Does Transcendentalism Explain the Gap Between Knowledge and Action?

[jammieg]

What is the difference between knowing a thing and understanding a thing?

Why is it so often that even when people acknowledge that they know the right thing to do their actions differ from their words?
For example, most everyone agrees that lying is bad but we all lie more or less.

 

[quartodeciman]

When I was still a young kid (prepubescent), I liked to fool around with my chemistry set. I prided myself on the facts I learned from the manual and some library books. One day, an adult asked me some chemistry questions.

He: Do you know what the formula for common table salt is?

Me: Yes, sir. It is NaCl.

He: What does that mean?

Me: It means that salt is made of two elements, sodium, called natrium in German, and chlorine.

He: OK. Is sodium safe to eat?

(I "knew" that one)

Me: No. Sodium is a highly caustic metal that will burn your mouth and throat if you eat it.

He: And how about Chlorine?

(I "knew" that too)

Me: Chlorine is a poisonous gas.

He: OK. Sodium is a caustic metal and chlorine is a poisonous gas. But salt is a crystal, yes?

Me: Yes.

He: And it dissolves in water, yes?

Me: Yes.

He: Can you eat salt?

Me: Yes, obviously. We put it on food.

He: If sodium and chlorine are both dangerous to humans, why is salt safe to eat?

Me: {GRRR!} (silently to myself)

I was mad. I couldn't answer that. I "knew" some stuff but I didn't "understand" yet.

 

[TENYEARS]

jammieg, if you can answer that question, you will understand how the universe works, because that is the only way it may be understood. To understand is what we strive to do, but knowing that is beyond the walls of the bowl.

If a human being has expectations of another, you will be disappointed because you do not see what is there, but what you project to be there and as the old saying goes, if our lives were exactly like theirs, how different would our actions be. Rightness, wrongness? Only repercussions. You understand this already though. Patience, conscious effort and a refusal to give up can change things and sometimes people.

 

[jammieg]

Thanks Tenyears but I don't see the connection, I'll take a physiological stab at it anyway though which is pretty much what I already suggested at the start of this post, that understanding is doing and knowing is being able to talk about stuff and look cool.
Understanding a thing demands that one first accept they don't know and will never really come to fully understand even the simplist concept like effeciency, and as a person practicing DOING things effeciently or putting it to use it has a real physical change on the brain for better or worse, but when a person only learns what effeciency is they are merely able to light up their speech center in some way to impress someone in their deep knowledge when in fact they are only lying to themselves that they understand, and lying is the best way to get out of effort, but then such things may amount to nothing whereas lying is a more effecient way of getting what one wants...in the short term.[b(]

 

[TENYEARS]

jammieg, you understand the walls of the bowl. I have read another post you wrote, I am not saying which, but you also understand something else.

I must say this, I will tell you it is true, because it is. It is possible, for a human being to "know" something which has never before been experienced in what society recognized as their discreet human body. I sometimes know things and there is no doubt. When a human being experiences this, they will never need anyone to tell them if or is it, because it is without question beyond things. There is a time coming, and I don't know when, but the proof of the knowing is on the way.

 

[Evo]

Originally posted by jammieg
What is the difference between knowing a thing and understanding a thing?

You can know a thing, like I know there is nuclear fission, but I don't understand it.

originally posted by TENYEARS - jammieg, if you can answer that question, you will understand how the universe works

Ok, I answered the question, but I still don't know how the universe works.

 

[jammieg]

Well everyone gets it in their own way I guess, eventually, I think basically the virtues are real and long ago people who walked far down those paths were called nobles and it was no joke that they tried very hard to keep everyone happy and holding together but occasionally the lust for war was too great. What do you suppose is comming more specifically? Let's just say these are speculations of the future.
Every once in awhile I have some strange dream that is so symbolic of how things are and the dream tells me exactly what I need to know, I suspect that your mysteriousness is kind of like this, but the problem is that dream mean different things to everyone so it's real difficult to communicate.
Me either Evo, I only think I know some things but have proved nothing.

 

[TENYEARS]

I understand the path you have explained, it would be arrogant of me to say all of it because I am not you. I may say this, there is a state, beyond image, beyond fact and it will be reality to you when it happens and only when. It does not go beyond the universe, it is not super and it is not meta, and it is beyond convinced.

