Sometimes, knowledge is powerless

[donq]

Our forum is a bit quiet. Let me post a (true) story I read two decades ago here. It was so fascinating.
(sorry if you already read it.)

Many doctors know the story of ''Mr. Wright,'' who was found to have cancer and in 1957 was given only days to live. Hospitalized in Long Beach, Calif., with tumors the size of oranges, he heard that scientists had discovered a horse serum, Krebiozen, that appeared to be effective against cancer. He begged to receive it.

His physician, Dr. Philip West, finally agreed and gave Mr. Wright an injection on a Friday afternoon. The following Monday, the astonished doctor found his patient out of his ''death bed,'' joking with the nurses. The tumors, the doctor wrote later, ''had melted like snowballs on a hot stove.''

Two months later, Mr. Wright read medical reports that the horse serum was a quack remedy. He suffered an immediate relapse. ''Don't believe what you read in the papers,'' the doctor told Mr. Wright. Then he injected him with what he said was ''a new super-refined double strength'' version of the drug. Actually, it was water, but again, the tumor masses melted.

Mr. Wright was ''the picture of health'' for another two months -- until he read a definitive report stating that Krebiozen was worthless. He died two days later."

I asked myself seriously many times, if Mr. Wright were not a knowledge lover like that, what would happen?
I am really curious. What could (true) knowledge harm him? Why did fake/fault one help him? 

[baangus]

Apr 3, 2014 7:40:23 GMT donq said:

I asked myself seriously many times, if Mr. Wright were not a knowledge lover like that, what would happen?
I am really curious. What could (true) knowledge harm him?

Hi donq. We live many lives and our souls are eternal. I don't see harm in knowledge. I see events that teach the individual a particular lesson that will lead to a deeper understanding in the next incarnation.

I would say that worrying about whether or not knowledge is harmful on some level, is potentially more harmful than any knowledge could ever be. Our collective minds and psychies are already clogged up like a plugged drain from thousands of years of religious and spiritual rules, regulations and taboos. We truly don't need anymore dos and don'ts. We need to free ourselves from our human-conditioned tendency to engage in negative spiritual speculation. Harm in knowledge? Consciousness is light, and light is creation, and creation is love. That is the foundation of all existence.

[donq]

Hi B,

Hmm…what differences between knowing and not knowing ?
What if, (just suppose) if we know for sure that there’s no next life?
Or if we know for sure that there is a next life, that will make us feel different?

[baangus]

Apr 3, 2014 11:13:09 GMT donq said:

What if, (just suppose) if we know for sure that there’s no next life?
Or if we know for sure that there is a next life, that will make us feel different?

That's a discussion point issue I run into all the time. I can't answer a question like that. I know I'm going to reincarnate. I know I will carry with me the knowledge and experience I gained from previous lives.

I understand if people don't believe what I do. All I can do is speak from my experience and beliefs, and leave it at that. I have no interest in speculating on other after-life scenarios that I don't believe in.

You ask what the difference is between knowing and not knowing. My answer is that knowing and understanding happens by degrees. I know more about myself now than I did a year ago. And I will know even more a year from now. Therefore I am always and forever in a continuous state of both knowing and not (yet) knowing.

[baangus]

BTW donq, I am not belittling your question, it's a good one. I did come across a spiritual idea years ago that put forward the idea we need to take care when sharing knowledge with others. The reason being that we become responsible for the person on some karmic level when we wake them up to higher knowledge. That idea sounded good to me at the time (2-3 decades ago) but I'm not sure how much I would support that notion now.

[donq]

Hi B,

I understand your feeling. I got that a lot, too.
Let me put it in this way, this forum is so cool. For example, most of my friends in chat room know that I don’t believe in the next life. But everyone knows that I never tried to convince the others otherwise. I told an old lady there (she’s our oldest friends there) that “I will believe in reincarnation every time I come to the chat room because of her” And I don’t have any problem with that at all. Hahaha!

About my questions, I meant…this knowledge will make a (already) good person becomes better person (or more happy)? Or will make a bad person turn to be good person?

