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<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:center; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal'><span style='mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>
<font size="4">To Learn and to Understand</font><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;mso-line-height-alt:11.75pt;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;mso-line-height-alt:11.75pt;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>IT is one thing
to learn (apprendre), quite another to understand (comprendre). In learning you
take in a thing by your surface mind and it is a thing that comes in from
outside like a foreign body; it is put into you, almost driven and thrust into
you. You do not absorb it, make it wholly your own. If you are not mindful,
leave it aside for sometime, it goes clean out of your memory. Understanding a
thing, on the other hand, means, you absorb it, get it into the stuff of your
being, you live it in your consciousness within. When you have understood a
thing you never forget it; it has become an element of your consciousness.
Years and years might have passed, yet the thing would be as clear and vivid as
it was on the first day. Why do you forget so easily the lessons that you learn
– with pain and difficulty – from books or at school from teachers? It is
because you simply learn, but do not understand. You retain in your brain the
words, the outer formula or forms, you note down the information; but what they
stand for, their import and inner law, the living truth escape you totally. You
read Einstein, read over and over again his formulas and equations and even
commit them to memory-learn by rote; but after a time, if you lose touch with
them, they vanish from your mind or become very vague and misty and you have to
start again. That is because you learnt Einstein simply as a lesson, whereas if
you entered into the perceptions these forms embody, the inner principles that
determine them, if the Einsteinian consciousness became in some way your
consciousness, then you would have understood and never forgotten. It would not
be a lesson but an experience. What is needed, then, is this inner awakening by
which you live a thing, identify yourself with it, become one with it and not</p>

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<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 274<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;mso-line-height-alt:11.75pt;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>simply meet
or make a mere nodding acquaintance with it. Unless there is this awakening or
openness, as we say, in the consciousness, however much a lesson is thrust into
you, it will not enter deeply enough. You may learn, like a parrot, but you
will not understand, it will pass over your head and soon be forgotten.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:13.5pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>Indeed
it was not very much necessary for the ancient sages and occultists to try to
hide their knowledge in an obscure language, in codes and symbols and ciphers
for fear of misuse by the common uninitiate; even if they had expressed their
knowledge in ordinary language, ordinary people would not have understood it at
all. It would be like my speaking to you in Chinese-, you would not make out
anything of it. One comprehends only what one already possesses, that is to
say, you must have within you something at least of what you want to know and
understand, something corresponding to it, similar in nature and vibration.
That is what I mean when I say that you should be open, your mind and
consciousness should be turned and attuned to the object it wishes to seize; it
must have some light in it in order to receive the light outside and beyond. If
it is mere obscurity, the light does not light; even if it manages to come it
departs soon or is engulfed in the darkness.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:13.5pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>The
human mind can seize things only in three dimensions. A three-dimensional
knowledge is its normal possession. But there is a fourth and a fifth dimension
(which some intellectuals in Europe have begun to guess at): indeed there are
at least as many as twelve dimensions in reference to the present creation. We
cannot readily picture a four-dimensional object, a fifth dimension borders on
the bizarre and beyond that it is all a blank to the human consciousness. If I
spoke of these multi-dimensional experiences, what would you make of them?</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:13.5pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>For
example, you read and hear much and constantly of the Divine. What is He or It
to you in reality? Something vague, misty, wordy. The perception is not
concrete to you. You can doubt, deny, refuse credence as you like. But if you
once experience it, hold it in your inner being and conscious-ness, in however
small a way, however little of it, if you get the direct contact in whatever
manner – well, the thing is</p>

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<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 275<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;mso-line-height-alt:11.75pt;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>unforgettable,
it lives, lives for ever. If the whole world denies and scoffs, you are
unshaken, you smile at the world, for you know what you know.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:13.5pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>What
then is the way to this experience, to this opening in the consciousness? The
Presence is there, the Light is there, the Grace always leans down to you,
surrounds you. On your side you have to make a corresponding gesture. You have
to ask for the thing sincerely, whole-heartedly, aspire for it tirelessly. You
have to ask for it persistently, without losing faith or trust; you have to go
on perseveringly without counting the time taken.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;mso-line-height-alt:11.75pt;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>There is an
iron door there nailed and fixed. It has to be broken open. It is the door that
shuts you within your narrow ego-consciousness. You have to throw down that
barrier and widen yourself out. You have to will for it, exert for it with a
settled constancy. There is the pressure on the other side too, the pressure of
Grace. Your aspiring will meeting the Grace will surely make the necessary
opening in the dead wall.<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

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mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>
<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 276<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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