What is knowledge and what is ignorance? || Acharya Prashant, on Shri Ashtavakra (2016)

Question: Ashtavakra Gita, chapter 16 verse 1:

“Son! Even if you read many scriptures many times, or you listen to them, yet you will not attain to your nature until and unless you forget all of them.”

Acharya Prashant: The mind proceeds on its spiritual pursuit, because it is fed up of itself. The mind does not turn towards the Truth till it has a certain belief in its own capability to heal itself. The mind tries its best. And when it sees that even its best is highly insufficient, then it turns to its concept of something beyond itself. So, that is the intention—to get relief, to go to a space that is outside of itself, contains a curative ability higher than itself. That’s what the intention of the mind is.

But then what is the mind?

The mind is all that which is accumulated in the mind. The mind is just its stuff, its content. Remove the contents of the mind, and nothing remains. The contents of the minds are also the container that contains them. This content of the mind is called knowledge. Mind is knowledge.

So, even when the mind tries to find relief from itself, it has no option, but to turn to knowledge, that’s what it does. It feels that by gaining another kind of knowledge it will be able to get peace. What it does not realize is that knowledge of any kind just becomes mind stuff. And mind stuff is mind. And mind is what the mind wants to get rid of.