The greatest of all delusions is the conviction that knowledge is not a delusion. It’s like light trapped in a diamond, reflecting itself endlessly: brilliant, yet blinding.
We inherit facts, beliefs, and traditions and we treat them as if they were bedrock. We build entire civilizations on them.
Yet, if you look closely at what you know, every piece of knowledge rests on another, like ladders resting on other ladders, never quite touching the ground.
What is the base concept of your knowledge? Do you know what it is?
This question grabbed my attention when I saw it. I had to find out. Here’s what I discovered.
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Most of us are familiar with how we learn. It has been this way since time began. The cycle repeats itself endlessly: Experience → Knowledge → Memory → Thought → Act → Experience…
This is the programming mechanism from birth. But what is the base concept on which this whole cycle rests? The primary principle?
Don’t take your mind’s first response as an answer… that answer is a programmed response based on this cycle.
To find out, you need to slow down and observe the cycle in action… to peer through the veil without touching it.
A bit like a mirage.
At first, you’re convinced it’s water. Then, when you understand what’s happening, you’re never fooled again. You still notice mirages, but you can see it clearly enough to discard the false and keep the truth.
This short video (~7min) from J. Krishnamurti is worth watching because he illuminates this point about knowledge in the clearest way possible.
In the 20th century, the theory of relativity upgraded the foundation for awakening… our generation’s golden ticket. What it says about Cosmology and Physics applies to every layer of existence. It unveils the obscure truth about knowledge too: it’s all relative.
But, we didn’t have the capacity to accept this truth back then. And it still isn’t part of core fundamental curriculum in our education systems… and so it hasn’t pierced our political, economic, social, religious or other systems either.
Yet.
But, it has started and we’re at an interesting tipping point.
Science has pursued certainty until it dissolved into a cloud of probabilities and happenings. There is nothing to anchor on.
Even the word knowledge is a shared illusion founded on a mutual agreement; a sound we collectively decide points to a concept that we imagine into existence.
To drive a car, to cook a healthy meal, to care for the sick… those forms of knowledge are useful in context, relatively speaking.
But a subtle veil turns into dark confusion when we mistake the concept for reality. When we start living in the cloud of words and stories, we forget the sky.
Reality is before knowledge.
A bird sings without learning music theory. A child laughs without knowing the psychology of humour. A fish swims without instruction.
Life moves, breathes, and loves without waiting for proof.
So the invitation is simple: use knowledge as a tool, but never worship it as truth.
Beyond the noise of concepts, what remains is direct seeing. Clarity unborrowed from any book. The soundless hum of being that needs no name.
© 2025 Zaheer Merali.
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