Knowledge And Knowing

Before we enter into this sutra let’s understand the difference between Knowledge And Knowing.

KNOWLEDGE IS indirect, knowing is direct. Knowledge is through many mediums; it is not reliable. Knowing is immediate, without any medium. Only knowing can be reliable.

This distinction has to be remembered. Knowledge is like a messenger comes and tells something to you: the messenger may have misunderstood the message; the messenger may have added something of his own into the message; the messenger may have dropped something from the message; the messenger may have forgotten something from the message; the messenger may have added his own interpretations into it, or the messenger may be simply cunning and deceptive. And you have to rely on the messenger. You don’t have any direct approach to the source of the message – this is knowledge.

Knowledge is not reliable, and not only one messenger is involved in knowledge, but four. Man is behind many closed doors, imprisoned. First knowledge comes to the senses; then the senses carry it through the nervous system, it reaches to the brain, and then the brain delivers it to the mind, and then the mind delivers it to you, to the consciousness. It is a vast process, and you don’t have any direct approach to the source of knowledge.

It happened in the Second World War: a soldier was hurt very deeply in his toe and the leg, and the toe was in severe pain. The pain was so much the soldier became unconscious. The surgeons decided to operate the whole leg. It could not be saved, it was so damaged, so they cut it. The soldier was unconscious so he never knew what happened.

Next morning when the soldier came back to consciousness, he again complained about the pain in his toe. Now this is ridiculous: when the leg doesn’t exist, toe and all the leg has been completely removed, how can pain exist in a toe which doesn’t exist? The nurse laughed and she said, “You are imagining, or you are in a hallucination.” She uncovered the blanket and showed to the soldier that, “Your whole leg is removed, so in the toe no pain can exist now, because the toe doesn’t exist.” But the soldier persisted. He said, “I can see that the leg is not there and I can understand your viewpoint, and I am ridiculous – but I still say the pain is severe and unbearable.”

Doctors were called; surgeons consulted amongst themselves. This was absolutely absurd! – The mind is playing some trick – but they tried to understand what is happening. Then the whole body was X-rayed, and this was the thing they came upon: the nerve that was carrying the message of the pain in the toe was still carrying it. It was trembling in the same way as it should tremble if there was a toe and there was pain in it.

And when the nerve is bringing the message, of course the brain has to decode it. The brain has no way to check whether the nerve is carrying a right message, a wrong message, real, unreal. The brain cannot come out and check the nerve. The brain has to depend on the nerve, and the brain decodes it to the mind. Now the mind has no way to check the brain – one has simply to believe it – and the mind delivers the knowledge to the consciousness. Now the consciousness suffers for a toe which doesn’t exist.

This is what Hindus call MAYA. “The world doesn’t exist,” Hindus say, “and you are suffering terribly, suffering for something which doesn’t exist.” This is how the mechanism functions of knowledge. It is very difficult in this process to check anywhere unless you can come out of yourself. Mind cannot do that because the mind cannot exist outside the body. It has to depend on the brain, it is rooted in the brain. The brain cannot do it because the brain is rooted in the whole nervous system; it cannot come out. Only at one point the possibility exists to check, and that is at consciousness.

Consciousness is not rooted in the body; the body is just an abode. As you come out of your house and go in, consciousness can come out of the house and go in. Only consciousness can come out of this whole mechanism and look at things, what is happening.

In nirvichara samadhi this happens – thoughts cease. The connection between the mind and the consciousness is cut, because thought is the connection. Without thought you don’t have any mind, and when you don’t have any mind the connection with the brain is broken. And when you don’t have any mind and the connection with the brain is broken, the connection with the nervous system is broken. Your consciousness now can float out and in; all doors are open. In nirvichara samadhi, when thoughts cease, consciousness is free to move and float. It becomes like a cloud without any roots, without any home. It becomes free of the mechanism you have lived with. It can come out, it can go in; there is no hindrance on its path.

