KNOWLEDGE AND AWARENESS
Awareness the
Inner Flowering!
“Only one question I have to ask you. Have you learned that by learning which there no need to learn anything anymore arises? Have you known that by knowing which all suffering ceases? Have you been taught that which cannot be taught?”


This is awareness not knowledge that fulfills life and takes you to the dimensionless dimension.


Knowledge and Awareness

Knowledge is arrogance awareness is humility.

Knowledge comes through the gate of the mind. It brings with it the seeds of arrogance and ego. Because your mind is a human creation, if you live with human beings the mind is continuously fed. They say something, you say something – the mind goes on learning, it goes on revolving.

Our present day education system is mind and knowledge based. The system makes you capable to live into the world. However it does not make you a human being.
Awareness comes through the door of the heart. Awareness brings with it seeds of bliss and humility. Awareness belongs to the fourth dimension or the dimension beyond the known. Therefore meditation is the way to bring a greater degree of awareness in an individual.


I have taken this opportunity to look into the present system of our education system as well. As a student or an educationist, you either spend or help someone go through nearly one third precious years of life in acquiring all that is deemed necessary to plunder into the outer world of competition, conflict, and duality, where everything is measured in terms of money, efficiency, and speed. After spending nearly 20-25-27 years of your youthful life of vigor you are decorated with degrees, credits, honors of various kinds and colors. It is said, ironically, you are now ready to the world that lies ahead of you.


Have you wondered that after spending nearly one third of your life’s precious years when you leave the universities to enter the outside world are you a balanced human being. Are you capable to deal with the unique questions the life poses to you? Are you blissful deep within? Are fully ready to enter the mysterious world, with unique way and means that is inviting you in all its glamour and glitter?


“Only one question I have to ask you. Have you learned that by learning which there no need to learn anything anymore arises? Have you known that by knowing which all suffering ceases? Have you been taught that which cannot be taught?”


I can answer on your behalf. But I leave this for you to introspect deep within the silence of your being. If the answer is a capital NO then we need to revisit our systems of education at schools colleges and universities.


Certainly, something is grossly missing in your education system. And that which is missing is Fourth Dimension or Dimension of the Being. It is Meditation. Meditation is the missing dimension in education.


When we look at ancient systems of education in the east the universities at Nalanda, Takshila and the system of teaching we find something unique. In such companies, the students were prepared inwardly to venture into the life ahead of us.


Let not any hasty conclude that I want the entire education system into older one. Remember life does not move backward. Life always moves forward. Wise never lament for that which is not. But certainly learn from the wisdom of the past and translate or present the old into new jargons. Each master does this. He is the link between the past and the present. Like a bridge under which life energy flows, he connects the two shores.


My purpose of such talks is to bring a new awareness and deep down a realization that indeed ‘Meditation is the missing dimension in our education system’. This realization is the first step for journey forward into a new horizon.

Meditation is that link or bridge or the master within that connects the two shores – the inner and the outer and in the process prepares you to face the intricate situations that life presents as you interact in the outer world of objects and beings.


Meditation transforms knowledge into awareness. In fact meditation bridges knowledge and awareness. And without the bridge your life will remain simply barren.


I take lore from the Upanishads to explain this further. This is the story of Svetketu.

SVETKETU

In Upanishadic days there was a sage Uddalak who had a son named Svetketu. Svetketu was sent by his father to a gurukul - a family of an enlightened master, to learn. He learned everything that could possibly be learned.


He memorized all the Vedas and all the science available in those days. He became so proficient in them that he came to be recognized as a great scholar. His fame started spreading all over the country. Then there was nothing else to be taught, so the master said, ‘You have known all that can be taught. Now you can go back.’

Thinking that everything had happened and there was nothing else remaining. Whatsoever the master knew, he also knew, and the master had taught him everything. Svetketu returned home. With great pride and ego, he came back to his father. When he was entering the village his father, Uddalak, looked out of the window at his son coming back from the master’s place or university. He saw Svetketu walking very proudly, holding his head in a very egoistic way, and he was looking all around very self-conscious of the fact that he knew.


The father became sad and depressed. He knew this is not the way of one who really knows, this is not the way of one who has come to know the supreme knowledge. The son entered the house. He was thinking that his father would be very happy – he had become one of the supreme most scholars of the country. He was well known and respected everywhere – but he saw that the father was sad, so he asked, “Why are you sad - Father?”


