Submitted by Jackie on
Dear Swami:
I have asked this question of many great masters, and none could answer it to my satisfaction. So I will ask you: "How do you know you know?"
Ashir Dropov,
Brooklyn, New York
Dear Ashir:
As far as I know, there are Four Stages of Knowing:
1. You don't know.
2. You don't know you don't know.
3. You know you don't know.
4. You know "I don't know" is all you need to know.
Clearly, you have not achieved Stage Four because you still think you need to know if you know, and your desire to be aware of what you know and what you don't know has led you to a state of mental confusion.
I understand this condition from my own experience, because I too was a know-aware man. But then in an instant of enlightenment, I went from know awareness to no awareness. As soon as I knew I didn't know, I knew. Y'know? I'll put it another way. All of the knowing we fill our heads up with is to avoid a void. But emptiness is the space of all creation. It says so right in the Bible: "In the beginning vas the Void." (Note: It is not widely known that the early God of the Hebrews spoke with a Yiddish Brooklyn accent.)
So instead of doing a void dance to avoid an unavoidable void, we must seek Holeness. That is why I recommend you carry your own box of Nothing with you at all times. This is nothing personal.
And I recommend that you stop throwing bait at all these spiritual masters. Believe me when I tell you this mental master-baiting will not get you nowhere. As my friend Brad Blanton says, "The mind is a terrible thing -- waste it".
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