thing that prevents the jump.
The scholar reduces everything coming from above the tree into the framework of his own level. The scholar is unable to gain any real understanding from the seeker. The only thing he gets are catchy quotes and feel-good ideas. Would an 8 yo child know what it's like to be in puberty? You can try to explain it to him, he can see it in his older siblings maybe, but he will never truly know what it's like until he himself gets flooded by those hormones. Direct experience trumps intellectual, second-hand knowledge.
When will the child know? When the child is ready to know.
When will the scholar know? When the scholar is ready to know.
On to the main point:
The difference between a scholar and a seeker is the direct experience of the inner world. Here is an analogy I thought of early this morning....
Direct experience gives a man a multi-dimensional "image" of the truth (what we usually call insight). After receiving this image, he then employs his rational mind to write the caption to this image. The caption however, despite his best efforts, is merely a very crude approximation of that image. It can never express the full impact of the image on the man, nor its multidimensional proprieties. Unfortunately, the caption is the only thing he can share when communicating with others. (Note: People further up the tree are capable of transmitting knowledge by presence alone. Captions are used sparingly or not at all.) This process transforms a normal man into a seeker. Picture first, caption later.
The scholar on the other hand, goes at it in exactly the opposite way. He starts from the captions (building up his worldview by accumulating horizontal knowledge) and uses them to paint the image. Of course, being limited by words that only describe the image in such a crude fashion, will result in an equally crude and two-dimensional image. The image gained in such a manner in no way resembles the image gained by the seeker. It would be like comparing a stick figure drawing to Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam", times a million....and even that doesn't fully convey the difference in quality.
Yet the scholar will insist that his stick figure is in no way of lesser quality than Michelangelo's painting, simply because he doesn't accept the concept of quality (stages of development) in the first place. He only accepts quantity (horizontal knowledge) as a means to gain knowledge and reveal truth.
In the same way an adult can not force a child to jump levels (for instance jump from late childhood to puberty) but has to wait until that level emerges in the child as a consequence of his natural development, the seeker can not force the scholar to jump to the next tree branch. The scholar must first reach the limits of his level and see that those answers are no longer enough for the new arising questions he has. This creates a vacuum, a new need. The old is rejected, but there is nothing yet to take its place. This is the perfect condition for the next jump.
So, what can we do?
We can not force the development (neither in ourselves nor in others), but we can facilitate it by supplying the right conditions. Ideally, the body should be healthy (good food, enough sleep) and the mind should be cultivated by avoiding harmful distractions (TV news, dysfunctional relationships, irrelevant and superficial information and habits). A very effective method is meditation, which trains the mind to become still and thus allows that which is beyond (or beneath) the mind to emerge.
What will the scholar do at this point?
He will insist that all possible knowledge to be gained on the vertical line (which he doesn't believe exists in the first place) is in fact to be found on the horizontal line. That means that all present unknowns can become knowns by simply reading and thinking.
If it were as easy as this, the world would be filled with wise man, but where are they? There are intelligent people, there are people with high morals and ethics, and there are some who are a mixture of these attributes. But there are very, very few wise men. Why is that? Because it takes more than reading books to become wise.
And no doubt will this very post go through the scholar's meat grinder of intellectual inquiry, chopped down and picked apart in search of the image. The scholar will certainly, once again mistake this caption for the image.
And for this reason, despite the incessant demands of the scholar, the seeker (wisely) refuses to answer his questions, as the answers would merely be colorless captions of the actual images. That's all the scholar is looking for...more and more captions in order to form and strengthen the image he's painting. And that is fine....for the scholar. That's how he fulfills his needs. The seeker however, prefers to generate his own image by practice and direct, personal experience. It may not be perfect, it may have flaws and inaccuracies, but it's an authentic and unique image, not an empty copy of someone else's masterpiece. The seeker too is trying to fulfill needs, but he knows that this can not be achieved by more intellectual learning. Image first, caption later.
And this is the crux of the whole debate. The whole endeavor is futile. The seeker doesn't need the scholar's knowledge because he has already transcended that level and he already knows that the answers to his current questions are not to be found there. The scholar doesn't recognize nor accept the level of the seeker and mistakes it for just another place on his own level/branch.
The 8 year old looks at his brother going through puberty and scratches his head..."He must have gone crazy!"
Disclaimer: No books were harmed during the making of this post.
Live Long and Prosper
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