The father enquired:

“Only one question I have to ask you. Have you learned that by learning which there no need to learn anything anymore arises? Have you known that by knowing which all suffering ceases? Have you been taught that which cannot be taught?”


The boy also became sad. He said, ‘No. Whatsoever I know has been taught to me, and I can teach it to anybody who is ready to learn.”


The father said,


“Then you go back and ask your master that you be taught that which cannot be taught.”


The boy said, “But that is absurd. If it cannot be taught, how can the master teach me?”


The father said, “That is the art of the master: he can teach you that which cannot be taught. You go back.”


He went back. Bowing down to his master’s feet, he said, “My father has sent me for an absolutely absurd thing. Now I don’t know where I am and what I am asking you. My father has told me to come back and return only when I have learned that which cannot be learned, when I have been taught that which cannot be taught. What is it? What is this? You never told me about it.”


The master said, “Unless one inquires, it cannot be told; you never inquired about it. But now you are starting a totally different journey. And remember, it cannot be taught, so it is very delicate. Only indirectly will I help you.


Do one thing: take all the animals of my gurukul – there were at least four hundred cows, bulls and other animals – and go to the deepest forest possible where nobody ever comes and moves. Live with these animals in silence. Do not talk, because these animals cannot understand any language. So remain silent, and when just by reproduction these four hundred animals have become one thousand, then come back.”


It was going to be a long time – until four hundred animals had become one thousand. And he was to go without saying anything, without arguing, without asking, “What are you telling me to do? Where will it lead?”


He was to just live with animals and trees and rocks; not talking, and forgetting the human world completely. Because your mind is a human creation, if you live with human beings the mind is continuously fed. They say something, you say something – the mind goes on learning, it goes on revolving.


“So go,” the master said, “to the hills, and to the forest. Live alone. Do not talk. And there is no use in thinking, because these animals won’t understand even your thinking. Drop all your scholarship here.”


Svetketu followed. He went to the forest and lived with the animals for many years. For a few days thoughts remained there in the mind – the same thoughts repeating themselves again and again. Then it became boring.


If new thoughts are not felt, then you will become aware that the mind is just repetitive, just a mechanical repetition; it goes on in a rut. And there was no way to get new knowledge. With new knowledge the mind is always happy, because there is something again to grind, something again to work out; the mechanism goes on moving.


Svetketu became aware. There were four hundred animals, birds, other wild animals, trees, rocks, rivers and streams, but no man and no possibility of any human communication. There was no use in being very egoistic, because these animals did not know what type of great scholar this Svetketu was.


They did not consider him at all. They did not look at him with respect, so by and by the pride disappeared, because it was futile and it even looked foolish to walk in a prideful way with the animals.


Even Svetketu started feeling, “If I remain egoistic these animals will laugh at me – so what am I doing?” Sitting under the trees, sleeping near the streams, by and by his mind became silent.


The story is beautiful. The years passed and his mind became so silent that Svetketu completely forgot when he had to return.


He became so silent that even this idea was not there. The past dropped completely, and with the dropping of the past the future drops, because the future is nothing but a projection of the past – just the past reaching into the future.


So he forgot what the master had said, he forgot when he had to return. There was no when and where, he was just here and now. He lived in the moment just like the animals, he became a cow. The story says that when the animals became one thousand, they started feeling uncomfortable. They were waiting for Svetketu to take them back to the ashram and he had forgotten, so one day the cows decided to speak to Svetketu and they said:


“Now it is time enough, and we remember that the master had said that you must come back when the animals became one thousand, and you have completely forgotten. Now is the time and we must go back. We have become one thousand.”


So Svetketu went back with the animals. The master looked from the door of his hut at Svetketu coming with one thousand animals, and he said to his other disciples, “Look, one thousand and one animals are coming.”


Svetketu had become such a silent being – no ego, no self-consciousness, just moving with the animals as one of them.


The master came to receive him; the master was dancing, ecstatic. He embraced Svetketu and he said, “Now there is nothing to say to you – you have already known. Why have you come? There is no need to come now there is nothing to be taught. You have already known.”


Svetketu said, “Just to pay my respects, just to touch your feet, just to be grateful. It has happened, and you have taught me that which cannot be taught.”


This is what a master is to do: create a situation in which the thing happens. Therefore only indirect effort can be made, indirect help, indirect guidance.


And wherever direct guidance is given, wherever your mind is taught, it is not religion. It may be theology but not religion; it may be philosophy but not religion.