Evo, I do not know nulcear fission, I believe I have seen images of this images of that, facts that interelate into what seems to be a flowing understanding that reinforces itself into a system that possibly works, and yet I do not know that fission is real. Seems foolish doesn't it. If you said the picture you had posted was you, I could believe you and yet, what would I know. I could meet someone who was that picture and know them and yet would I ever know it was you. I could believe you or not, and yet what would I know? What do any of us truly know? There is a state beyond the skin.

 

[TENYEARS]

jammieg, if I told you what happen and how, what generated it, the circumastances that followed and all that transpired before and since, threw in a little scientific method as best that could be thrown in at the time and during it's exclamation, I give you my word as I am writing this with a grinch smile, you would be at least a beliver, which is what you are now and what you would be then even though it would go beyond any reasonable statistical probability. There are days when I found it hard to comprehend what was happening was really happening.

 

[phoenixthoth]

here's the best explanation possible:



(insert encoded silence above)

 

[jammieg]

Ah so you say bowl and I say brain...you truly have a strange language to me, I will try it, not to worry about locked nobles, because I do and such fancy isn't my suit for long though they want me to wear it, the only limits are the limits we imagine. People run from themselves too often but who are they running from but the first bowl that is themselves and what they don't want themselves to know, I've seen the face of that bowl and it is terrified of me but it also knows that it's time, time is always on our side and it's all known by almost everyone now except a very few who even now are growing tired and it's selfishness that will be the downfall of those poor souls as always, unless they learn as others that deliberate effort toward all things good and bad with embrace may be the ultimate virtue among following the others(I only talk of it now), that one's hands may grow free as they do what they are meant to do but will also grow to choose what they apply their hands to for greater degrees of good and bad. The reason I think this is that when the day comes that having a single thought can instantly give a person the most pleasure they've ever known, very few people will be able to let go and find balance in things through doing and acceptance and may die, myself included.
I walked around a bush a million times in someone's place before I cleared it in one place at one time it helped me realized I was everyone too and then began to be myself- reason is immortal.

 

[phoenixthoth]

The reason I think this is that when the day comes that having a single thought can instantly give a person the most pleasure they've ever known, very few people will be able to let go and find balance in things through doing and acceptance and may die, myself included.

that is the fear, yes. rather, in its case, the concern. that most certainly happened to it before the final/initial moment.

I walked around a bush a million times in someone's place before I cleared it in one place at one time it helped me realized I was everyone too and then began to be myself- reason is immortal.

and since we are self-aware mathematical structures, pure reason, we are immortal. yeah. just be your Self and be cool. try to relax as often as you can and by that i mean meditate included. you'll find yourself expanding while the universe seems to shrink though that's another artifact of perception indicating something on a grander scale.

you're all invited to tune in:

 

[the_truth]

We may love the truth, but we are tied to our hedonism.

 

[TENYEARS]

jammieg, you are very close to the mindset you need for true experience if there is such a thing. If a high is all that it is would I be here on this forum? Maybe, maybe it was postive comment of some of my posts by you which I am responding to, in a form of reciprocity which in the end is like placing money in ones own bank account. Proof, proof, proof, the world wants proof. Would it know with proof? No. I can change no one. I can give them nothing. Truth is not a question of change, it is a question of witnessing. What is this thing called witnessing? Hmm... Nothing, maybe I lie. If you want to go to the next phase, you must now deny what you believe to know, interact and walk without expectation and see what is. Can you do this? One of these days, we must all walk the plank and step into the unknown, as to where and when this occurs, it happens when it does. I asked one day, and I was answered.

 

[phoenixthoth]

the only proof is witnessing it yourself. the only way to know something is to ... identify with it. anything 'less' is just knowing about it.

and all thoughts and words are lies in the sense that a description of truth is not the truth as a description of a cup is not a cup.

random quote that may amuse you:
If one does those three things well enough, he even knows how things are going to end up at the end of the physical universe, which makes predicting in the meantime child's play.

For eaxmlpe, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. If, hwoveer, the lsat ltteer is out of pclae, it all mekas no snese.

