Towards Infinity : Appendix II
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Ignorance and knowledge are the two extremities of the same
thing. Up to a certain extent it is termed as ignorance,
after that it turns into knowledge. They are like the two
poles of a magnet. Thus avidya (ignorance) has no existence
without vidya (knowledge) and vidya without avidya. If one
is there the other must also be there. That means when the
veil of ignorance is torn off, avidya and vidya are both
gone. Thus avidya covers the entire sphere included in both
avidya and vidya. That is the state of tam which is beyond
both. It is in true sense the state of realisation – where
there is neither avidya nor vidya. What is it there then?
Neither of the two – a state of perfect latency,
not-knowingness, or complete knowledgelessness which may
roughly be denoted as the state of ignorance just as it is
at the age of infancy. Ignorance is in fact the highest
pitch of knowledge. That comes to mean that we start from
the level of ignorance and finally end in a state of higher
ignorance (or complete ignorance as I call it). The sphere
of knowledge (in the popular sense of the term) is only an
intermediary stage. Really so far as it is the sphere of
knowledge, it is all ignorance in true sense.
Can that which dawns after the veil of ignorance is torn
off, be ever expressed as knowledge? Certainly not, though
one does call it so in the outer sense taking into view the
two opposites. Does it cover the sense of knowledge? No:
knowledge implies awareness of that which is beyond self.
Realisation means merging or oneness with the Absolute. In
that case no question of knowledge can ever arise. What that
may then be – knowledgelessness – not knowingness –
ignorance or what? In short it must be something like that,
though it may well nigh be impossible to express it in
words. Complete ignorance, as I have put it, may however be
nearest to appropriateness.
One on the divine path is supposed to be marching from
darkness to light. Let darkness be avidya (as it is commonly
represented) and light vidya. Sahaj Marg does not have light
for its goal. It is but an intermediary stage, which we pass
through during our march to the Ultimate, which is neither
light nor darkness but beyond both. Thus do we start from
avidya (ignorance) and pass through vidya (knowledge) on to
that which is neither avidya nor vidya but beyond both. What
word can denote the exact sense of that which is neither
light nor darkness or which is neither avidya nor vidya? Is
there any word for that in the world vocabulary? None, for
sure. Let it therefore be, as I say, ‘complete ignorance’
different from its crudest state of preliminary ignorance.
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