Chapter 5 Real Knowledge vs Borrowed Knowledge

Whatever you gain from others will not become your knowledge; it will only become a means to conceal your ignorance. When a person's ignorance is concealed, they can never gain knowledge. Because you believe this to be your knowledge, you become completely attached to it. You are attached to your ideas; you are not brave enough to abandon them. You support them because you believe they are your knowledge, and if you lose them, you will become ignorant. But remember, no matter how attached you are to your ideas, you will not become a knowledgeable person through these ideas.

There is one kind of knowledge that we gather from the outside world, and another kind that comes from within. What we gather from the outside becomes a constraint; it doesn't bring us freedom. We can only find freedom from what comes from within. So the first thing to look inward for is: Do you really know what you know? You need to question every thought and every word you know: Do you really know? And if the answer is, "I don't know," then all the gold nuggets in your life will slowly turn to stone. You can fool everyone in the world, but you can't fool yourself.

No one can deceive themselves. What you don't know, you simply don't know. If I ask you, "Do you know the truth?" and you nod and say, "I do," then you are not being honest. Ask yourself in your heart, "Do I know the truth? Or am I just accepting what I hear? If I don't know, then that truth is worthless. How can something I don't know change my life? Only the truth I know can become a revolution in my life. What I don't know is truly worthless; it's false. It's not the truth at all; it's all borrowed, and it won't make any difference in my life."

What others teach you, you'll repeat over and over again for your entire life. Because so many parrots surround you, no one will resist, no one will argue. These parrots will all nod and say, "You are absolutely right." Because what they've learned is the same as what you've learned. In religious councils, religious leaders teach people, and everyone nods and completely agrees with what they say, because what the religious leaders have learned, people have already learned. Then they all think they've already learned it, and they all nod in agreement: "Yes, these words are absolutely correct. The same things are written in our books. We've read the same things."

You must find out if the clothing of knowledge, the thing that is considered clothing, is truly clothing, or are you standing naked wearing invisible clothing? You must test every thought of yours against the following criterion: "Do I understand this?" If you do not understand, then rather than clinging to false knowledge, you might as well prepare to go to hell.

The first condition of sincerity is that a person should say they don't understand something, no matter what they don't understand; otherwise, it becomes the beginning of hypocrisy. We usually can't see the big deceptions, only the small ones. If someone tries to cheat you out of a few rupees, you'll notice. But if someone stands before an idol, hands clasped, saying, "Oh God. Oh Lord..." even though they know perfectly well that the idol is made of stone and there is no God or Lord inside , then even if this person seems sincere and pious, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more dishonest or hypocritical person on this earth. They are completely deceiving you. They are saying something entirely false, and they don't feel anything inside. But they lack the courage to understand what they are saying and doing.

A devout person is one who recognizes what he knows and what he doesn't know. This recognition is the first step to becoming devout. A devout person is not one who claims to understand God and the soul, not one who claims to have seen heaven and hell. A devout person is one who claims to know nothing; he is utterly ignorant: "I have no knowledge. I don't even understand myself, so how can I say I understand existence? I don't even understand the stone in front of my house. How can I say I understand divinity? Life is very mysterious, very unknown. I don't understand anything. I am utterly ignorant."

If you have the courage to be ignorant and the courage to accept your ignorance, then you can begin your journey and break free from the entanglements of thought. Otherwise, you can't even begin. So you need to understand one thing: you are utterly ignorant, you know nothing, and what you seem to know is false, borrowed, and outdated.