Can we achieve certain knowledge free from illusion and doubt?

Question

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Have a great day!

Answer 1

yes by knowing that all is emptyness so how can we doubt that? Also knowledge about compassion cannot be doubted

Answer 2

imagination and doubt are parents of facts.

love

Pluto

Answer 3

meditate, I get alot of proof about things in my life because I am so spiritually focused. I have sought the right info. & worked at it so I feel like I am always on the right track & keep getting proof that I am.

Answer 4

Our natural man of flesh can't.  "For we know in PART, and we prophesy in PART"; 1 Cor 13:9.  

"And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know"; 1 Cor 8:2.

This is a real illusion, men who claim to know-it-all, and they, themselves, are the ones illusioned.

Answer 5

Absolutely......NOT.

But perhaps someday.

Answer 6

Certain knowledge is commonly defined as evidence based knowledge acquired to tackle with the matters of our shared experiences, as for instance, to seek remedies for aliments in medicine, to explain the nature of reality in general science, and in psychology, to describe human behaviour and understand its states and conditions. Certain knowledge, therefore, is not what it might appears to be by its name, an absolute or an absolutely accurate body of knowledge, but instead a knowledge of sufficiency for the practical requirements of human condition. Our knowledge is always partial and limited, and thus, allowing us to ‘fill the gaps’ with our ‘illusions and doubts’, making it possible for us to push the boundaries of our understanding through disciplined innovation, creativity and imagination.

Then if we consider doubt to be part of our definition of knowledge, then can allow our doubt to scrutinise as what exactly is an illusion, and what is reality, or where is the diving line between dream and its actuality. I think human mind without its capacity to doubt, and without its normal allowance of illusions, would soon run dry of all thoughts, bereft of its imagination and of its ability to see beyond sensory limits into the worlds of wider possibilities the mind would become stone dead.

The following abstract I find is worthy of a read in this regard:

Radical empiricism rejects the idea that certain knowledge concerning the conditions of the universe is accessible to the minds of mortal men. It considers the a priori categories of logic and mathematics as assumptions or conventions, freely chosen on account of their convenience for the attainment of the kind of knowledge that man is able to acquire. All that is inferred by deduction from these a priori categories is merely tautological and does not convey any information about the state of reality. Even if we were to accept the untenable dogma of regularity in the concatenation and succession of natural events, the fallibility and insufficiency of the human senses makes it impossible to ascribe certainty to any a posteriori knowledge. We, human beings as we are, must acquiesce in this state of affairs. How things "really" are or may appear when looked upon from the vista of a superhuman intelligence, essentially different from the human mind as it works in the present aeon of cosmic history, is for us inscrutable.’

Answer 7

The act of directing our attention towards something that appears other than ourself is what we call thinking.

All objects come into existence only because of our act

of knowing them.

Thoughts and images arise in our mind,they are formed by

action of thinking or imagining them,an action that can only occur when we allow our attention to move seemingly away

from ourself.When there is seeming movement of attention,the concept of time arises because all doing

involves change and change requires time.

It is just our old habit to direct attention towards the objective

world and fall in this prey of illusion which brings us lot of

misery.

If we can direct our attention selfwards all the seeming

movement of attention stops and when there is standstill

of thought,there is only being whose nature is existence,

consciousness,bliss.

In the understanding and perceptionof false i.e illusion

we encounter nonobjective self conscious being which

is our natural state.In this we have the certain knowledge

of our essential being without doubt.

Answer 8

Certain knowledge is fact?

Answer 9

I don't think so. There are no certainties, and no absolutes. Only degrees of probability. M.

Answer 10

If the knowledge gained ,and therefore an answer is the superlative in that line of questioning then yes,,

Answer 11

We can never know anything 100% certainty. If you think about it, everything we think we know we have just learned from someone else.

Let's take what we know best for example; ourselves. Can you tell me with 100% certainty that you know your real name? Can you tell me with 100% certainty that your parents are really your biological parents? Maybe your real mother is the one you've been calling your aunt. Even if you remember being born and seeing your mother, it could be a false memory.

We could go on and on with the endless examples. However, the truth of the matter is; no one can be 100% certain of anything. I may not have used the best example, but I think in a dark way is backs up my point. Don't you?

Answer 12

I don't think we can fully trust our 5 senses as capable of distinguishing reality from illusion, they usually reflect our inner selves (what I mean is that sometimes we just see what we wanna see or we only hear what we want to hear).

So how did we achieve that knowledge? through our 5 senses?

Regarding knowledge free of doubt,  in other words: "absolute certainty", it is definitely my goal, though I can't say I am there.

The mind could also make us believe that we are free of doubt.... a big denial wall can lock  us in a false "absolute certainty" state too....

Answer 13

If we believe in it as certain knowledge that is free from illusion & doubt, faith I guess.

"Old knowledge becomes new ignorance" I know that, I think.

All the best.

Answer 14

You can open to the reality beyond karma.

Answer 15

I don't think it's possible to achieve perfect knowledge or proof, there's always, without acception, a valid (although most of the time improbable) "but, what if....?" question that casts a doubt, albeit almost always a tiny one. So no matter how much evidence points in one direction, there will always be some margin of doubt.

In math and logic, it's a different story, a certain conclusion can be reached.

Answer 16

Onlyby working it out for yourself. If you can look at the world and see some glimpse of something pure and right hold onto. the meaning of life is love