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knowledge taken like that be worth its salt? Taken-sannyas is not real sannyas. You cannot put on a mask of truth. Truth has to be awakened.
Sannyas is born. It comes through knowledge. And in that knowledge we go on being transformed. When our knowledge is transformed our outlook is changed and our behavior is transformed automatically. The world stays where it is and sannyas is gradually born within us. Sannyas is the knowledge that "I am not the body"; it is the knowledge that "I am the soul". When this knowledge dawns, ignorance and attachment drop away. The world was there outside and it will still continue to be there. But inside there will be the absence of attachment for it. In other words, there will be no world, no samsara inside.
To try to cling to the outside world is ignorance and to try to renounce it is also ignorance because in both these states you continue to be related to it. Attachment to the world and disgust for it are both ignorance. Both are relationships with the world. The absence of this relationship is freedom, freedom both from attachment and from aversion. It is not just aversion or disgust. This absence of attachment and aversion I call sannyas.
Freedom from both attachment and aversion is attained through knowledge. Attachment is a kind of ignorance and the reaction one has to being fed up with attachment is aversion. This reaction too is ignorance. In the first case a person runs towards the world; in the second case, away from it. In both cases he runs. But little does he know that the joy of the one enshrined within us is not to be attained by running after the world or by running away from it but by being firmly lodged in one's own self. We must neither run towards the world nor from it. We have to move within, to our real selves.
Remember, we must move into our selves. This coming into one's self is impossible with attachment or with aversion. It is only possible by one's becoming a witness to the inherent conflict between attachment and aversion. There is one within us who is the witness to both our attachments and our aversions. We have to know him, he who is simply a witness. By knowing him we automatically
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