@platorepublic,
Hi Qualia - hey I can tell you've been talking to Reconstructo. (Don't worry, he's a friend of mine.:bigsmile:)
One must be careful not to over-intellectualise these things. That song, and the Beatles, and the fact that I was 16 when Woodstock happened, sparked a long interest in Eastern spirituality in me and many others. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, peace be upon him, introduced Transcendental Meditation to a mass audience, via the Beatles. I never learned from his school in particular, but I learned from a similar school, and I would recommend it to anyone.
The thing is, Eastern philosophy is really not intellectual. When you try and turn it into words, it
sounds intellectual, but it arises from a very different kind of attitude to life and the world than that of the Modern West. You have to learn to be still and to be very observant of the whole mind and body. It is about purification and concentration. But you can't break it down to a set of concepts or ideas; it is a practice and a way of life.
A famous Western philosopher apparently said once of Buddhism - 'that is not philosophy, it is physiology' (I can't trace the source.) He was very close to the mark, though. When you learn to understand yourself this way, it is quite exact and scientific in its impact. You learn to understand yourself like David Attenborough understands the movement of some gazelle or other animal that he is studying on one of his nature shows. You understand the phenomenon of the mind and body by really watching how it all works and interacts.
And
that is self-knowledge.