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Chapter 5: Such Is the Depth of Its Meaning

Let us not make arbitrary conjectures
about the greatest matters.

Much learning does not teach understanding.

Seekers after gold
dig up much earth and find little.

You could not discover the limits of the soul
even if you traveled every road to do so -
such is the depth of its meaning.

The whole of philosophy is nothing but arbitrary conjectures.

If you want to avoid real knowledge, if you want to avoid the existential, then there is nothing like philosophy. Escape into philosophy and you can avoid all, all that creates problems. Philosophy is a cheap solution. Without entering, without encountering reality, you simply theorize - and theories are nothing but words. Arguments, rationalizations, explanations are nothing but tricks. Nothing is solved because you remain the same.

A philosopher is the most deceived person in the world because he thinks he knows without knowing anything at all. Heraclitus has laughed about Pythagoras, one of the greatest philosophers the world has ever known. Many times Heraclitus says, “If by philosophizing somebody could have become a knower, then Pythagoras would have been the first knower in the world” - because Pythagoras traveled all over the world, the known world in those days. He even came to India; he lived in Egypt, he traveled far and wide - he collected much knowledge.

Pythagoras was a contemporary of Heraclitus and he is more known than Heraclitus. In the histories of philosophy Pythagoras is a milestone. He collected much, he knew much, but without knowing anything at all. What did he do? Through scriptures, through teachers, through schools, ashrams, secret societies, he gathered knowledge. When you gather knowledge it becomes part of your memory - you remain unaffected. Your heart is not touched, your being is not even aware of what you have collected in your memory. Unless your being is touched and transformed, knowledge is ignorance and more dangerous than ordinary ignorance - because an ordinary ignorant person knows that he is ignorant, and a philosopher thinks that he knows. And once you become addicted to knowledge you will think your knowledge is knowing. Of course, you know too much, but deep down nothing has been known, nothing has changed; you have not evolved to a higher plane of being.

Real knowledge consists in attaining higher levels of being, higher planes of being - not more knowledge, but more being. To be more, not to know more, is the real way. To know more, and not to be more, is the false way. Philosophers talk about things. They don’t even have a glimpse of God, of moksha, of liberation, of other worlds, heaven and hell. Not only do they talk about it, they also talk very authoritatively - but they cannot deceive. They are deceiving nobody else except themselves.

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