The Special Truth

Not inside knowledge, not outside knowledge, not knowledge itself, not ignorance.
-Line from Mandukya Upanishad as translated by Sri Swami Satchidananda in The Yoga Sutras of Pantajali,

Say What???

Okay...I know.  All this is getting harder and harder to grasp.  But that is the beauty of it, isn't it?  We do not have to grasp it or understand it for that truth to be what it is.

It isn't just the Tao that speaks to this idea of not knowing...of experiencing rather than trying to understand the Great Mystery conceptually. Ancient Hindu scripture expresses this as well and Yoga...the ultimate quest for Self...is centered around that idea of finding wisdom beyond the mind.

The 49th sutra of Patanjali's  Book One can be translated:

The special truth is totally different from knowledge gained by hearing, study of scripture or inference.

The Tao, consciousness, the cosmic force, God, can not be understood from learning nor can any of  it be explained in that way.  True knowing  can only be experienced by transcending the mind.

And because we are a manifestation of this, we can not understand who we really are until we get past our hang up with knowing conceptually. We are a part of that mystery.

There is an unknown and an unknowable depth to who you are.  (Eckhart Tolle, 2019)

Know Thyself!

Tolle explains in, You are the Universe, that there are two levels of understanding this Great Mystery of Self.

1. One important level of knowing your Self is through recognizing your conditioning the moment you are caught in a conditioned reaction.  Knowing ourselves on the psychological level is okay to begin with.  We can learn to understand our thoughts, emotions and behavioural responses to them We can understand our egos.  We can use psychotherapy to help us to do this. The trick, however,  is not getting stuck here in the psychological  story of who we are. It is good to be aware on the superficial layer but we want to get beyond this layer, right?
2. Then we relinquish any attempts to understand with the mind.  That is where the above sutra takes us...past the psychological mind.  We go deeper into awareness and awareness itself goes beyond conceptual knowing. When and if we are able to completely let go of all the knowing we have been offered from the outside...(the knowing the ego thrives on)...we can then 'experience' the truth of who we really are.

Letting Go in order to Experience Union with the Special Truth

We need to let go of conceptual knowledge to reach the ultimate truth of our existence.  Christianity, even back in the medieval day, spoke of this need for unknowing.  An excerpt from a  translation of A  Cloud of Unknowing  reads

God can be loved but he cannot be thought. He can be grasped by love but never by concepts. So less thinking and more loving. (A Cloud of Unknowing)

Hmm!  Something to think about.

All is well!

References

William Johnson...translator(reissued 1996)...A Cloud of Unknowing. Image Publishing book

Sri Swami Satchidananda (2011)The Yoga sutras of Patanjali.  Integral publications: Yogaville

Eckhart Tolle (2019) You Are the Universe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNuMS-GlDrc