Similarly, if one accurately perceives what exists now (the first letter is correctly in the first position), and knows how everything is going to exist in the end (the last letter is correctly in the last position), he can see all the big picture (the whole word) and can make sense out of everything in the middle. Accordingly, he can easily predict the future (the various letters that come after the first).

from the gospel of thomas:
18 The disciples said to Jesus, "Tell us, how will our end come?"
Jesus said, "Have you found the beginning, then, that you are looking for the end? You see, the end will be where the beginning is.
Congratulations to the one who stands at the beginning: that one will know the end and will not taste death."
19 Jesus said, "Congratulations to the one who came into being before coming into being."

***
thus, congratulations to, hopefully eventually, us all.

alpha=omega

 

[TENYEARS]

This is a correct statement, so in using this, what would this say of the scientific method in accordance with all known fact and knowledge?

 

[phoenixthoth]

what is scientific 'fact' but an account of what one, many, witnesses?

if you were to tell me what you witnessed, i would believe you witnessed it or you were lying though i would doubt the latter.

 

[TENYEARS]

They see/experience relative view(s), witnessing a relative process or a relative object. Is this witnessing?

 

[phoenixthoth]

i can't think (LOL) of a reason why not. but i know what you're getting at and in that sense, no it is not witnessing. remember that you don't have to bear witness but bearing false witness is advised against though that seems unavoidable if one opens one's mouth, so to speak. thus perhaps that prescription is to stop talking, stop writing, etc. i just hope that the account of what i witness is accurate enough to 'get the job done' as is their hope.

 

[PFanalog57]

Belief = B

Understanding = U

U(B) > B(U)

[T|F = T ] ---> U ---> B

Symmetry forms the basis of logic, thus symmetry forms the basis of truth.

To understand is to believe, but to believe is not necessarily to understand.

 

[Thallium]

I do not know what witnessing is and I guess that is where Tenyears is going.

But Tenyars, your last post there. Why is not witnessing a relative process, witnessing? Because you do not see every side of the process?

 

[TENYEARS]

There is a state which occurs which is nonrelative, while although you are in a primarily relative chemical reaction, you become a witness to go beyond it. I could rip this to shreds at any point because the human language or at least english is inadaquate at any point to describe this. I some times use language in this way because it helps break down the walls which are set up by people which are not so concerned with reality but their own ends which sometimes they themselves to not totaly realize. The word witness denotes at least to me the way it formed in my life and I have herd it used through out my life is a relative view of one object to another. What I am describing is a relative view which from the viewing point becomes nonrelative.

Anyone who has come to the boarders of the bowl, or gone beyond it knows that this statement is true for all so called known fact until nonrelative experience becomes reality.

"and all thoughts and words are lies in the sense that a description of truth is not the truth as a description of a cup is not a cup."

There are presently accepted views in science and religion and health today which are wrong. They are accepted views, and so society calls it knowlege, is it? Here maybe something which has never been said, but is true. Is 2 + 2 always two? The answer it is always an approximation. One because you will never know if you have 2, because the objects are relative and their perceived existence at anypoint is not a gaurentee, do to their subatomic make up. Math deals with approximations of relative objects, but these objects are always different, therefore any perceived computation in the history of the world is without question an approximation. Show me any human being who says differnetly and they will be self proclaimed fools by the very nature of their speach, because they are king of the hill mongers. The closer are the derivers, because they want to know, and yet they two have taken preperscribed paths built upon other overlaying mounds.

Now you all make a liar out of me see I don't like posting logic because, the king of the hill mongers consume to their ends, do they really have a choice? What are the results of children running around with loaded weapons not knowing what they have? This is all that it is no matter how any or all humans justify this position.

 

[Thallium]

Originally posted by TENYEARS
Math deals with approximations of relative objects, but these objects are always different, therefore any perceived computation in the history of the world is without question an approximation. Show me any human being who says differnetly and they will be self proclaimed fools by the very nature of their speach, because they are king of the hill mongers. The closer are the derivers, because they want to know, and yet they two have taken preperscribed paths built upon other overlaying mounds.

Exactly what are you saying?

Tenyears, it appears that you feel that if something can be proven, to which you in person can be a witness to and see with your own eyes, only then it is reality.

And what is this non-relative state you are talking about? Please elaborate unless you are confinded by the limited language(and that is true: language can far from perfectly explain everything).

