Dr allan w anderson biography examples

Anderson taught a small, informal graduate seminar from until In addition to his academic accomplishments Dr. Anderson was at heart a poet, his pen and heart happiest in verse. The greater part of his poetry is being readied for publication. San Diego State University has established a special collection of Dr. Anderson's work and we urge you to contact us if you have materials which you might like to donate.

Suggestions are always welcome! Click here to contact us. Anderson's life and work. If you have materials you think might be relevant to the collection, we urge you to contact us. Ministry [ edit ]. Research and selected publications [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. Retrieved May Archived 26 August at the Wayback Machine. Authority control databases.

K: No, no. Now we must now go back to the word again - the word 'knowledge', what does it mean 'to know'? A: Well, I have understood the word in a strict sense this way: knowledge is the apprehension of 'what is', but what passes for knowledge might not be that. K: It's generally accepted - the experience which yields, or leaves a mark which is knowledge.

That accumulated knowledge whether in the scientific world or in the biological world or in the business world or in the world of the mind, the being, is the known. The known is the past, therefore knowledge is the past. Knowledge cannot be in the present. I can use knowledge in the present. But it has its roots in the past. Which means - that's very interesting - whether this knowledge which we have acquired about everything K: I personally don't read any of these books, neither the Gita, the Bhagavad-Gita or the Upanishads, none of the psychological books, nothing.

I am not a reader. I have observed tremendously all my life. Now, knowledge has its place. K: Let's be clear on this. In the practical, technological - I must know where I am going, physically, and so on. Now, what place has that, which is human experience as well as scientific knowledge, what place has that in changing the quality of a mind that has become brutal, violent, petty, selfish, greedy, ambitious and all the rest of that?

What place has knowledge in that? A: We are going back to the statement we began with - namely that this transformation is not dependent on knowledge, then the answer would have to be, it doesn't have a place. Yes, now I know precisely the point at which we are going to move from. Where does that freedom begin, which is not dependent on this funded accretion from the past.

So, the human mind is constructed on knowledge. It has evolved through millennia on this accretion, on tradition, on knowledge. K: Obviously, and it is a repetition. So, what is the beginning of freedom in relation to knowledge? May I put it this way to make myself clear? K: I have experienced something yesterday that has left a mark. That is knowledge and with that knowledge I meet the next experience.

So the next experience is translated in terms of the old and therefore that experience is never new. A: So in a way if I understand you correctly, you are saying that the experience that I had yesterday, that I recall K: Generally it is. Where is freedom in relation to knowledge? Or is freedom something other than the continuity of knowledge?

K: And what does that mean, what does it mean to end knowledge, whereas I have lived entirely on knowledge. K: Ah wait, wait. See what is involved in it, sir. I met you yesterday and there is the image of you in my mind and that image meets you next day.

Dr allan w anderson biography examples

K: And there are a dozen images or hundred images. So the image is the knowledge. The image is the tradition. The image is the past. Now can there be freedom from that? K: Of course. Therefore, we can state it, but how is the mind which strives, acts, functions on image, on knowledge, on the known - how is it to end that? Take this very simple fact, you insult me, or you praise me, that remains a knowledge, with that image, with that knowledge I meet you.

I never meet you. The image meets you. K: Of course, obviously. Therefore, how is that image to end - never to register - you follow, sir? K: Therefore what am I to do? How is this mind which is registering, recording all the time - the function of the brain is to record, all the time - how is it to be free of knowledge? When you have done some harm to me personally, or collectively, whatever it be; you have insulted me, flattered me, how is the brain not to register that?

If it registers it is already an image, it's a memory - and the past then meets the present, And therefore there is no solution to it. K: I was looking at that word the other day in a very good dictionary - tradition. It means and of course the ordinary word - tradere - is to give, hand over, to give across. But it also has another peculiar meaning - not peculiar - from the same word, betrayal.

K: Traduce. And in discussing in India this came out: betrayal of the present. If I live in tradition I betray the present. K: So how is the mind which functions on knowledge - how is the brain which is recording all the time That is, sir, let me to put it this way, very simply: you insult me, you hurt me, by word, gesture, by an actual act, that leaves a mark on the brain which is memory.

