Blessed Are the Ignorant
sakthidpi@gmail.com
Talks given from 4/12/76 to 31/12/76
Darshan DiaryCHAPTER 1
If you can accept your ignorance your life will have the quality of
magic
4 December 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Deva means divine, and agyana means ignorance; divine ignorance. And this has to be understood.
All knowledge is superfluous. Knowledge as such is superfluous. And all knowledge creates only
an illusion that we know – we don’t know. You can live with a man your whole life, and you can think
that you know him – and you don’t know him. You can give birth to a child, and you can think you
know him – and you don’t know him.
And whatsoever we think we know is very illusory.
Somebody asks, ’What is water’, and you say, ’H2O’ – you are simply playing a game. It is not
known what water is, nor what H is nor what O is.
You are just labelling. Then somebody asks what this H is – this hydrogen – and you go to the
molecules, to the atoms, to the electrons... but you are again giving names. The mystery is not
finished – the mystery is only postponed. And at the last, there is tremendous ignorance. Nobody
knows what the electron is.
In the beginning we did not know what the water is – now we don’t know what the electron is, so
we have not come to any knowledge. We have played a game of naming things, labelling things,
categorising, but life remains a mystery.
Ignorance is so profound and so ultimate that it cannot be destroyed. And once you understand it,
you can rest in it. It is so beautiful, it is so relaxing... because then there is nowhere to go. There
2CHAPTER 1. IF YOU CAN ACCEPT YOUR IGNORANCE YOUR LIFE WILL HAVE THE QUALITY OF MAGIC
is nothing to be known, because nothing can be known. Ignorance is ultimate. It is tremendous and
vast.
All that we know is illusory. Somehow we manage the illusion that we know. Somebody introduces
you to somebody else, tells them your name, your qualifications, your country, and it is thought that
you have been introduced. You remain completely unintroduced, because your name is not you,
neither is your country nor is your religion. You are that profound ignorance inside.
But when I use the word ignorance, I don’t use it in any negative sense – I don’t mean absence of
knowledge. By ignorance I mean something very fundamental, very present, very positive. It is how
we are. It is the very nature of god to remain mysterious. It is the very nature of things to remain
mysterious. Everything is illusive, and that’s why it is so beautiful. If man succeeds in knowing
everything one day, there will not be anything left except to commit suicide.
