Chapter 6 Volume 2 Knowledge-1

Anger and fear tormented my heart.I curse the day that comes, that calls me to life, that makes me doubt the true meaning and meaning of life.At night, I woke up from that disturbing dream.I searched anxiously for a ray of light that would free me from this maze of doubt.I seek, seek, but always sink deeper into the labyrinth. Once, about midnight, I beheld a strange figure approaching me, which said to me: "Poor mortal man!--I heard it say--you make false inferences again and again, and think you are wise. "You tremble before those horrible images that you have painstakingly created for yourself. Take courage and be really wise. I have no new revelations for you. I What can be told to you, you already know, now you just have to remember it.

I will not deceive you, because you yourself will admit that I am quite right; and if you are deceived after all, it is only you who deceived yourself.Take courage; listen to me and answer my questions. " I mustered up my courage.This courage appeals to my own intellect.I have to dare to do it.This courage can inject no thought into me; what I will think I must think of myself, and the beliefs I accept must be created by myself. "Strange elf!" I cried, "whatever you are, if you tell, I will listen; if you ask, I will answer." Elf: "Do you think that these objects and those objects actually exist outside of you?"

Me: "Yes, of course I think so." Elf: "Then how do you know they exist?" Me: "I see them, I touch them when I reach out to them, I hear them; they reveal themselves to me through all my senses." Elf: "True, but maybe you will take back the assertion that you see, touch, and hear objects in the future. For now, I want to say as you said, as if you really , tactile activity, etc.—but only through your visual activity, tactile activity, and your other external senses. Or is that not the case? You perceive through other means than through your senses Does it exist for you except when you see or touch an object?"

Me: "Absolutely not." Genie: "Thus perceptible objects exist for you only by virtue of a property of your external senses: you know them only by virtue of knowing this property of your visual activity, tactile activity, etc. You say 'Objects exist outside of me', which is based on the fact that you see objects, hear objects, touch objects, and so on." Me: "That's exactly what I mean." Elf: "But how on earth do you know what you see, hear and touch?" Me: "I don't understand what you mean, your question even seems weird to me."

Elf: "I want to make this question easier to understand. - Can you see your visual activity and touch your tactile activity? Or, you also have a special high-level sense, with the help of Are you aware of your external senses and their attributes with this sense?" Me: "Absolutely not. Of what I see and touch, of what I see and touch, I know directly; I know such things when they exist, and because they exist, There is no need to resort to and pass through another sense.—Thus your question seems strange to me, because it seems to doubt this immediacy of consciousness." Genie: "That is not what I am asking; I am asking only to prompt you to explain this immediacy yourself. Do you, then, have an immediate awareness of your visual and tactile activities?"

I have got." Genie: "I'm talking about your visual activity and your tactile activity. In this way, you are the subject of the visual activity and the tactile activity; when you are aware of your visual activity, you are aware of your own regulation or change. form?" Me: "No doubt." Genie: "You are conscious of your visual activity, your tactile activity, etc., so you perceive objects. But can't you perceive it without this consciousness?Can't you recognize objects by sight or hearing if you don't know you're looking or hearing? " Me: "Absolutely not."

Genie: "Therefore, immediate awareness of yourself and your own stipulations is perhaps the only condition of all other awareness; you know something only when you know 'you know something'. What is not contained in the former consciousness cannot appear in the latter consciousness. " Me: "Yeah, I think so." Genie: "You know that objects exist only because you see them, touch them, etc., and you know that you see and touch only because you happen to know this, because you know it directly. Are you unable to perceive anything that is not directly perceived by you? "

Me: "I think so." Spirit: "In any perception, you are first only aware of yourself and your own state; what is not included in this perception is not perceived at all?" Me: "You're repeating something I've already admitted." Genie: "If I were afraid that you had not fully grasped this, that it had not been indelibly engraved on your mind, I would have taken the trouble to repeat it in various ways. Can you say that you are conscious of external objects ?" Me: "To be precise, I can never say that. Because the visual, tactile, etc., through which I grasp objects, is not consciousness itself, but only what I am first and most immediately aware of. Strictly speaking, I It can only be said that I am aware of my visual and tactile activities of objects."

Genie: "Never again forget what you now clearly understand. In any perception you are only aware of your own state. "But I will continue to speak in your language, which is familiar to you.