To have or to be?


To have or to be?
[ Home ]	Based loosely on Fromm, Erich (1976) To Have or to Be; Abacus; ISBN 0 349 11343 2

The great masters of living have made the alternative between having and being a central issue of their respective systems
	The Buddha teaches that in order to arrive at the highest stage of human development, we must not crave possessions. He calls on people to wake up and liberate themselves from the illusion that craving for things leads to happiness. The Hebrew prophets appeal to the people to wake up and know that their idols are nothing but the work of their own hands, are illusions.

Jesus teaches: "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall save it. For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself or be cast away?" (Luke 9:24-25) Master Eckhart taught that to have nothing and make oneself open and ‘empty’, not to let the ego stand in one’s way, is the condition for achieving spiritual wealth and strength. "Knowledge is no particular thought but rather it peels off all coverings and is disinterested and runs naked to God until it touches him and grasps him."
	Marx taught that luxury is as much a vice as poverty and that our goal should be to be much, not to have much. He reckoned that we need to destroy illusions in order to create the conditions that make illusions unnecessary. Freud’s concept of self-knowledge is based on the idea of destroying illusions (rationalisations) in order to become aware of the unconscious reality.
our goal is to be much, not to have much

	In the view of all these masters of living, knowing begins with awareness of the deceptiveness of our common sense perceptions, in the sense that our picture of physical reality does not correspond to what is ‘really real’ and, mainly in the sense that most people are half-awake, half-dreaming, and are unaware that most of what they hold to be true and self evident is illusion produced by the suggestive influence of the social world in which they live.
our picture of physical reality does not correspond to what is ‘really real’
Optimum knowledge in the being mode is to know more deeply. In the having mode it is to have more knowledge. The active, alive person is "like a vessel that grows as it is filled and will never be full." (Eckhart)