What Is the Price of Knowledge?

This article is drawn from a talk which is available freely here: https://www.barrylong.org/podcast/metamorphosis

What happens the more you know, man and woman? You don't get anything for nothing. It's got to come from somewhere. If you take an extra word into you, it has to come at the price of something. What is your knowledge costing you? The price is life.

Every satellite the scientists send up takes a bit more out of your life.

Now, please look at this. Look at this, man and woman – it is your earth – you are not just responsible for that little place you call your home — and I don't mean responsible as in trying to save the earth, because you can't save the earth, the world is finishing. But the more knowledge these scientists invent and find, the price you pay is more distraction and less the feeling of life.

Every bit of information has to be paid for — in the feeling of life, in the feeling of love within you.

Do you wonder why everyone's nearly going mad?

You might note this: madness has a peculiar compensating factor — you don't notice it as you go mad. It's like a car that gradually runs down. You think it's going fine, but it keeps running down, down, down. And then one day, you hop into someone else's car, the same make, and you say, "My God, what's happening?" You didn't notice it.

It's like your love with your lovers – you have beautiful love when you meet and a few weeks or a few months down the line you wonder where it's all gone.

Everything runs down. Everything degenerates. Because the life goes out of it.

That's what they're doing to you. While they invent the information and give you more radio stations, more things to listen to, more to distract you — and while you fall for it, and do not compensate with the well of yourself, with the life and wonder and beauty in yourself now — you die a little more.

You cry in the night. You cry, "My God, where am I going? I don't feel alive." And so, you've got to have an extra drink, a bit more sex — anything to try to get a bit of compensation as life. But it doesn't work. Because when you get a bit of compensation, it's just excitement. And excitement dwindles. It's gone the next day, the next minute. Because nothing in the world of excitement lasts.

The bombardment of information goes on and on. It keeps the life out of it. It knocks the very life out of you.

Am I saying what is true? Have you seen it in your life? — That the more distracted you get, the more busy you get.

All those men that are running around — the busy people who are running the banks, and the newspaper people especially — they are dreadfully unhappy.

And the only way they can compensate is to keep going. For if they stop—my God—they'll die in their own emptiness.

"So let's get on with it, lads."

"Give us another sensation, for Christ's sake."

"What are we going to do tonight? We need more news."

If you watch the news, you're going to see this more and more, every day. It's going to get worse. Nothing's ever going to get any better.

Are you listening to me, man and woman? I'm telling you the truth. But you don't have to believe me. I just want you to watch it — this year, this week, next month, the month after. Watch it. I'm telling you the truth.

I'm not making predictions. I want you to check it. Next week, man and woman — life on earth is going to be worse than it is this week.

But in between, you're going to get a little bit of relief. You see, people call relief pleasure. A good night out. A good party. You really get it going, all the troubles lift off — it's great.

But it doesn't last, unfortunately.

Down the next day. "What am I going to do for a bit of excitement now?"

A bit of this in the arm. A bit of this down the throat. Anything.

But that doesn't last either. Because it's getting worse.

There's great hope in the world. I don’t know what about. But I want you to watch it, every week. The situation in the schools, man and woman, is going to get worse and worse every year. Better for one week, twice as bad the next. You watch. The local councils—it's going to get worse and worse. The hospitals—worse and worse. The terrorism you’re watching is nothing—you cannot conceive what's going to happen. And eventually, it's going to get to you, not to someone else.

It's creeping towards you.

Don't believe me though. Watch it.

Your own emptiness, your distance from God, is going to get worse—unless you do something about it.

And when I say God, I mean life. We don't have to believe in God, do we? Because we are life, aren't we? I'm not asking you to believe in anything.

You are alive, aren't you?

That's good enough.

That's where God is—in that life that you can feel.

We're talking about the fact that you are doomed. Almost like the old prophet said. Unless you do something about it.

You've got to come to life.

That's not something you've got to do in the future.

I'm just here now. I'm here now.

That's all I've got to give you.

That's what brings you to life, man or woman.

That's what life is.

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