April 20, 2016 – Understand What you Learn

There are two allied powers in man: knowledge and Wisdom. Knowledge is so much of the truth, seen in a distorted medium, as the mind arrives at by groping; Wisdom what the eye of divine vision sees in the spirit.

Sri Aurobindo

(Thoughts and Aphorisms 1

Understand What you Learn

The true way so that [what you learn] remains is to understand, it is not to learn by heart. You learn something by heart, it is mechanical, you see; but after some time it will be effaced, unless you make use of it constantly…

If you understand the thing, if you have the sense of the principle which is behind, you can remember it indefinitely, for hundreds of years if you live for hundreds of years; whereas something you have learnt by heart… after some time the brain-cells multiply, are replaced, and some things are wiped out… In one’s life there are things which remain like landmarks, there are others which are totally effaced to the extent that one doesn’t remember them at all, they are gone. But there are things like that, truly like milestones, like landmarks in life. Well, these things were conscious experiences, that is, they were understood; so the experience remains indefinitely, and with just a tiny movement of the consciousness you can bring it forward. But something that is learnt mechanically – unless, I tell you, you make use of it daily, it is effaced.

The Mother

The Great Adventure – A Diary for All Times. Page 246.