Today, I want to tell you about the spirit. Many people have said, “Attain the spirit. Achieve the spirit,” but it has never been formulated anywhere what “spirit” is, in a real sense…. Attaining the knowledge does not mean that you read books. Knowledge cannot be gained by reading books. Knowledge means recognising on your central nervous system that this is true knowledge, “gna”. The Sanskrit word for this is “gna”, which you people call as “gyan” or “gyanam”.
This word was used by Jesus Christ’s disciple, Thomas, when he came to India, but his books were buried for 1600 years. Actually, he buried 52 of his books in the ground, fearing that people might call him a heretic, meaning a person who would mislead others from the belief in God; or a blasphemer, meaning he disrespects God. He wrote that knowing God is an “experience” and until you have had this experience you cannot be a scholar. At that time, whoever experienced this knowledge were called gnostic, and those who did not acknowledge the existence of God were called agnostic. But these mullahs, priests, and also the Hindus who considered themselves the incarnation of God, did not want Thomas’s preachings to spread, and went completely against him and started saying that Thomas had no knowledge, and whatever he was saying was wrong. Because when religion becomes a means to earn money, then this knowledge obviously will be declared wrong. And like this they started spreading that whatever is told by the gnostics is wrong and completely against God. These people do not have any knowledge. So, these people buried all their books in Egypt, and then came to India. This was the circumstance at that time, and it was worse than today’s situation.