Definition of knowledge:
– mental faculty producing an assimilation by the mind of objective content previously translated into signs and ideas.
– result of this assimilation.
How can we differentiate so-called living knowledge from so-called dead knowledge? These 2 types of knowledge can be structurally identical, and therefore difficult to differentiate. Both are knowledge, but their implications and uses for consciousness are very different.
However, both involve an assimilation of content by the mind. But yesterday’s living knowledge can become tomorrow’s dead knowledge. When knowledge is accumulated in order to become a system of thought or even a certainty; it atrophies. For it to remain current and relevant, it becomes necessary to modify perceptions of reality so that it can remain true and faithful to the ideology. We become a slave to this knowledge in a way. This atrophied knowledge can be considered dead, because it is no longer in phase with the truth conditions of its origins.
A living knowledge is in constant change in order to be able to constantly stick to reality. It leads to understanding, liberation of the mind, and ultimately enlightenment. The ancients kept knowledge alive through oral transmission only. Once it is written, it becomes fixed and therefore incapable of evolving and living through those who carry it.
Dead knowledge can be categorized, classified and compartmentalized.
Living knowledge cannot be, nor can it be reduced to language, symbols and other ideological beliefs. It looks more like principles, like organic systems that are difficult to grasp by the human intellect. It comes to us, through us, even in spite of us. Living knowledge is constantly renewed, always specific to a being and a moment. No system can lock it away. Creating the conditions to welcome it requires clearing out obsolete and therefore dead knowledge.
Dead knowledge is the old. Living knowledge is the New.
Dead knowledge is conceptual, cumulative, it gives an identity to those who carry it. Living knowledge is destructive of the old, it is reductive and bursts into our lives like a whirlwind that sweeps away the old. Living knowledge frees us, it cancels everything that is false because it is more present. The storm creates a void, the condition for welcoming the New, the living. The human becomes living knowledge, he knows.