THE PARALLAX BETWEEN DOING AND KNOWING

In SrimandBhagwatgeeta, the Orientalist wisdom, God himself suggests two distinct ways of knowing the truth. One is via doing (Karmyog) and one is via Knowing (Samkhyayog). What is here interesting, is that he prescribes both not at once. You can either do or you can know. Not simultaneously. 

If we, for a moment, bring that duality of knowing and doing in ordinary day to day life from spirituality, we find this deadlock too. There exists a gap between doing and knowing what is done. What is interesting is Knowing cannot exist without a complete background of doing and doing cannot exist in empty space either, you need a presupposed background of knowledge of what is to be done. In this sense, within the same subject exists a Parallax, a sort of gap in reality itself when we view it from different point of reference. 

What else is a parallax if not a gap in the phenomenological reality and the underneath scientific logic that led to its building. Suppose there is a Flower, red rose. You look at it phenomenologically, fine, good. But, then suddenly, you lose your phenomenological ground when you suddenly read how color emerges from the absorption and the re-emission of selective wavelengths of light characteristic to every object. You suddenly reckon that there is no color intrinsic to flower and flower is actually colorless bunch of atoms stacked in pure darkness. Also, you lose your skies as well when you reckon nothing in this world is colorful, but a stack of gap is the ultimate reality, a colorless void. The world is a colorless void only to be colorized because of light and selective absorption.  This parallax between immediate experience of reality and the logical picture of reality is what we are talking about, the parallax of objective reality. 

A parallax between Doing and knowing also exists. The doer cannot at the moment perceives oneself as such as we perceive something external to ourselves, that is "in a third person". The Knower, on the other hand, cannot indulge in pure doing in the same way a doer does, "As first person!" 

This parallax that exists within man which tries to mimic both, a perfect doer and a perfect knower and this might lead to what I call, "The inaccurate mimicry". The condition of such a contemplative living subject, is that of a juggler which juggles balls while keeping a track of each one's momentum and position, that is taking the job of both the experimenter and the theorist at once. This non-simultaneity is what gives rise to many contradictory phenomena which I try to build upon. 

There cannot exist a Tapaswi Raja or the Philosopher king. A Tapaswi cannot be a king and a philosopher cannot rule. The kind of heuristic supposition that requires doing as ruling as a king, is very different from pure knowing of a saint, a philosopher or say a Tapaswi. 

A king has to do. The background of the deed must act on a background of conformity of knowledge, however flawed, narrow minded or inconsistent the knowledge is. This leads to the King's presence in the ontic reality as a pure subject which submits itself to pure doing as if he has accepted his fate as a doer, Amor Fati. 

A saint, however, has to know, under the background of conformity of deeds, however mundane, non-creative and non-productive. He knows, as a pure object, as one, which objects every possible available phenomenological reality to get into the logic consistency of the phenomena itself. 

In the nut inside the nutshell, we can say, you cannot simultaneously know and do. You cannot simultaneously enjoy a flower in its naive phenomenological existence and its deep scientific edifice of a reality as a colorless void. You cannot fight a war knowing that you are fighting a war tacitly. You, in somewhat twisted sense, has to lose a bit of awareness in the process of it, in order to be good at war. Similarly, you cannot live in the naive existence of immediate reality as a knower. Withdrawal is inevitable.