Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
- Edmund Burke
An elderly gentleman, Mr. R., who had some acquaintance with the Vedanta literature, once approached His Holiness and said:
Q: I have tried to understand the Advaita philosophy but numerous doubts and difficulties keep on cropping up now and then, which I don't find it possible to solve by myself or with the help of the scholars whom I have met. I shall be very grateful if your Holiness will be pleased to initiate me into the Advaita-Vedanta yourself.
A: I shall certainly be very glad to do so, if I can do it. But it is quite beyond my competence.
Q: I am sure Your Holiness is not serious. If Your Holiness professes incompetence to teach Advaita, I do not see how anybody else in the world can claim to teach it.
A: What can we do? It is the nature of the subject. The Upanishad itself proclaims 'He who claims to know, knows not'. The Advaita is not something to be learnt; therefore it cannot be a thing to be taught. It is essentially something to be realised by oneself. I cannot therefore undertake to teach you. If, however, in the course of your Vedantic studies you want any passage to be explained either in a text or in a commentary, I shall certainly try my best to explain it. I can thus help you only to understand the significance of words or of sentences which are composed of words, or of ideas which are conveyed by sentences. But it is impossible to convey to you a correct idea of what Advaita is, for it is neither a matter for words nor is it a mental concept. It is, on the other hand, pure experience which transcends all these. Suppose I do not know what sweetness is. Can you describe sweetness in words sufficiently expressive to convey an idea of sweetness to me?
- Sri Chandrasekhara Bharati, Advaita
