Roy W. Perret History, Time and Knowledge in Ancient India

“Genuine knowledge, it is assumed, is presentative, not representative.”

If all the knowledge I ‘possess’ or will create is representative then I am no better than a pen drive. My mind is then just a store house of information aptly tossed in an out. What does it mean to be really alive?

The reading discusses why Indians (on geographical basis) haven’t created Historic records of their lives, culture and times over the centuries. Observing myself reading the sheet I noticed how much pressure I exerted because of identifying with the text- being an Indian. But having born and brought up in a liberal atmosphere my whole life; my family school and college, I completely related to the idea that Ancient Indian schools advocated of perception, inference and testimony as the vital means of knowledge. Perception, inference and testimony being experiential and not representative serve as real tools of learning, of knowing things for oneself.

Isn’t it only when we learn something for our self does the knowledge exist to be true? It’s funny though, these cycles of change humans have indulged within linear time. Hundreds of years ago the people of ancient India talked of liberation and understanding oneself as the real goal of life- that real knowledge grows inside oneself and cannot be found in external mediums no matter how much we pursue them. And today the 21^st century Indian is caught between the dilemma of the right way of life- between the engineer and technician who has through exams and memorization worked his way up the materialistic ladder versus the birth of young individuals who’ve realized that in this system they have no identity- that everything they have gained from ‘memory’ is just a skill and not a strength. Today we are reverting to these ancient men from Indian history trying to un-learn the useless factual knowledge of the conditioned mind and understand what exact role does ‘memory, documentation, representation’ play in our life.

Don’t take this too seriously but how much of everyday living I give it up to our ancient ancestors saying “of course they knew better- they were way smarter than we were; they were far ahead of us in their thoughts on the meaning of life-religion-philosophy even understandings of sciences- and not only their thought processes but even their skills were much ahead.” Though this is highly debatable it does seem like a meteor hit earth somewhere between long long ago where self-actualization was all over the place and today where no one is aware about anything to do with themselves.

I came across this passage through my personal readings, it’s interesting and could throws some light on the above quote..

“....I must cultivate memory, strengthen memory by practice, by discipline, to be something, to achieve, to gain, which means continuation in time. So, through time we hope to achieve the timeless, through time we hope to gain the eternal. Can you do that? Can you catch the eternal in the net of time, through memory, which is of time? The timeless can be only when memory, which is the 'me' and the 'mine', ceases. If you see the truth of that - that through time the timeless cannot be understood or received - then we go into the problem of memory. The memory of technical things is essential; but the psychological memory that maintains the self, the 'me' and the 'mine', that gives identification and self-continuance, is wholly detrimental to life and to reality. When one sees the truth of that, the false drops away; therefore, there is no psychological retention of yesterday's experience.”