What is the use of knowledge in self-awareness? || Acharya Prashant (2014)

Speaker: The yogi who finds stillness is neither distracted nor focuses. He knows neither pleasure nor pain. Ignorance is dispelled. Ashtavakra Gita, Chapter 18, specifically shloka 18.10. In this shloka, Ashtavakra is saying that he is free from knowing. So the question is- how can he be free of the knowledge that ‘nothing is’? You are saying that ultimately this much of knowledge that ‘nothing is’, will remain. No.

What is the right place of knowledge in the mind? What is the right function of knowledge? Why must one have knowledge?

Listener: May be to express.

Speaker: We are not taking of the kind of knowledge which tells you what is your house number, how the electric fan works, what is your bank account number, how does the economic system operates. No, we are not talking of that type of knowledge. We are referring to self-knowledge. We are referring to the relationship of all the knowledge with myself. Even that is the knowledge. How am I related to economics? How am I related to science? And ultimately, ‘Who Am I?’

So, what is the place of self-knowledge in the mind? What is the rightful place of self-knowledge in the mind? Why must one acquire knowledge? Why must one read the Ashtavakra Gita? Because even that is knowledge. The rightful place of knowledge is that it should not be there. Then why does one read? One reads, one acquires new knowledge so that the old knowledge can be wiped-off. That is the only good use of knowledge, that it liberates you from all the previous knowledge that you have already accumulated otherwise, knowledge has no use as far as self-awareness goes. Are you getting it?