Not Knowing – In Gita Verse 11.20 Although You are one, You spread throughout the sky and the planets and all space between. O great one, seeing this wondrous and terrible form, all the planetary systems are perturbed.
Looking at Krishna’s opulence form, Arjuna became like a child. In wonders and awe.
A person who has got divine eyes from Krishna and seeing through divine vision is one who has no barrier between him and existence. And knowledge is a barrier. Knowledge divides you from existence; it keeps you separate. Not knowing unites you. Arjuna became innocent like a child, loving. Love is a way of innocence. Innocence is a bridge: knowledge is a wall.
Not Knowing is the Most Intimate: Then the question arises – WHY ISN’T KNOWLEDGE OF THE SCRIPTURES HELPFUL IN FINDING THE TRUTH?
KNOWLEDGE IS NOT YOURS, THAT’S WHY. It is borrowed. And can you borrow the truth? Truth is untransferable; nobody can give it to you. Not even an alive Master can transmit it to you. You can learn, but it cannot be taught. So what to say about dead scriptures, howsoever holy they may be? They must have come from some original source; some Master, someone awakened must have been at the very source of them – but now they are only words. They are only words about truth, information about truth.
To be with Krishna is a totally different matter from reading the Bhagavad Gita. To be with Mohammed, attuned, in deep harmony, overlapping with his being, allowing his being to stir and move your heart, is one thing. And just to read the Koran is a far, faraway cry; it is an echo in the mountains. It is not the truth itself; it is a reflection, a full moon reflected in the lake. If you jump into the lake you are not going to get to the moon; in fact, if you jump into the lake even the reflection will disappear. Scriptures are only mirrors reflecting faraway truths.
Now the Vedas have existed for at least five thousand years; they reflect something five thousand years old. Much dust has gathered on the mirror, much interpretation, commentary – that’s what I mean by dust. Now you cannot know exactly what the Vedas say; you know only the commentators, the interpreters, and they are thousands. There is a thick wall of commentaries and it is impossible to just put it aside. You will know only ABOUT the truth, and not only that: you will know commentaries and interpretations of people who have not experienced it at all.
Knowledge is imparted for other purposes. Yes, there is a possibility of imparting knowledge about the world because the world is outside you, it is objective. Science is knowledge; science, the very word, means exactly knowledge. But religion is not knowledge.
Religion is experience – for the simple reason that its whole concern is your interiority, your subjectivity, which is available only to you and to nobody else. You cannot invite even your beloved into your inner being. There you are utterly alone – and there resides the truth.
Knowledge will go on enhancing, decorating, enriching your memory, but not your being. Your being is a totally different phenomenon. In fact, knowledge will create barriers. One has to unlearn all that one has learned – only then does one reach the being.
One has to be innocent. Not knowing is the most intimate. Knowing creates distance.
Truth is not separate from you; it is your innermost core. So you need not to learn it from somebody else. Then what’s the function of the Masters?
The function of the Masters is to help you drop your knowledge, to help you unlearn, to help you towards a state of unconditioning. Your knowledge means you will be always looking through a curtain and that curtain will distort everything. And knowledge is dead.
Consciousness is needed, knowing is needed, a state of seeing is needed, but not knowledge. How can you know the alive through the dead?
Drop all your conclusions – Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan, Jaina, Jewish. Drop all the knowledge that has been forced upon you. Every child has been poisoned – poisoned by knowledge, poisoned by the parents, the society, the church, the state. Every child has been distracted from his innocence, from his not-knowing. And that’s why every child, slowly slowly, becomes so burdened that he loses all joy of life, all ecstasy of being, and he becomes just like the crowd, part of the crowd.
Krishna wanted to give Arjuna direct experience not to perpetuate the past; hence Krishna after giving him all the Knowledge he gave him Divine eyes so that he can see. By seeing him become a non-egoistic approach towards reality. Arjuna can learn “I don’t know and I am ready – ready to know.” Knowledge means: “I know already.” Knowledge is the greatest deception that society creates in people’s minds.
Krishna’s function is to serve the future, not the past. The past is no more, but the future is coming every moment. Krishna wanted Arjuna to become innocent, seers, knowers – not knowledgeable – alert, aware, not unconsciously clinging to conclusions.
My own experience says that as soon as you know yourself you know that you don’t know anything. State of not knowing.
Tags: Not Knowing