 

[phoenixthoth]

i don't think anyone can ever really prove anything. sure, one can adopt convention and criteria for proof, and then appear to meet it, and then consider it met. words can only describe the truth, not are the truth. as one appears able to do is say
1. this is what i witnessed
2. this is how i arrived at the door to what i witnessed and with what 'eyes' i witnessed it
3. then ask, do you witness the same thing?

and then if many agree that they witness the same thing and if it meets the arbitrary criteria, then it is arbitrarily called a proof.

for example, (i think you meant 2+2=4, though in a field of characteristic 2, 2+2=2=0), i can adopt the convention of what constitutes a mathematical proof and definitions. if i wrote it down, i would challenge you to find out where I'm using relative terms. the relativity is in what is considered a proof or a nonproof and the arbitrary convention one uses to say, past this threshold of this and that 'evidence' and 'testimony', it is a 'proof.'

***

going back to understanding stuff...

my friend can understand algebra without the basic steps and formulas memorized. it's like a guitarist who can play an A7 without knowing all the notes that go into that chord or the little details of what makes up the composition. he can solve equations in his head faster than i, a mathematician, can (because I'm using the steps). he just understands it. is it possible to understand the universe this way?

it's kind of like this: one can slepl wodrs any way one lekis as lnog as the biinneng and eding letters are in the right place and one can read what is being wittren. that is becuase the human mind is capable of viewing the whole global picture as well as the local parts of the picture. especially if the hologram is self-similar all the way down, that means it's contained in you and hence its whole is within you. I'm not sure if that's the reason why we can witness its whole but soemehow we can.

 

[Thallium]

Originally posted by phoenixthoth
i don't think anyone can ever really prove anything. sure, one can adopt convention and criteria for proof, and then appear to meet it, and then consider it met. words can only describe the truth, not are the truth. as one appears able to do is say
1. this is what i witnessed
2. this is how i arrived at the door to what i witnessed and with what 'eyes' i witnessed it
3. then ask, do you witness the same thing?

and then if many agree that they witness the same thing and if it meets the arbitrary criteria, then it is arbitrarily called a proof.

Eureka! That was exactly what I was thinking to write, but I could not formulate it. This what we are talking about being a relative witnessing?

 

[phoenixthoth]

i don't know if this is what TENYEARS meant because i of course can't read his mind.

there is a nonrelativity to the statement:
THIS IS WHAT I WITNESSED!

now I'm not saying what i witnessed is "true" or "false" or "real" or "holographic" or whatever, but i can say with absolute certainty that i remember witnessing something. and if you don't witnesses it i tend to doubt myself. when that doubt fades, the relativity does with it.
induldge me for a sec:
aleister crowley, liber CCCXXXIII, book 45:

45

CHINESE MUSIC
"Explain this happening!"

"It must have a 'natural' cause."

"It must have a 'supernatural' cause."
Let these two asses be set to grind corn.

May, might, must, should, probably, may be, we may safely assume, ought, it is hardly questionable, almost certainly -- poor hacks! let them be turned out to grass!

Proof is only possible in mathematics, and mathematics is only a matter of arbitrary conventions.

And yet doubt is a good servant but a bad master; a perfect mistress, but a nagging wife.

"White is white" is the lash of the overseer; "white is black" is the watchword of the slave. The Master takes no heed.

The Chinese cannot help thinking that the octave has 5 notes.

The more necessary anything appears to my mind, the more certain it is that I only assert a limitation.

I slept with Faith, and found a corpse in my arms on awaking; I drank and danced all night with Doubt, and found her a virgin in the morning.

 

[jammieg]

Makes good sense about the sllpenig, Crowley was a good poet or mystic. My guess on Jesus saying those things is that what he meant is that hardly anyone remembers things before the age of 5 and yet young children are probably the most intelligent beings on this planet but few ever have remarkably intelligent teachers in this time frame and it seems that some people never really grow old in their minds but their bodies do, and some people grow younger in mind, and Jesus may have been one of those people but I think Socrates was one who went beyond the bowl but unfortunately he couldn't explain it to others, only suggest the ways. Perhaps many many people have come close to achieving some sort of complete control over their own brain but the last word may be missing and so no one has lately crossed that line in which the near death experience of some may reveal what is really going on, one of my friends reported that just before a car accident time seemed to slow down 2 seconds were seen frame by frame as if 10 or 20 seconds, and she was able to reason out what to do very very fast. The other version is the ego and super ego, but finding a useful way of communication and essentially putting the mitochondria into the ameoba for a truly working relationship to make a cell "can't" be done and I don't really know if it can be done, but why not try... If it's true then seeing is believing, I haven't seen it yet either, and yet how do those idiot-savants do it I wonder.

