Page 5 - NAMAH-Jan-2023

Knowledge and Wisdom 1

1--There are two allied powers in man: knowledge and Wisdom. Knowledge is so
much of the truth, seen in a distorted medium, as the mind arrives at by groping;
Wisdom what the eye of divine vision sees in the spirit.

Someone has asked me, “Why are the powers allied?”
I suppose that we are so used to seeing all the elements in man quarrelling among
themselves that the idea of their being “allied” causes astonishment. But these quarrels are
only apparent. All the powers which come from the higher regions are in fact necessarily
allied — they are united, they have agreed to fight the Ignorance. And Sri Aurobindo says
clearly enough — for those who understand — that one of these powers belongs to the
mind and that the other belongs to the Spirit. This is precisely the profound truth that Sri
Aurobindo wants to reveal in his aphorism: if the mind tries to obtain the second power,
it is unable to do so, since it is a power that belongs to the Spirit and arises in the human
being together with the spiritual consciousness.

Knowledge is something that the mind can obtain through much effort, although this is
not the true knowledge, but only a mental aspect of knowledge; whereas Wisdom does not
at all belong to the mind, which is altogether incapable of obtaining it, because, in fact, it
doesn’t even know what it is. I repeat, Wisdom is essentially a power of the Spirit and it
can arise only with the spiritual consciousness.

It would have been interesting to ask what Sri Aurobindo means when he speaks of “the
truth seen in a distorted medium”. First of all, what is this “distorted medium”, and what
does the truth become in a “distorted medium”?

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