Activity and the Path of Knowledge
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'Activity and the Path of Knowledge' by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Saturday 18 May 2013 12:45
All activity is a manifestation of the defective nature of the imperfect individual. Action which is a means to achieving an unacheived end is incompatible with Perfection which is Supreme fulfilment. Action is not the essential nature of a thing; it is the agitation of the illusory vestures in which things are shrouded that is called action. It is possible to change the course of an action, but Self Knowledge is ever unchanging. Action is relative; Knowledge is absolute. Action is dependent on the individual doer; Knowledge is independent of the individual and rests solely on the unchanging object, Brahman, with which it is identical. Knowledge is not subject to the process of producing, obtaining, purifying or modifying, as action is and as the results of action are. After an act there is something to be known or attained other than the act; but after attaining Knowledge there is nothing to be done and nothing else to be attained. Action is of the nature of prompting or inciting one to something else outside; but Knowledge is Illumination itself which is at once the breaking of the bond of Samsara and the experience of the Perfection of the Absolute. The Jnana-Marga or the Path of Knowledge, because it aims at a fusion of the means and the end in one, is, for those who are not endowed with the necessary equipments, extremely hard to tread, and the difficulty is well pointed out in such references to it as 'the razor's edge', 'the pathless path', and the like, which show that Knowledge has a unique track of its own which is not what is known to the mind and the intellect working with the material supplied by the senses. "The path of the Knowers is untraceable like the track of birds in the sky and of aquatic beings in water." Only those who have a penetrating insight and are perfectly dispassionate can walk the Path of Knowledge.
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