 

[phoenixthoth]

i've had experiences like that time lapse thing. i looked at the clock and it was 4:40 and closed my eyes and mediated for what felt like ten minutes. and it really felt like 10 whole minutes. i opened my eyes and the clock read 4:40, indicating that just a few seconds had passed.

if there were a matrix/bowl/box, and if there were a way to 'think' 'outside' the 'box' it must be very difficult to explain how to arrive at this.

 

[TENYEARS]

I did mean 4, and yet it could be 2 "relatively speaking" within a confined area of set paramters, it is possible to exit those parmaters, that does not mean one violates the law of conservation of matter and energy, it just means ones system of "relative measurement" is not capable of relaying the result. HINT

I don't claim to know everything, but what I know I know without question. Funny thing is I could take what I know it could be proven and have the whole world aknowlege it and yet, if a new band wagon was created and said it was all a lie, guess what, so much for proof. This is the total sum of the knowledge of the world outside yourself. Science seems more stable than a polotics, but its not. If if you think other wise no matter who you are, you would be quite arrogant not to think again. For now I wait.

 

[phoenixthoth]

you don't claim to know everything, that much i agree with. but do you?

 

[Thallium]

Originally posted by TENYEARS
I don't claim to know everything, but what I know I know without question. Funny thing is I could take what I know it could be proven and have the whole world aknowlege it and yet, if a new band wagon was created and said it was all a lie, guess what, so much for proof. This is the total sum of the knowledge of the world outside yourself.

I do not understand this. What is the total sum of the knowledge of the world outside you? The things others know, but you don't?

 

[phoenixthoth]

to me it means that what is normally considered proof is actually relative, based on pretense, and not absolute.

 

[TENYEARS]

Badabing, givem a cigar. So what do you do with the wonderful gift of lack of proof which now places uncertainty upon every relative experience, thought, object known fact that has ever existed. Was Abe Lincon the president of the United States of america? I don't know, I may believe with a strong sense of proof, and yet the fact is I do not know. Is my name from birth my real name? Maybe. If these words do not affect you then they are also not real, because for these words to be real you will undoubtably feel them. To anyone that may say a word called "so", you define yourself to yourself, for those who do not, there is no definition, only a walk into the unknown. Careful the fish the swallowed Jonah is lurking nearby.

 

[phoenixthoth]

i think that while it is in fact difficult and would take a lot of time (LOL) to know everything, it is sufficient to KNOW at least one thing for SURE. that's the first quantum leap. the question is, are you a believer or a knower? and do you just know about or do you know? what is there available to you at all times for your "eye of the I" to peer into, to study, to wonder if it exists, to ask whose name it is but YOURSELF. i once heard on internet infidels that one cannot prove you exist and with this i wholeheartedly agreed. despite the fact that i as a mathematician cling so desparately to the notion of "proof," i also forced myself to just KNOW that i exist without a doubt. it's not just "i think therefore i am." no. i don't always think; they're are brief moments during which "time" i don't think so do i exist during those times or do i cease to exist? to me, it's more like this
1. I AM or just
2. I

it's difficult for language to express truth but statement 2 comes very close as it has no separation between a "subject" and an "object" or a subject being in a state (of existence, for example, or a reason for existence, or a proof of existence).

now if holograms have the property that all is contained in all parts, then knowing one's self would actually mean a lot if the universe were holographic, now wouldn't it?

 

[jammieg]

