One of the most important things we do with our minds is to learn, yet we seldom ask: how do we learn things, and is it a single process?

How do we learn things, and is it a single process?

How do we learn things?

We have to be careful to define what we mean by learning. The child or young student gains praise by learning facts. Facts are important, as we are discovering in a world where idiots are given microphones and loud-hailers so they can bay at other adoring idiots; the entire set of bayer and recipient comfortable in a self-enclosed bubble, protected from knowledge osmosis.

Our collective sense of outrage at this treatment of the truth appears to have evaporated. Every day, the headlines bring us another loud idiot, looking to score in the rankings.

Every day, the headlines bring us another loud idiot, looking to score in the rankings.

On both sides of the Atlantic, we can point to populists who knowingly harvest the opinions (and votes) of people who do not have the capacity to question the noises they rally around. The protagonists here are in possession of the facts; the truth, but their character is such that the exploitation of the opposite side of that coin – the deliberate untruth – is acceptable as a route to power. 

their character is such that the exploitation of the opposite side of that coin – the deliberate untruth – is acceptable as a route to power. 

It’s a well-trodden path. Every fascist dictator or religious strongman/woman who rose to prominence claiming they represented ‘the people’ repeats the assault on the truth. In politics it is not unusual; even expected. But episodes like Covid vaccines and attempted overthrowing of audited national voting have exposed the new fragility of what used to be the self-evident.

…have exposed the new fragility of what used to be the self-evident.

Society depends upon that outrage. The collective derision of the deliberately twisted truth is one of our most powerful weapons to protect our civilisations. This is mirrored in the individual by the corrosive effect of having to live with untruths. We can rightly say that the soul is less bright; even dimmed, in the face of untruth.

This is not a political blog, though I may have opened with a rant…

Rather than look at the abuse of opinion, we might gain insight from examining the wider processes of truth, and how we truly learn – or surrender to happy not-knowing, but comfortably the same as our friend, Jack, in the pub.

The schoolboy’s accumulation of facts, regurgitated as multiple choice ‘ticks in boxes’, is valid for that stage of their learning. We can assemble accurate but empty facts into a ‘kit-bag’ of relevant information and have it to hand when we need to carry out something more important.

Which begs the question: what is the nature of that which is ‘more important’?

Which begs the question: what is the nature of that which is ‘more important’?

When information stored by us as reliable facts becomes part of something we can do, can achieve, then we know that the fact – the information is ‘a seed’. 

A seed cannot fulfil its potential without soil in which to grow and water to trigger its life. Yet the seed contains all the ‘process’ it needs to set in motion the potential it holds.

If I know the radius of a potential circle, it might help me as long as I know that a piece of string constrained to stay taut and then allowed to move at one of its ends, would ‘describe’ a circle with that length of string as its radius.

More theoretically, I might be able to design a circular garden feature if I know that within any circle, the diameter and the circumference are related by the multiplication of the former using a mysterious number called Pi – approximately 22 divided by 7.

Put simply: the diameter (all the way across the circle and crossing the middle) times Pi is always equal to the length of the circumference; the length of the string stretched equally all the way round.

This means that the inner meaning of a circle is to be a ‘growing machine’; one that converts straight lines of certain lengths (single dimensional) into a higher two-dimensional figure (the circle) which has the unique property of that first length as its child… or more accurately, its seed.

The seed in this case is the mysterious number ‘Pi’, which is not really a number, but a process. hidden in our number system to point out to us that our rational view of the world has a few cracks in it. In schoolboy facts, Pi is thought of as the number 22/7 or 3.142. But that is just an approximation which works, as long as you don’t ask philosophical questions of it…

If you are fascinated by the truth of Pi there’s a bit more below, taken from the Careers in Maths website: Did you know Pi has your birthday written in it?

This means that the inner meaning of a circle is to be a ‘growing machine’!

To my knowledge, the ‘zombies against truth’ have not derided the properties of the circle in favour of an opinion to the contrary, though they might be preparing such a case… 

Does this radical idea of a ‘growing machine’ have parallels in the human mind?

The philosopher Jidhu Krishnamurti considered such questions deeply. He studied the process of learning from a spiritual perspective; meaning that spiritual learning not only has the power to transform us, it must transform us…

He said some wonderful things about learning; including the statement “Learning is not additive – you cannot gather learning.”

Learning is not additive – you cannot gather learning

To the rational mind, this is anathema…

The mind gathers – accumulates – for a living. Its greatest joy is to add to the store of facts. This is not to say that those facts are not true, nor that they are not capable of being ‘seeds’ for action. But Krishnamurti was on the trail of a much higher goal: He wanted to find the ‘Pi of the mind’, and he found it in a different type of learning, one in which the mind has to be placed into a state of emptiness of (even) facts…

In this state, if we hold it open, the incoming seed, the ‘Pi’, does its work and converts our straight line into a mystically-experienced circle, where learning is immediate and total…

You cannot see if you are not empty. This means no commitment, always learning, not accumulating; it means observing, being awake, being aware without any choice, and therefore giving tremendous attention

Jidhu Krishnamurti

Does this denigrate the mind? Not at all… But it does point to where the mind might be more powerfully employed…

In the next post, we will examine this ‘other place’.

©Stephen Tanham 2022

Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog