Vichara Choodamani: self-inquiry. (Volume 1) (Telugu Edition)

There are two kinds of learning: 1) Accumulation of knowledge, of experience, of technology, of a skill, of a language. It is time bound. 2) Psychological learning—learning through experience either through the immediate experiences of life which leave a certain residue of non-understanding, of tradition, of race, of the society. There is no line of demarcation between the two types of learning, they overlap. What we are concerned in self-inquiry is psychological learning that we have acquired through centuries or inherited as tradition, as knowledge, as experience. This we call learning, is it learning at all? Mind has learned and with what it has learned it meets the challenge of life in the active present. It is always translating the life or the new challenge according to what it has learned. This is what we are doing in the name of learning. Is that learning? Does not learning imply something new, something I don’t know and am I learning if I am merely adding to what I already know, then it is no longer learning. If you are to discover for yourself what is the new, it is no good carrying the burden of the old, especially the knowledge of scriptures or a great master. A man protecting himself constantly through such knowledge is obviously not a truth seeker. When you want to find something new, the mind must be quiet. If the mind is crowded, filled with the facts and borrowed knowledge they act as the impediment to the new. This book is for Telugu speaking people all over the world.