Beyond Understanding

Spiritual evolution is a movement from not-knowing to knowing, then beyond knowing back to not-knowing. The initial state of not-knowing is ignorance; the ultimate not-knowing is freedom from the known. Understanding sets us free, but freedom itself is beyond understanding. To transcend the dimension of understanding one must be totally empty - one must be no one and indeed know nothing.

The Limits of Understanding

To know what we need to know and to unknow what we do not need to know is wisdom. Understanding lights our way, but where we are going is beyond understanding. The moment we start clinging to the conclusions we have reached, they entrap us. Understanding is the last barrier to the direct experience of reality, for it separates the knower from the known. Understanding has a purpose but it is not the purpose.

Certain traditions of enlightenment overemphasize the role of understanding as a tool for awakening, creating the illusion that through the power of self-knowledge or a sudden radical insight into the nature of reality we can instantly realize the self and complete our path. However, no matter how intelligent or spiritually sensitive, we cannot be transformed and illuminated through understanding alone. Many seekers gather extensive spiritual knowledge yet remain unable to realize true peace. Even the most profound spiritual revelations cannot tear down the walls of our separate existence and false individuality and emancipate us from our sadness, emptiness and suffering.

There is a vast chasm between understanding and reality, between knowing and experiencing. Although we may get in touch with the essence of our consciousness through understanding, without the total transmutation of our consciousness and the awakening of our complete self, we remain far from enlightenment. Our efforts to awaken through understanding orient us towards reality, but can never manifest as true self-realization. Enlightenment transcends understanding, for it is beyond the power of our intelligence to fathom the mystery of the self. True understanding is humble - it knows its own limits. While its final act, the surrender into being, is indeed an expression of understanding, it points to the end of knowledge.

The Burden of Knowledge

Knowledge can be a blessing or a burden: a blessing when it enables us to progress on the path towards freedom, a burden when it is either excessive or clung to when no longer needed. Knowledge is always of the past, for it is no more than an accumulation of memories, experiences and concepts. Though necessary to help us grow and live in the world, it cannot take us beyond it. In order to enter the dimension of the now, we must be empty, free of the totality of the past. Only in the absence of self is it possible to merge with universal presence. Knowledge, no matter how precious, crystallizes our personal identity - the known creates the knower. Even self-knowledge becomes a burden when it separates us from the realization of oneness and absence.

Knowledge can be seen as part of ignorance. In fact, without ignorance there is no knowledge; knowing requires the shadow of not-knowing. Only when both knowledge and ignorance are dropped, can we enter the dimension beyond the knower and the known - the unknown.

Letting Go of Understanding

Letting go is the essence of the spiritual path. Everything we hold onto in the form of conceptual understanding solidifies the false self. To let go of understanding is the real key to freedom. Nonetheless, we cannot let go of understanding prematurely, as we must first enquire into the nature of reality. Only when understanding has fully ripened and been assimilated by our intelligence, can it be transcended.

Letting go of understanding demands courage, for we renounce the security of knowing. To drop understanding is to become empty and exposed, yet ready to be filled with the light of the self. We no longer require the crutch of knowledge in order to be. We are open to experience reality as it is, and in this pure state of existence, regain our original innocence. In the absence of the knower, the known is no more, and we return to non-conceptual unity with reality as it is.

Pure Knowing is Being

Pure knowing is the natural state of the spiritual dimension, yet it cannot be accessed until our personal consciousness has merged with the beyond. When we surrender our knowledge and understanding to the non-conceptual state of being, our knowing and not-knowing transform into pure knowing. Pure knowing is owned by the supreme reality alone, and revealed only to one who abides in emptiness of the now.

Divine Ignorance

Our perception of reality before entering the path and after completing it, while different, are also mysteriously alike. To become a true sage is to become ignorant again, empty of all knowledge, intoxicated with the supreme alone. But unlike ordinary ignorance, the ignorance of the sage is divine. It is a blissful state of freedom. In divine ignorance, one no longer knows through oneself - one knows through the creator. To enter divine ignorance we must return all of our understanding to its source. We no longer need the conceptual reality that supported our separate self - we leap into the dimension of no-support. With no place to abide, we lose ourselves in the boundless void of the unknown.

The State of Not-knowing

Not-knowing is not antithetical to knowing. Although reflected in the mind, not-knowing points beyond all mental states - it is actually a state of existence. Not-knowing is the nature of the soul and the gate to the beyond. It is the meeting between the renunciation of the known and the knowing of the unknown.

Not-knowing is our ancient innocence. Nothing is more innocent than a small child facing the unknown world of infinite possibilities. That child-like innocence is within us all, beneath all of our empty knowledge and endless layers of mind. The dust of experiences we have gathered along our path has never touched its essence. Still, because we have been lost in forgetfulness for so long, we are now disconnected from our original purity. It is only by passing through the process of true understanding, inner remembrance, awakening and existential surrender that we can return to our primordial state of not-knowing.

Entering the Unknown

'The unknown' is not an idea to grasp with the mind, but the pure reality beyond the known - the state of universal now existing eternally prior to knowing and consciousness. Not-knowing is not the unknown itself; it is the final passage from mind to no-mind through which consciousness renounces knowing in order to enter the unknown. Entering the unknown through the gate of not-knowing, we surrender our knowing to the ancient source and merge with the eternal movement of universal intelligence. What was unknown to the mind becomes known to the soul as the bliss of samadhi and the state of love.

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