Real human being is to go beyond what is normally implied by being human

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Question: Is there any fundamental knowledge that man must have?

Acharya Prashant (AP): To be a man, to call oneself as a man is in itself knowledge. To know oneself as a body-form labeled with a certain name is in itself knowledge. And from this knowledge, an infinite number of other waves of knowledge will surely proceed. So, it is not as if one has a choice in this regard.

Once you have called yourself a man, you have no option but to live in the world of knowledge. You will be finding concentric circles, ever-widening — circles of identities. The corollary is, if you start negating all the knowledge that you have, then you will have to finally negate the knowledge that you are a man.

“I am a man” — is the fundamental knowledge from where all other knowledge proceeds. If you see the limitation and the conflict associated with living by the mind, by the contents of the mind, by knowledge and you keep hacking down your dependence on knowledge, ultimately you will find that you are staring in the face, the fact that you know yourself as a man. And you will have to bring down that as well.