[donq]

Hey b,

what happen with another thread?
First I thought there was something wrong with my device because it is gone.
Hope you are ok.

[sparklekaz]

The other thread has been moved to spiritual book section Monty, as it was felt that was where it should have been put in the first place, as the thread was about a book. Though it evolved as threads always do. No problem with it. Just a bit of tidying up on the forum.

Love and light
Kaz

[donq]

Ah, I see. Thanks, kaz.
First I thought it was one of those omens that, whenever I see them, I know to expect disaster (to me.) hahaha!

[baangus]

Apr 3, 2014 12:07:32 GMT donq said:

Let me put it in this way, this forum is so cool. For example, most of my friends in chat room know that I don’t believe in the next life. But everyone knows that I never tried to convince the others otherwise.

Hi donq. I don't try and convince anyone either.
Because I know we'll be laughing about it next lifetime when we find out I was right all along.

I've been blessed with a wonderful gift of wisdom: knowing exactly when to step back, and stop lecturing and trying to change people. Some people never learn that technique whereas it only took me about three decades and a few dozen ruined friendships and relationships to figure it out!

[donq]

Oh! I envy you! I have to confess that I really don’t have that gift. Urh…it’s just that I have only one (me) but our friends in chat room are 5-6 persons (sometimes more than that.) Though I’m not good at Math but I know no way I can win. So, I have to blend in for my safety.

Ok, seriously now. Yes, I do understand what you try to say. When I was a young man, I was so brave and thought that if only I knew the truth, everyone would be happy to listen to me. Why didn’t anyone want to hear the truth, right? But as you can guess, I was seriously wrong and got very hurtful. Because when…how to say in English…then the “inner” way of understandings of two persons are not the same, there will never be mutual understandings. Even between a teacher and disciplines, sometimes mutual understanding is still lacking. So not to mention about the case between other people.
I think that we have to share our inner understanding only with someone who has inner understanding the same as us. But not to the other who may has more and less.

[baangus]

Apr 4, 2014 14:28:08 GMT donq said:

When I was a young man, I was so brave and thought that if only I knew the truth, everyone would be happy to listen to me. Why didn’t anyone want to hear the truth, right?

I came across this bit of wisdom this morning: "The Creator gave us two ears, two eyes and one mouth for a reason. We are supposed to do four times as much listening and observing as talking, especially when we are young. Our hearing and vision diminish as we age. We can always talk. Think about it."

I know less about truth now than I did four decades ago. I used to be convinced of certain truths, now I honestly couldn't tell you what truth is. Is truth eternal? Or maybe truth is just a series of momentary understandings that change and evolve from one minute to the next, like the man in your story who goes from believing a life-giving truth one moment, to believing something else the next that leads to his death. Knowledge didn't kill this man. What killed him, is his belief that the knowledge he received was the truth.

[donq]

Is it not kind of sad? I used to think that it was sad. But now I really feel indifferent.
I sacrificed so much, too much for knowing the “very” truth when I was a young man. Suffice to say that I never spent that time like any other young men at all. For example, I stopped going to my university (but I had to finish it later for my parent) and lived in the forest (temple) more than 4-5 years (only came back home only from time to time.) Then, even after I got my Law degree, I never used that paper to earn my living at all. In stead, I did volunteer job without any payment for years. Not to mention time and a lot money I spent on searching in every libraries, buying so many books in my country and from other countries, too.
To make a long short, that time I believed that my sacrifice should be a must because I used to die once. Somehow it was like I had responsibility to do that (that time my doctors already told my relatives that I could not survive for sure), to search for the truth, not only for me but for the others, too. Or why did I survive, then?
After that (let’s say that I got that truth) I spent more than 25 years to tell that truth in another way, I become a writer/translator. But I’ve also learnt that no one wanted to hear the “very” truth. Did my sacrifice wasted?
Honest answer is no. I have experienced so amazing things. It’s really worth. And at least, I can tell myself now that, I already did my best. :-)

[donq]

Oh my!

So sorry, b. You talked about Mr.Wright.
I thought...me.
I really apologize. It was really my bad. So sorry.