“Do you mean to tell me, dear, that you cooked the parrot that I sent home? The one I’ve been searching for you for such a long time? And did you know that the parrot could speak not just two languages but five?”

“Why then,” asked his wife, “didn’t he speak up?”

Scholars are never known to be intelligent; they are well-informed but immensely stupid at the same time. Scholarship is a way to cover your ignorance – it does not dispel ignorance, it only covers it up. And by covering it up you can deceive the world, but you cannot deceive yourself.

Pandit Satyavrata had come to see me ten or twelve years ago, and I could see the misery he was in – because it is impossible to deceive yourself. You know that all that you know is borrowed, and the borrowed cannot fulfill you.

Moe: “Hi! Thought I’d drop in and see you about the umbrella you borrowed.”

Joe: “Sorry, but I loaned it to a friend of mine. Did you want it?”

Moe: “No, but the fellow I borrowed it from says the owner wants it back.”

Scholars go on living something that has been given by one generation to another for thousands of years, and the older it is the better it seems to them. The old is respected by the scholars, and with that old they become old. With all that ancient rubbish accumulating in their heads they become just garbage and nothing else.

But how can you deceive yourself? Deep down you know all the time that you have missed knowing, that light has not dawned upon you, that your inner being is absolutely dark. And as death starts coming closer, the knowledgeable person becomes more and more shaky.

When Pandit Satyavrata came to me I could see that trembling. He was trying to hide it, he was trying to pretend that he was not worried at all about enlightenment, but his whole concern was how to become full of light within. Knowledge had not helped, but knowledge helped in one way – he became the vice-chancellor of a university; he was nominated for the parliament; he wrote seventy-five beautiful books; and, as you say, he certainly is the most respected leader in the Arya Samaj.