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Without knowing the Supreme Reality, the study of the Sastras is futile. Having known the Supreme Reality, the study of the Sastras is futile.
Here is an exquisite example of hammering in a joint into a student while creating in him a sense of wonderment through the use of a deliberate 'statement of contradiction'. The stanza, when you read, even in its tenth reading, leaves but a staggering sense of amazement and confusion. Wonder is an emotion in which there is dizzy pause of our individual thinking, and at this moment of complete restfulness, the stanza is digested by the student, and when he realises the meaning fully, it goes straight into the deepermost vaults of his heart-cave.
The riddle is solved in this stanza when we give a little conscious application of a purified intellect on the word knowing in both the lines. In the first line it is used ‘without knowing', and in the second, it is used as 'having known'. In both the places, the term knowing has a different meaning: the literal and the indicative. In the first line, knowing means, 'intellectually understanding', and in the second line, knowing means 'realising'.
Thus, re-reading the stanza with these appropriate words added on, it becomes a clear statement of truth. Sankara means to say that so long as we have no right intellectual appreciation of what the Vedanta-texts indicate, all study of the Scripture is futile. Again, when we have realised the Truth in ourselves, Scripture, which is but the vain attempt made by sentimental masters in their moments of ignorance in order to bless their generation of disciples, is indeed, empty, hollow and futilė.
Elsewhere in the Vedantic literature, it is said* that the efforts of all the Vedas is to ultimately deny everything in the plurality: a sorrowful dream projected forth by the individual mind itself: a delusive dream super-imposed upon the Atman, the substratum. All the arguments that we
* It is said : “All Sastras but endeavour to explain what is not, and deny
the delusion."