K: That memory is knowledge, that knowledge is going to interfere in my meeting you next time - obviously. Now how is the brain and also the mind, to record and not let it interfere with the present? See what is implied, I know, but how am I to negate it. How is the brain whose function is to record, like a computer it is recording A: I didn't mean to suggest that it negates the recording.

But it's the association, the translation of the recording into an emotional complex. K: How is it - that's just the point - how is it to end this emotional response when I meet you next time, you who have hurt me? That's a problem. A: That's the place from which we in the practical order in our relation to ourselves must then begin. A: Exactly. There is an aspect of this that interests me very much in terms of the relation between the theoretical and the practical.

K: Sir, to me theory has no reality. Theories have no importance to a man who is actually living. A: May I say what I mean by theory. I don't think I mean what you think I mean by it. I mean theory in the sense of the Greek word theorea - spectacle, what is out there that I see. And the word is therefore very closely related to what you have been talking about in terms of knowledge.

And yet it is the case that if we see something, that something is registered to us in the mind in terms of a likeness of it, otherwise we should have to become it in order to receive it, which in a material order would annihilate us. It seems to me, if I followed you correctly, that there is a profound confusion in one's relationship to that necessity for the finite being and what he makes of it.

And in so far he is making the wrong thing of it he is in desperate trouble and can only go on repeating himself, and in such a repetition increasing despair. Have I distinguished this correctly? K: You see religion is based on tradition. Religion is vast propaganda, as it is now. In India, here, anywhere, propaganda of theories, of beliefs, of idolatry, worship, essentially based on the acceptance of a theory.

K: And obviously that's not religion. So religion as it exists now is the very denial of truth. K: And if a man like me or Not in the vain sense of that word. Light, because the world is in darkness and a human being has to transform himself, has to be a light to himself. And light is not lit by somebody else. A: In a sense we could use the analogy perhaps from surgery: something that has been continuous is now cut.

K: We haven't time to fool around any more - the house is on fire. At least I feel this enormously - things are coming to such a pass we must do something - each human being. Not in terms of better housing, better security, more this and that - but basically to regenerate himself. A: But if the person believes that in cutting himself from this accretion that he is killing himself, he is going to resist that idea.

K: Of course, of course. Therefore he has to understand what his mind has created, therefore he has to understand himself. K: Oh, for God's sake, no, no. Attending schools where you learn sensitivity and all that rubbish. A: The point that you are making, it seems to me, is made also by the great Danish thinker, Kirkegaard, who lived a very trying life in his own community because he was asking them, it seems to me, to undertake what you are saying.

He was saying: Look, if I go to seminary and I try to understand what Christianity is by studying it myself then what I am doing is appropriating something here, but then when do I know when I have appropriated it fully. I shall never know that point therefore I shall forever appropriate it and never do anything about it, as such, as a subject.

The person who must risk the deed, not the utterance. A: As I said before, or not simply thinking through what someone has thought before but actually embodying the meaning through the observation of myself in relation to that. A: And that has always seemed to me a very profound insight. But one of the ironies of that is, of course, in the Academy we have an endless proliferation of studies in which scholars have learned Danish in order to understand Kirkegaard.

A: And what they are doing is to a large extent - if I haven't misjudged the spirit of much that I have read - is simply perpetuate the very thing he said should be cut. I do have this very strong feeling that profound change would take place in the academy of which you know I am a member, laughs if the teacher were not only to grasp this that you have said, but take the risk of acting on it.

Since if it isn't acted on, if I've understood you correctly, we are back again where we were. We have toyed with the idea of being valiant and courageous, but then we have to think about of what is involved before we do, and then we don't do. K: Therefore sir, the word is not the thing. The description is not the described, and if you are not concerned with the description but only with the thing, 'what is', then we have to do something.

When you are confronted with 'what is' you act, but when you are concerned with theories and speculations and beliefs you never act. A: So there isn't any hope for this transformation, if I have understood you correctly, if I should think to myself that this just sounds marvellous: I am the world and the world is me, but while I go on thinking that the description is the described.

There is no hope.