Journey from Knowledge to Faith and Liberation
Acharya Prashant: They say that spiritual knowledge must be like the wood used in the funeral pyre. That wood burns down the dead body, but having burnt down the dead body, the wood does not remain itself, the wood too disappears. It removes all that which was dead, unnecessary, decomposing, and having removed that, it goes away by itself. That is the best knowledge, knowledge which removes your falseness and then sublimates. Having performed its function, it no more overstays. It goes, so your mind is now totally free—totally free of worldly knowledge and also free of spiritual knowledge.
So, you see, there are then a few kinds of people. The first kind who carry a lot of worldly knowledge and have a firm belief that this worldly knowledge can redeem them. We know a lot of such people. The world is full of such people who trust their intellect to liberate them. Of course, they keep suffering.
And then there is a second category who are not satisfied with all that which science, economics, medicine, politics, sociology, astronomy have to offer. They say, “We want more,” and they turn to spirituality and they gain a lot of spiritual knowledge. These people suffer doubly. Now they are under the weight of two kinds of knowledge—one: intellectual, worldly; and the other: spiritual—and they suffer all the more because their expectations are belied. From worldly knowledge they had expected something—they do not get it—and from spiritual knowledge they had expected something only because their expectations had not been fulfilled from worldly knowledge, so they are beaten doubly. Their suffering is double. Most people who indulge in, who dabble in spirituality belong to this category. They are not any better off than the common worldly folks. In fact, their misery is compounded.
Then there is a third type who goes deeply into the scriptures, who listens keenly to words of the teachers, and sees the inadequacy of worldly knowledge. So, he withdraws the trust he had placed upon his intellect, upon anything and everything that is sensual and material. He withdraws that trust. But having withdrawn that trust, he now places that trust upon spiritual knowledge. Do you see this? So, he becomes empty of the world but full of the scriptures. The scriptures now become an alternate world for him.
You would have seen such people as well. He feels that he is out of the world, whereas the fact is that he has just started living in an alternate world which is just as bad as—if not worse than—the world that the ordinary people live in. He does not talk now of money, of growth, of respectability, of career, of relationships, of lust; he rather talks all the time about liberation, enlightenment, nirvāṇa (liberation), sādhanā (spiritual practice), yoga (union), bhaktī (devotion). But all this talk is just empty prattle. Like a parrot, he keeps repeating these words.
There is the householder who is busy worrying about what would happen to his kids, and there is this so-called spiritual man who is busy worrying about what would happen to his next births. Same, just the same. In fact, worse. At least the householder has some contact with facts. This one is living totally in illusion. He is living in a fancy make-believe world of his own.
Each of these categories is worse than the previous one. That is why most people who enter spirituality are worse off than those who never entered at all; they have less peace. You can find some peace in ordinary households, but you will find very little peace in those who regularly visit the temples and the churches; you will find very little peace in those who are absorbed in the scriptures all the time.
We had the basic category who lived by their intellect in worldly knowledge. Then we had the category who wanted to gather both worldly and spiritual knowledge. Then we had the third category which got rid of the worldly knowledge but built an alternate world of spiritual knowledge. And we are saying each of these is worse than the previous one.
Then there is a fourth mind. This fourth mind—as you have already read and expected—frees itself from even spiritual knowledge. Ashtavakra is referring to this fourth mind, this fourth man. This fourth man gives up even the scriptures. His mind is now totally light and empty, empty of everything. He does not even meditate. He forgets all methods of liberation. He does not indulge in any sādhanā , any practice, any abhyāsa . He has left yoga far behind. This is the free man. This is liberation—to live without the support of any kind, to live without mental projections, to live totally fearlessly, to not depend on any mental props, to just live. This is the fourth man.
If you are in the first stage, you are probably still lucky, but there is no end to your agony if you belong to stage two or three. At the same time, those stages are an opportunity. Now jump to the final stage. Forget all that you know. And you can forget all that you know only if first you see why you wanted to remember all that. You wanted to remember all that because all that offered a consolation, a support. It offered a promise. When you see that you are so strong that you need no support of any kind, then you give up your crutches. Knowledge is a crutch.
When does that happen? That happens when you realize that that which you are seeking through knowledge is already present within you; that which you are seeking through knowledge is your basic reality. When you realize that, then you see that knowledge is such an insufficient instrument, such an unnecessary middler.
That is called faith—to not rely upon anything other than the Absolute. “I do not need the support of knowledge. I have the support of the Absolute”.
Now, knowledge can be there just in the memory, just in some kind of a database. Useful in these little matters, but not something that I use in central matters of living, not something that I entrust with to liberate myself. Now, knowledge can remain in one corner of the mind. The memory can contain all that. The intellect can use all that.
But I live not by knowledge but by faith. My central trust is not upon my own knowledge but upon my faith in something beyond myself. That which I, in one way, call as beyond myself is actually my own heart. Both mean the same, I could refer to it either way. I could either say that it was beyond me, or I could say that it is the most central to me, that it is the closest to me.
Full article link: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articles/what-is-knowledge-and-what-is-ignorance-on-shri-ashtavakra-1_cd004ea
