What is Knowledge? From Sri Sri Ravi Shankar at Pacific Palisades, California 1990

Every knowledge scientific or artistic, knowledge leaves you at a place of awe, amazement, wonder, don’t know. You ask a poet who writes a beautiful poetry, how did you write this? I don’t know. A Scientist, he doesn’t know. Oh I don’t know how it came up! That I don’t know level of consciousness is innocence is beautiful. Hmm? Some of you had the problem, Oh! My mind goes round all the time. Because you want to know all the time. Just remain I don’t know quiet, the journey begins from head to heart. Knowing is not the realm of the heart, being is the realm of heart. Hmm? Knowledge is like a detergent agent, detergent soap. Hmm? You put it on the cloth, but you wash the soap also away. You don’t keep the soap, say Oh its wonderful detergent soap, and let it remain on my body. Hmm?

All our struggle is to know more, know more. Understand- you are trying your level best to understand your emotions, your feelings, what is happening with you and you get into more and more and more confusion. This is what has happened with psychology today. Try to explain you why you feel like that- the way you are feeling. And the why question arises always when you are unhappy. You say, why this problem to me on earth of all the people? Nobody ever asks why I am so happy? Why there is so much joy and beauty in the world. When a problem comes, why this problem to me? Why me? The why is associated with this? So you want to understand why, why. Why am I feeling not good? Why this is happening? Why I am angry? And then more you try to understand and try and dig into it, you seem to understand it less and less. The mystery
deepens. But an illusion comes, as though, oh I know it. But that is for a short while. Hmm? And we ourselves do not know what it is and we try to explain to others.

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For God’s sake, stop your explanations. Your explanations have put you into a soup and make other people also more confused. You yourself have not understood what is happening in your mind- roller coaster! It’s a crowd! Something comes up sometime; some other thing comes up some other time, some other thing comes up sometime. And then you say something, you commit something and then later on guilt comes and other things come. So many! It’s a whole series; the train moves behind that. Simple and innocent, I don’t know. That is how it is; this life is mystery, beautiful. Live it, live the mystery so totally. Living the mystery is joy. Hmm? Become the mystery that is Divine. You are a mystery. Hmm? Don’t you think so?