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<title>-029_TO LEARN AND TO UNDERSTAND.htm</title>
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<p class="paracenter">TO LEARN AND TO UNDERSTAND
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<p class="paracenter"></p>
<p class="para">It is one thing to learn (<i>apprendre)</i>, quite another to 
understand <i>(comprendre). </i>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 forced 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
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-88</p>
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<p class="para">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 Eins-teinian 
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 simply meet or make a nodding 
acquaintance only 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.
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<p class="para"> 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 un-initiate; 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 make nothing of it.
</p>
<br><p class="pageno">Page-89</p>
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<p class="para">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.
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<p class="para"> 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>
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<p class="para"> 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,
</p>
<br><p class="pageno">Page-90</p>
<hr>
<p class="para">hold it in your inner being and consciousness, in however small 
way, however little of it, if you get the direct contact in whatever 
manner—well, the thing is 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.
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<p class="para"> 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.
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<p class="para"> 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 in the 
dead wall.
</p>
<br><p class="pageno">Page-91</p>
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