Now direct knowledge is possible. Direct knowledge is knowing. Now you can see immediately, without any messengers between you and the source of knowledge. It is a tremendous phenomenon when your consciousness comes out and looks at a flower. You cannot imagine because it is not part of imagination; you cannot believe what happens! When the consciousness can look directly at the flower, for the first time the flower is known, and not only the flower, through the flower the whole existence. In a small pebble, the all is hidden; in a small leaf dancing in the wind, the whole dances. In a small flower by the side of the road, the whole has a smile.

When you come out of your prison of senses, nervous system, brain, mind, layers and layers of walls, suddenly individuals disappear. A vast energy in millions of forms… and every form indicating towards the formless, and every form melting and merging into other forms – a vast ocean of formless beauty, truth, goodness. Hindus call it sat-chit-ananda: that which is, that which is beautiful, that which is good, that which is blissful. This is direct perception, aparokshanubhuti, immediate knowing.

Otherwise, all your knowing is indirect, depends on messengers which are not very reliable – cannot be. Their very nature is unreliable. Why? Your hand touches something; now the hand is an unconscious thing. From the very beginning an unconscious part of you takes the message. Intelligence is hidden behind, and on the door an idiot is sitting, and the idiot takes the message. The idiot is the receptionist. Hand is not conscious, and the hand touches something and receives the message. Now through the nerves the message travels. Nerves are not conscious; they don’t have any intelligence – so from one idiot to another now the message is given. From the first idiot to the second much must have changed.

In the first place, the idiot cannot be hundred percent true because he cannot understand; understanding is not there. The hand is dull, very dull. It carries the work in a mechanical way, robot-like. The message is delivered much has changed already. The nerves take it to the brain and the brain decodes it. And the brain is not also very much intelligent, because the brain is part of the body, it is the other end of the hand.

If you know something about physiology, you must be knowing that the right hand is connected to the left hemisphere of the brain and the left hand to the right hemisphere of the brain. Your two hands are two receiving ends of the brain. They function for the brain; they are extended brains. Your right hand carries a message to the left brain, your left hand to the right brain. Brain is also not alert; the brain is just like a computer – something is fed to it, it decodes, it is a mechanism. Sooner or later we will be able to make plastic brains, because they will be cheap and they will endure more and they will create less trouble. And they can be operated very easily and the parts can be changed: you can even have spare parts always with you.

Brain is a mechanism, and by the discovery of computers it has become perfectly clear that the brain is a mechanism; it has no intelligence in it. Then the brain accumulates whole information, decodes it, gives the message to the mind. Your mind has a little intelligence; very little that, too… because your mind is not alert. Your hand is mechanical; your brain is mechanical; your nervous system mechanical, and your mind is asleep, as if drunk. So from one idiot to another idiot then finally to a drunkard the message reaches!

Gurdjieff used to give vast big dinners for his disciples, and the first toast was always for the idiots. These are the idiots.

And then this drunkard, half asleep, half awake, interprets it according to the past, because there is no other way. According to the past the mind interprets the present. Everything is going wrong because the present is always new and the mind is always old. But there is no other way; the mind cannot do anything else. It has accumulated much knowledge in the past through these same idiots, as unreliable as anything, and that past is brought to the present, and the present is understood through the past. Everything goes wrong. It is almost impossible to know anything through this process.

That’s why Hindus call the whole world that is known through this process maya, illusion, dream – like; it is. You have not known the reality yet. These four messengers won’t allow you, and you don’t know how to avoid these messengers or how to come out into the open. The situation is as if you are closed in a dark cell, and just through the keyhole you are looking out, and the keyhole is not passive, the keyhole-is active – it interprets, it says, “No, you are wrong; this is not so, this is like this.” Your hand interprets, your nervous system interprets, your brain interprets, and finally the drunkard interprets. And that interpretation is given to you and you live through that interpretation. This is the state of the ignorant mind, the state of the unenlightened.

In nirvichara samadhi, this whole state is shattered. You suddenly come out of this whole mechanism. You don’t rely on it, you simply drop the whole mechanism. You come directly to the source of knowledge; you look immediately to the flower.

