Who Knows?

“Knowledge is power,” said Napoleon. Was he right?

Well, that depends on what you know, as opposed to what you think you know, and whether you use it wisely. 

Worldly power is acquired mainly of influential position and forceful personality. There is no guarantee, however, that a person of power has the will or capacity to see things correctly or act wisely. When power goes rogue, as it often does, its relationship to knowledge goes away. 

Knowledge and power simply do not equate, at least not in the world as we know it. If they did, our human history would be dramatically different. We would not be witness to its endless repetition of our foolish ways and follies. 

Either knowledge has been devalued as a virtue, or we do not understand what true knowledge is. Big hint: the latter is a pretty safe bet. In the tug-of-war between our egoic desires and higher awareness – from which true knowledge is received – it is our higher awareness that tends to lose its footing and land in the moat. 

True knowledge is not what’s acquired of books or internet searches. It is not a reflection of intelligence, an accumulation of factual information, or the result of data analysis. Nor is it even a product of the conscious mind. It is an experiential awareness consistent with the principles and ways of how the cosmos works. It is received in a moment of superconscious, intuitive connection, which is how, in a flash, Einstein received the Theory of Relativity. 

Needless to say, not every intuitive message is of such monumental importance, but that is how it works, and that is why the art and practice of meditation is a key to its acquisition and game-changing application. 

True knowledge cannot be created. It’s a gift of grace that yields its treasure only of our attunement to the flow of divine wisdom. No other cipher unlocks it. True knowledge speeds one’s spiritual growth. It has no ulterior mission. Its centeredness in God is sufficient to its worth.

In his magnificent poem Samadhi, the great Indian master Paramhansa Yogananda refers with divine recollection to the true meaning of knowledge as power: “… the storm of maya [delusion] stilled by magic wand of intuition deep.” 

Knowledge is not power until it delivers the capacity to see and dispel the storms we unleash by our delusional thinking. It is not power until it comes from clarity born of divine communion. And power is not power if not of self-control.