Only the rare one deserves to give up the scriptures

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

“All the texts say that in order to gain release one should render the mind quiescent; therefore their conclusive teaching is that the mind should be rendered quiescent. Once this has been understood, there is no need for endless reading.”

“In order to quieten the mind, one has only to inquire within oneself, what one’s Self is. How could this search be done in books?”

“One should know one’s self with one’s own eye of wisdom. The self is within the five sheaths, but the books are outside them. Since the self has to be inquired into by discarding the five sheaths, it is futile to search for it in the books. There will come a time when one will have to forget all that one has learned.”

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi

Then there is a similar verse from Kabir Sahib:

पोथी पढ़ि पढ़ि जग मुआ, पंडित भया न कोय,ढाई आखर प्रेम का, पढ़े सो पंडित होय

pothi padhi padhi jag mua, pandit bhaya na koye,dhaee aakhar prem ka padhe so pandit hoye

Translation: The entire world has been passing into death reading book after book, but nobody has gained any illumination. One who could just read a little bit of love comes to know everything.

Question: Even though we know that to know the Self, the mind has to become quiet, but in our day-to-day lives, we tend to forget and attach our mind with mundane stuff. This is where reading scriptures regularly helps —…