Knowledge

Divine Life Society Publication: The Mundaka Upanishad by Sri Swami Krishnananda

Real Knowledge does not consist in the mastery of cartloads of mere verbiage, but in the immediate experience of the Self. Without this Self-Knowledge, it is futile to try to know anything else! Man’s knowledge of an object is clouded by the ignorance that shrouds his own Self; and minus this unifying force of Self-Knowledge, all knowledge is reduced to mere conjecture and, therefore, it is arbitrary. Knowledge of the Self instantly means true knowledge of everything.

How is this Knowledge to be attained? While yet engaged in the performance of his daily duties, the aspirant should carefully and minutely analyse the nature of the world, and grasp the transience of all objects. If everything is transient, what, then, is Eternal and, therefore, worth aspiring for? This question cannot be answered by the aspirants’ intellect, for the intellect itself is a finite and frail instrument and one amongst the transient objects in this evanescent world. But the emergence in the aspirants’ mind of such a Query is itself the signal that the heart-strands that bound him to Samsara have got loosened, and that with the sword of Jnana he can easily cut them asunder. This sword is in the Guru’s sheath and has to be acquired by direct personal initiation. In the Guru’s holy presence, the disciple’s intellect ceases to function. Like the gushing waters of a mountain torrent, when the obstructing dam is broken, Divine Wisdom floods the heart of the aspirant: he knows. He realises that in essence he is that Knowledge Itself! That is the Supreme Knowledge in which the distinction between knowledge, the knower and the known vanishes.

Excerpts from: Knowledge - The Mundaka Upanishad by Sri Swami Krishnananda