Mind is a faculty for seeking knowledge

Our mind therefore does not convey to us the ultimate reality but merely approximations of a reality which it has the capacity to display. It is like an analogue television set which cannot show us the transmission of digital channels as it does not have the receiving capacity to capture those ‘transmission’ of reality that lies beyond its ‘wavelengths’. The approximations the mind allows us to see is additionally coloured by our language, childhood learning and conditioning by our culture. Thus, certain ethnic groups in the world do not have words for certain emotions that those speaking English have for instance and thus whilst they have the experience of an internal state, they cannot express or describe it to others or indeed to themselves. It is said that in the Yoruba language in Nigeria, the words for hunger, anger and pain are the same. The reality experienced and described by the Yoruba speakers will be very different then. Such idiosyncrasies reveal a reality that is approached from particular standpoints or centres. The mind therefore cannot be a faculty of knowledge, but merely a faculty for seeking knowledge, within multiple constraints. For human beings, the mind seeks knowledge from the time it is born in the following order: i) physiological safety of temperature, hydration and feeding, ii) care and affection, iii) belonging and identity, iv) esteem and power and ultimately v) a tendency to put the needs and concerns of others above oneself, to “actualise” to borrow a term popularised by Maslow, a psychologist, who interestingly believed that only Mahatma Gandhi & Martin Luther King in modern times were those who actualised themselves. Mind therefore can only manage a chunk of the entire spectrum of truth, that which it can store within the bank of memory. This means that collective minds (and in modern times powerful computers) can increase the storage space of memory and therefore the variety and depth of knowledge. However, the capacity of computer to store information is limited for ultimately it is not merely acquiring immense amounts of information but the ability to use it to solve problems is what makes us human. Some amongst us are gifted in that they can use the right information in the correct amount and at the precise moment: the gift of wisdom.