We only know what we are told by higher authorities (author)—father, mother, teachers, political leaders. We accept such knowledge by association with others through application. Alone, without association, we cannot know anything. Directly, in and of itself, we always require association of higher authorities to confirm or deny what is what.
Everything is information. Therefore Information Highway. We want to know everything. Computer technology has opened up the flow of information. We are drowning in an ocean of information, but do we know anything? An infinite number of bits (megabytes) of information, and still we do not know anything for sure or absolutely. We certainly don’t know what we are, what is this place, where we have come from, where we go at the time of death. We may be well informed, but we certainly are not in knowledge or enlightened. We remain in the dark about the most important thing to know: knowing ourselves. We do not know what or who we are. We simply collect information about the environment around us, both during waking hours and sleeping hours. We do not know even whether we are sleeping or awake, unless we associate with a reference point of an opposite phenomenon. While sleeping, one thinks he is awake. When he awakens, then only does he understand he was sleeping.
Even life and death are indistinguishable to the living entity. So the conclusion is we do not know anything independently. We know only that which is taught or REVEALED TO US BY OUTSIDE or higher sources. We are free to accept or reject incoming information, to act or to be idle in regards to the inflow of information. We cannot understand God by collecting information, but we can know Him only by accepting the revelations He gives to us through shastras, guru and sadhus.
If God is inconceivable, then so are His energies, so are the living entities. We can simply surrender to the inconceivable with faith that He is taking care of us, or we can resist Him and take care of ourselves. That is our freedom.
When we abandon the compulsion, obsession to now God (as one tries to know or possess information of mundane things) and simply accept Him on His word and act accordingly (FAITH), then we are in our healthy existence known as spiritual life. Life is not information or knowledge; it is FAITH in the INFINITE, inconceivable, love of God.
To know the name of God is to know everything, because God and His name are the same identical substance. God is everything. So simply by chanting the holy name of God, one is always in knowledge, and informed about everything necessary.
