The Vedas teach us to learn and master knowledge, apply it and live in the world. The Amrita Bindu Upanishad goes a step further and says that after learning, you should drop all that is learnt just as one who wants rice drop the husk.
The intelligent student acquires knowledge and is efficient in applying it too.
However, once that is over, he drops the knowledge completely as if it is like the husk that covers rice which can spoil the taste of eating it.
The Vedas or books of knowledge are like the long stick for the pole vault runner.
The sportsman trains to run a long distance with the stick, point it on the ground, take hold of the other end and jump across the bar.
Once he begins falling on the other side, he cannot but drop the stick gracefully.
In the same way, the Vedas teach us ways and means to make the mind single-pointed. Once that is achieved, then
the realisation of the self is attained in that aware state of steady mind.
Once the truth of the self is realised, the means to the knowledge has no purpose and it has to be dropped. If on reaching the end, we still hold on to the means, it will be like travelling on the New Delhi train up and down even after the destination is reached.
The greatness of this piece of advice given in the Upanishads is that there is no demand on the part of the teachers to keep remembering all that we studied. The studying is done for the purpose of realisation.
Once the realisation is achieved, even the Vedas command or rather give permission to drop them and move on.
How is this possible? It is for this reason that the four-fold path is shown in the traditional system of learning.
In the Brahmacharya Ashrama or phase of learning, the seeker acquires all knowledge and excels in it.
In the Grihastha Ashrama, the knowledge learnt is applied in real life.
In the Vana-prastha Ashrama, one ishta devata or a thought form is taken up for exclusive worship to concentrate the mind and develop devotion.In the phase of the sanyasi, even that is dropped as the individual entity merges with total consciousness while living in this very life itself.
So the Upanishad gives us the liberty to learn well, apply that knowledge and when the result of the learning is experienced, we have the command of the masters to drop that very knowledge that took us there or the very ladder that helped us scale the heights of truth.
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