I have been living in ignorance. How do I start living in knowing? || Acharya Prashant (2016)

Question: Sir, for some time now, throughout the day, I see that I really don’t know anything. What is ‘knowing’?

Speaker: Yes, yes. This is it. This is it. This, this sincerity, this try.

Do you see that two paradoxical activities are happening right now, at the same time? On one hand, you are prepared to admit that we live our lives in total ignorance. We know nothing about what is happening but we live as if everything is normal. As if just everything that is happening, is happening with our permission, with our understanding, with our comprehension, while we know not even an iota.

So this is one part of the happening. The other part of the happening is – the confidence that you have. Were you not sure that you could know, would you have asked this question? And is that not paradoxical, for someone who has discovered that she is not knowing anything, to simultaneously, parallely, at that very moment ask, “What is knowing?”?

Are you with me on this?

Listeners: Yes, Sir.

Speaker: I am saying, “I am X years old,” and this X is a definite number, is a significant number. It may be twenty, thirty or seventy. “And for twenty, thirty, seventy years, I have not really known anything. And yet I rise and say…”