Knowledge and Search for Knowledge Is Something

Knowledge and search for knowledge is something that should tend to be absolute and not relative. In our lifetime, we should try to search for a universal truth and to try to discover as much as possible. In its basic sense, knowledge is the key to progress.

What would actually happen if everybody would study and learn only about their own history and their own traditions and their own past? If we assumed this hypothesis, we would most likely discover the world spilt up into a series of smaller worlds, each with its own characteristics, isolated and with an interest only towards its own past. Is this something to be desired? No, in my opinion, knowledge should at least attempt to be universal.

Of course, the problem with studying religions (as well as history, traditions or cultures) we know very little about, belonging to people that we know little about, is that we may tend to simplify them and to adapt them to our own occidental culture. If we study the Native American religion and religious traditions, for example, we may tend to get ideas from Hollywood movies or from simplified books that most likely will only partially reflect the truth.

But this is something that will only happen if we are superficial in our study. Studying opens up an infinite front, with an infinite set of sources that can be used. The key to studying remote people from distant areas we know little about is that it should not restrain itself to the surface of facts, but dig in deeper and use every available source.

Even more so, using native sources, for example Hindu books that write about South Asian Hinduism, its traditions and customs, will probably ensure that we receive a better image of facts and that we are not intoxicated with stereotype images about these cultures. Indeed, we do know little about many people and their cultures and, unless we study about them, we will most likely know just as little in the future.

However, there are people who have studied intensively these cultures and who have created an image about them as close to reality as possible. The books and works these people have written are not the creations of the Western culture, but that of universal culture, with all the characteristics this brings about. Studying their work will mean that we will have a truthful picture about cultures we know little about.

I want to emphasize two arguments in favor of studying all people, their religious ideas and rituals, rather than limiting two those we know best. The first, as I have stated above, is the need for universal studies. An erudite can never restrict himself to a limited area of knowledge and study. The second relates to sources. This is, perhaps, the most important thing. What sources to use? Acknowledging that there is indeed a large.