DIVERSITY AND WISDOM
Through awareness, a person understands our interconnectedness and how actions reverberate. Through wisdom, the community becomes more compassionate and considerate, lessoning suffering to oneself and others, thus making knowledge a form of salvation and ignorance a form of self-destruction.
It is not always the actual knowledge attained or personal perception of it, but, the physical and mental act of seeking that enables the mind to become alive. Learning new information and making connections keeps a mind active, like a charged battery it creates energy to attract, attach and connect to other life forces. The origin of spirituality is "the seeking of knowledge" that makes humanity divine.
The philosopher Socrates declared the importance of learning, so much so that he become the epitome of wisdom. The rapture of "Gnosis" is striving for knowledge and, through intelligence, the acquiring of wisdom. Knowledge has a function that is existential and is the "total science" which is recognized in Indian and Chinese medicine, worldwide shamanism and indigenous traditions. From Pythagoras to Plato, from the humanists and alchemists practices of the Renaissance, to researchers and explorers today, the search for more complete understanding is essential.
Buddha spoke of the pursuit of perfect wisdom and enlightenment for all humanity that is ignited through knowledge. In Islam, seeking knowledge is a divine obligation. Jesus also conveyed the similar sensibilities as described in the Gospel of Thomas: "Let him who seeks continue seeking. When he finds he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled he will become astonished, and he will rule over all things". In the Gospel of Truth : " If one has knowledge, he receives what is his own, and draws it to himself . . . Whoever is to have knowledge in this way knows where he comes from, and where he is going".