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acquired knowledge, from some conclusions already achieved. Then he is not pure, not uncorrupted. Then he is listening from a corrupted mind -- and whatsoever you interpret will be your interpretation.
I was reading one anecdote; it happened in a small school:
The teacher was telling the pupils about the discovery of America -- Columbus and his journey and the discovery. One small boy was very, very excited, was listening very intently, attentively. So the teacher asked him to write an essay on the discovery of America. This is what that brilliant boy wrote:
"Columbus was a man who could make an egg stand on end without crushing it. One day the King of Spain sent for him and asked: 'Can you discover America?'
'Yes,' Columbus answered, 'if you will get me a boat.'
He got the boat and sailed in the direction of where he knew America was. The sailors mutinied and swore there was no such place as America, but finally the pilot came to Columbus and said, 'Captain, land is in sight.'
When the boat neared the shore Columbus saw a group of natives. 'Is this America ?' he asked them. 'Yes,' they replied.
'I suppose you are Indians?' Columbus went on.
'Yes,' said the chief, 'and you are Christopher Columbus, I take it?'
'I am,' said Columbus.
The Indian chief then turned to his fellow savages and said, 'The jig is up. We are discovered at last.'"
A child listens with a childish mind, his own interpretations. Everybody listens with his own mind -- then you are hearing but not listening.
In India, when somebody is reading an ordinary book it is called 'reading'; but whenever somebody is reading the Gita we have a special term for it: we call it path. Literally translated it will mean 'lesson'. Ordinary reading is just reading -- mechanical; but when you read so deeply absorbed in it that the very reading becomes a lesson, then the very reading goes deep in your being and is not only part of your memory now but has become part of your being. You have absorbed it, you are drunk with it. You don't carry the message in so many words, but you have the essence in you. The very essential has moved
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