Phonix it's possible that everyone is born with some fundamental bit of certainty or one sure thing and they go through the whole process of life from that one bit outward to the rest of their brain, it's possible that the brain is kindof like a big chunck of computer that's trying to mimic the universe and so randomly people are set up with some bit and may go throughout a lifetime trying to refine that bit or discard it for a better one or what not and it's passed on through sex, but each time the various fundamental bits people have are subject to chaos or the imagination of the highier brain which puts it to some tests. If I had to guess although I think everyone may experience this, that when I get really sick I have the vision of something balancing on a thin string of which it shouldn't be able to it seems and yet it does.
My fundamental belief could be dichotomy or another silly theory and finding balance in all things, it seems like a good one because I find as long as whatever new things I try I also try the opposite and analyze the two for what I can and try to determine what sense can be made of them I don't get too lost in the cortex. Anyone who's ever taken acid has some experience with the cerebral cortex, we aren't supposed to be using things we can't wield with reason so I ended up covered in head to toe in mud for what seemed like a good reason at the time anyway. So reason may be the process of finding balance and also being able to let go and take control- the better one's balance the further they can go, that's the impression I get anyway. Or one's fundamentals could be as complex as a plutonium atom, who knows, but then how would one figure out what those fundamentals were, if such a thing were true?

 

[phoenixthoth]

perhaps one may best 'figure out the fundamentals' by realizing that, well at least in my case, that i ain't going to 'figure it out.' others that are brighter than i perhaps can 'figure it out' but not me. there are other tools besides figuring though... tools that others will wholeheartedly call subjective and not a proof of anything and to that my mind would agree. i guess it's kind of like 'thinking' out of the box. you can't think your way out of a box, can you? or can you? sorry this post is so unhelpful...

 

[TENYEARS]

jammieg, you have all the ability you need to accomplish anything you want to do. The question usally avoided to oneself is what do you really want to do? Your subconscious expressing itself when you are sick interesting. You see, you are a witness to the primary expression of the subconious. That is a start, there is more.

 

[Rader]

Originally posted by jammieg
What is the difference between knowing a thing and understanding a thing?

A "free will decision to make a choice.

Why is it so often that even when people acknowledge that they know the right thing to do their actions differ from their words?
For example, most everyone agrees that lying is bad but we all lie more or less.

Is lying a lie to a lier? The perspective of the I, is what makes the I lie or not.

 

[the_truth]

Knowing is a memory.

Understanding is a pattern that you remember.


Something I know: What an apple looks like.

Something I understand: 1+1=2

Relevant situation: I am looking at two apples on a table.

Relevant thought processes involved in analysing this situation: I recognise before me an apple. I recognise before me another apple. There is 1 apple and 1 other apple. Ergo: 1+1=2. I see before me 2 apples.

 

[Rader]

"Truth and Reality"

Originally posted by the_truth
Knowing is a memory.

Understanding is a pattern that you remember.


Something I know: What an apple looks like.

Something I understand: 1+1=2

Relevant situation: I am looking at two apples on a table.

Relevant thought processes involved in analysing this situation: I recognise before me an apple. I recognise before me another apple. There is 1 apple and 1 other apple. Ergo: 1+1=2. I see before me 2 apples.

"Our Reality" is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is based on our perceptions. What we percieve depends on what we look for. What we look for depends on what we think. What we think depends upon what we perceive. What we perceive depends on what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is "our reality".

But if you trully undertstand, the deep meaning behind the physics of QM," Our Reality is an illusion and everything just "Is". Which brings a totally new meaning of what "Reality" might be.
Emitte lucem Tuam et veritatem Tuam

 

[Thallium]

An additional comment to Rader's post:

What we define as reality is the result of our perception. That literally explained what Rader wrote. This opens the door for other and unlike comprehensions of what reality is like and if there is a "universal" reality that is palpable to every being.

 

[elwestrand]

transcendentalism

Well I'm a transcendentalist. I'm not very familiar with any of the writings of Emerson or Thoreau, but basically I believe that the basis of transcendentalism is that knowledge can be acquired without the senses or sensory experience. There is an essay by kant called "critique of pure reason" which is kindof about this but I have no idea what he says about it. I doubt it's even possible to be a transcendentalist and believe that the mind is reducable to the physical brain. I believe that the physical brain is just an interface for the spiritual mind (which transcends time), to take part in this existence. Kindof like a deep sea diving suit is to a diver and it allows him to travel to depths were the pressure would naturally implode his skull. Our psycical mind, senses and body are just an insturment.

Understanding cannot come from the sences or reside in the brain. Well, our course, it may have its origin through the senses and physical brain, but it is not "understood" until it transecnds that part of the mind. This is understanding. For example, Einstien did not preceive the ingredients for his theories. It came to him through intuition. The man who composed the periodic table of the elements saw it all it a dream. According to Edison, Genius (understanding) is not possible without that 1% inspiration.