Q: Guruji, In the Ashtavakra Gita, it says, ‘You can go on reading scriptures, but you will get liberation only when you forget the scriptures.’ So then what is the purpose of reading the scriptures?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: See, you get into a bus, but then you also need to get out of the bus. Now if you argue with me that, ‘If I have to get out of the bus then why should I get into the bus?’

You get into the bus from somewhere else and you get out from somewhere else.
If you have to get out of the bus, why should you get into the bus in the first place - this argument doesn’t hold. 

So, the scriptures are to make you understand your nature, the nature of the universe, the nature of this mind which is stuck in small things, and to give it a bigger vision. So knowledge is like the detergent. See, you put soap on your body but at some point you wash it off as well, isn’t it?!

Similarly, you have this desire, ’I want to be liberated’, and that desire takes you away from all other small desires. But if you keep holding on to that thought, then it will also become a problem at some point. You have to wash that off as well and become free. ’I want liberation, I want liberation, I want liberation’, you won't get liberation. But that desire is essential till you are free from all other small desires. Then a point comes when you say, ‘If I have to get liberation let it be, otherwise let thy will be done.’ In that moment you are already free.