Author: Aldous Huxley

The quote below is the very first paragraph from the section of knowledge and understanding from the Collected Essays by Aldous Huxley. The process is as follows. Letters when strung together become words. Words when strung together make sentences. Sentences when strung together make paragraphs, and so for and so on. The process keeps going until we get to something that makes sense or maybe not at the time, and that is called knowledge.

“Knowledge is acquired when we succeed in fitting a new experience into the system of concepts based upon our old experiences. Understanding comes when we liberate ourselves from the old and so make possible a direct, unmediated contact with the new, the mystery, moment by moment, of our existence.”

Most of the time, knowledge is passed on by our ancestors by means of books and stories. It is important to mention that knowledge can be passed on in many ways. On the other hand, understanding can’t be passed on like knowledge due to its own nature. Understanding consists of an unmediated and raw experiences with reality. Understanding can only be achieved by letting go of preconceived ideas and accepted notions imposed upon us by society, cultures, traditions, etc.

“Understanding is not conceptual, and therefore cannot be passed on. It is an immediate experience, and immediate experience can only be talked about (very inadequately), never shared. Nobody can actually feel another’s pain or grief, another’s love or joy or hunger. And similarly nobody can experience another’s understanding of a given event or situation.”

Due to our own misconceptions and preconceived ideas, each person reacts in a totally different way to any particular situation. Huxley claims that to be able to gain an understanding of these situations at all, we should get rid of what we have been told or heard about these situations. Only in this way, we will be able to have new experiences which will allow us to gain the necessary understanding of such situations.

Not to say that knowledge is not useful. Thanks to knowledge we know how things work. For instance, if we want to know how to make a chemical solution, we use the Internet, ask some people who know how to make such solution, or look it up in a chemistry book. The knowledge that has been passed on from generations and recorded in such books allows us to achieve our goal without having to have much understanding of chemistry.

In other words, one doesn’t have to go back to the beginning of chemistry and start understanding the very nature of chemical solutions to get the answer that we are looking for. These kinds of experiences don’t require us to have an immediate and direct contact with chemistry since the knowledge is readily available to us. We don’t really need to dive deep into chemistry books if it’s not what we like anyways, so for these cases, knowledge comes in handy.

“We learn to speak, we accumulate conceptualized knowledge and pseudo-knowledge, we imitate our elders, we build up fixed patterns of thought and feeling and behavior, and in the process, we become human, we turn into persons. But the things which make us human are precisely the things which interfere with self-realization and prevent understanding. We are humanized by imitating others, by learning their speech and by acquiring the accumulated knowledge which language makes available. But we understand only when, by liberating ourselves from the tyranny of words, conditioned reflexes and social conventions, we establish direct, unmediated contact with experience. The greatest paradox of our existence consists in this: that, in order to understand, we must first encumber ourselves with all the intellectual and emotional baggage which is an impediment to understanding.”

For other experiences, it might be useful not to rely on knowledge too much. Let’s say that your family tells you that you’re supposed to count to ten whenever you encounter a stressful situation while your friends tell you that you’re supposed to ignore the situation completely. For all we know, their knowledge might be correct or incorrect, but more importantly their knowledge has been built upon their own past experiences which might be biased due to their emotions at the time and other factors that come to play.

These so-called useful suggestions might not applicable to our own circumstances. They might give us some pointers about what to expect, but in the end, they mostly keep us from experiencing new situations with an open mind. The same knowledge that might help us deal with stressful scenarios is the same knowledge that makes it hard for us to understand our personal reactions and instincts.

Learning is as important as unlearning. We should keep learning, but also unlearning what is not useful. Maybe you were taught to eat spaghetti only with a fork. You go to a different country and encounter people who eat spaghetti with a fork and a spoon. You see that this combination of these kitchen utensils provides a magnificent result. This combination is more efficient in this case. You try it and indeed it is better. However, because you have been told that spaghetti is supposed to be eaten only with a fork, you disregard that more efficient way to complete this task.

The bag of knowledge that has been imparted to you when growing up is the same bag that keeps you from accepting and adopting a better way to eat spaghetti. The point is that these traditions and costumes even though they define a part of our identity, they also impede us to have new learning experiences which could lead to understanding. It might be almost impossible to live free of misconceptions, but the mere act of trying to break free from our preconceived ideas asserts us that we are on the right path towards understanding.

Additional Resources

Aldous Huxley – Knowledge and Understanding

Collected Essays by Aldous Huxley

The link above takes you to the free ebook. However, I strongly recommend you reading the whole book. If you want to read the part being reviewed here about knowledge and understanding, please refer to page range (194-205).

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