The theory of Knowledge: Epistemology of Coexistential Philosophy

Posted On: November 18, 2019

As I have stated in my previous articles, human beings are the fusion of physical body and incorporeal conscious soul. The simple truth is that the physical body needs comforts and abundance, while the consciousness needs understanding and knowledge. The inquisitiveness of consciousness can only be satiated by complete knowledge of existence and reality. When the needs of both consciousness and the physical body are met, peace prevails. This can be verified by you right here, right now.

Human beings are highly evolved creatures. Their purpose in this existence, unlike the animals, is not merely surviving. The advanced human body has evolved with a purpose and the obvious purpose of human beings is to know the reality of existence.

Human beings and Knowledge

Human beings are the only creatures endowed with the superior faculty of imagination. Human beings use their imagination to form their perception of reality in order to understand and function. Using this imagination power, human beings are able to understand as well as transfer the knowledge to other human beings.

knowledge = education, tradition, culture

Over the course of growing up and learning to use imagination, every human being forms countless beliefs from culture, education and other experiences. These beliefs drive his life and construct his perception. Not all of these are true and every belief needs to be verified before it can be accepted. When these beliefs go unchecked and are not verified, they are merely opinions. When these beliefs are validated and verified, they become knowledge.

It is important to check and validate beliefs that are illusory because you can not know something that is not there. If you don’t know what is there in existence, your study is going to be incomplete.

“All knowledge is finite and can be gained and transferred by tradition and culture. A human being can understand, adapt, learn from the cloud knowledge base of ancestry that is available in the form of culture and tradition.”

What does it mean ‘to know’?

Knowledge is a term currently understood as excellence in academics and knowing the teachings in books, videos, etc. But, in reality, existence is all that there is to study. Knowledge is possible about whatever exists in existence. Since existence is finite, fixed, and behaves uniformly, complete knowledge about existence is possible.

There are things that you can see and touch and there are things which you can just feel. The physical things have color, texture, area, volume, density, etc. You can use arithmetic to measure them. The things you feel are trust, love, affection, happiness, etc. which are qualitative and can not be quantified. The physical things serve the body and the virtual things serve the consciousness.

Complete knowledge of both these physical and virtual elements gives immense contentment to the conscious soul. This is the purpose of conscious soul. When it’s fulfilled, the consciousness achieves the state of supreme blissfulness — what we understand as enlightenment. It starts reflecting in the behavior of the person and turns life into a celebration.

“Understanding of any substance, virtual or physical, is complete when you know four inseparable attributes of that element: Roop, Gun, Swabhav, and Dharm.(Structure, characteristics, behavior, and purpose.)”

You can claim to understand or know something only after being aware of these four (Roop, Gun, Swabhav, and Dharm) attributes of any element. Given the limitation of language, the exact English translation is not possible. The closest would be — Roop- Physical and Chemical structure, Gun- Characteristics, Swabhava- Behavior, and Dharma- Purpose. Thirst of the soul is quenched and understanding is complete only when you know all the four attributes of an element.

When I say I have understood water, I need to know everything about water that includes its Physical and Chemical structure, Characteristics, Behavior, and Purpose. The physical, chemical, the solid, the liquid, and the gaseous state are required to be understood and also the fact that its propensity and utility is to quench the thirst of the plants, animals, mankind.

Everything in existence from a stone, plant, human, brain, feelings to God, needs to be understood in the same way. Understanding reality as it is and experiencing it is the purpose of human beings on this planet.

The proof of your understanding being right is that it will be verified by the 7.5 billion human beings and be a step toward living harmoniously.

Human beings will be in bliss if they can create perceptions in alignment with reality. That is possible using language. Nothing more. Philosophy or science or any other subject — the language has a productive role to play.

My appeal to everyone to help achieve that before human species wipe itself out of the face of the planet.

Anand Damani Author at Medium

Serial Entrepreneur, Business Advisor, and Philosopher of Humanism

Writes about Human Behaviour, Universal Morality, Philosophy, Psychology, and Societal Issues.

Anand aims to help complete and spread the knowledge about Universal Human Values and facilitate their practice across sex, age, culture, religion, ethnicity, etc.

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