This is possible. This is possible only in the highest state of meditation, nirvichara, when thoughts cease. Thought is the link. When thoughts cease, the whole mechanism ceases, and you are separate. Suddenly you are no more imprisoned. You are not looking through the keyhole. You have come out into the world under the sky, open. You look at things as they are, and you will see that things don’t exist; they were your interpretations. Only beings exist; there are no things in the world. Even a rock is a being, howsoever fast asleep, snoring; a rock is a being because the ultimate source is a being. All its parts are beings, souls. A tree is a being a bird is a being, a rock is a being. Suddenly, the world of things disappears. “Thing” is the interpretation of these idiots and the drunkard mind. Because of this process everything becomes dull. Because of this process only the surface is touched. Because of this process you miss the reality; you live in a dream.

You can create a dream in this way. Just try someday: your wife is sleeping, or your husband, or your child – just rub a cube of ice on the feet of the sleeping person. Do it just a little, not too much, otherwise he will be awakened – just a little and put it away. Immediately you will see the eyes under the lids are moving fast, what psychologists call REM, rapid eye movement. When the eyes are moving rapid, a dream has started. Because the person is seeing something, that’s why the eyes are moving so fast. Then just in the middle of the dream, you wake the person and ask what he saw. Either he would have seen that he is passing through a river which is very cold, ice cold, or he is walking on snow, or he has reached the Gourishankar: something like this he will dream. You created a dream because you deceived the first idiot, you touched at the feet, ice. Immediately the idiot started working, the second idiot was given the message, the third idiot decoded; the fourth, drunkard – which is also asleep now – immediately started a dream.

You can create dreams; you create many times, unknowingly. Your both hands are on your chest and you are Lying on your bed, and you feel that somebody is sitting on your chest, a monster. And when you open your eyes, nobody is there – your own hands, or a pillow.

The same is happening while you are awake. It makes no difference because the whole mechanism is the same; whether the eyes are opened or closed makes not much difference, because there can be no check on the process. Even if you want to check, you will have to go through the whole process itself. How can you check unless you can come out and see what is happening?

This possibility is the whole world of spirituality: that the final consciousness can come out. Drop the whole mechanism, look at the thing directly: “things” disappear. That’s why Hindus say this world is not real, and for the real knower it disappears. Not that rocks will not be there and trees will not be there they will be there even more so, but they will be no more trees, no more rocks; they will be beings. Your mind turns beings into things: your wife is a thing to be used; your husband is a thing to be possessed; your servant is a thing to be exploited; your boss is a thing to be deceived. The mind, because of this whole idiotic process, turns every being into a thing. When you come out of the mind and have a look under the open sky, suddenly there is nothing at all. “Thingness” disappears.

When thoughts drop, the second thing to drop is the thing. Suddenly the whole world is full of beings, beautiful beings, supreme beings, because they all participate into the ultimate being of God. Definitions disappear – you cannot separate. All separation existed because of the mechanism. Suddenly you see a tree moving out of the earth, not separate – meeting with the sky, not separate, everything joined together; everybody is a member of everybody else. The whole world becomes a net of consciousness, millions and millions of consciousnesses, luminous, kindled from within, every house lighted. Bodies disappear because bodies belong to the world of things. Forms are there but they are no more material; they are forms of moving, dynamic energy, and they go on changing. That is what is happening.

You were a child, now you are young, now you are old. What is happening? – You don’t have a fixed form. The form is continuously flowing and changing. A child is becoming a young man, the young man is becoming old, the old is moving into death.

Then you suddenly see: birth is not birth, death is not death. There are changing forms, and the formless remains the same. You can see that luminous formlessness always remaining, the same, moving amidst millions of forms, changing, yet not changing; moving, yet not moving; becoming everything else and yet remaining the same. And that’s the beauty and the mystery; then life is one – a vast ocean of life. Then you don’t see alive beings and dead beings, no, because death doesn’t exist. It is because of the mechanism, wrong interpretation.

Neither exists birth nor death. That which exists is birthless and deathless, eternal. But this is how it looks when you come out of the mind.