We are all too prone to read, or to listen, and we pay scant attention to the ideas or information imparted to us. From the Theosophical point of view, it is all the more necessary for us to change our method of reading. Skimming over the pages of a book—which often passes for "study"—is of no value to us and rather tends to fill the mind with clichés, mere empty words, which are often misapplied because they have not gone deep into our consciousness.
What does it mean, to "read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest"? Taking it point by point, we may see if we can begin to change our method of observation of life in all fields of activity.
Reading and listening are methods by which various words or sounds are transmitted through the senses and sense-organs to the brain. Accuracy in recording and using the senses, therefore, is the first step. Patanjali attaches importance in his aphorisms to accuracy in seeing, or listening, and recording, followed by the testimony of others to see if we have recorded correctly. The sense of sight and the sense of hearing must therefore be controlled by the user.
Having read or listened to the words, the next step is to "mark" them, to pay attention to them. Concentrated attention is necessary in order that the brain may record accurately and its attention may be directed to the true facts. We often hear the expression: "in at one ear and out at the other." This means that we have not "marked," have not paid attention to, what we have been told.
The paying of attention is an important step, because we can hardly expect to make any headway if what we have learned is inaccurate. H.P.B. said in her Five Messages: "Learn, then, well the doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation." Why learn these doctrines? Surely the recognition of them as facts is necessary. But can we truthfully say that we have learnt them well, thoroughly? The ramifications of such learning are many, and if applied would revolutionize all our thinking as also make us more careful in generating fresh Karma.
The next stage is difficult but necessary—digesting inwardly, that is, meditating upon, thinking about, dwelling on a subject with the mind. Here it is good to remember what H.P.B. wrote in The Secret Doctrine (I, X1Vi): "Every reader will inevitably judge the statements made from the standpoint of his own knowledge, experience, and consciousness, based on what he has already learnt." We should realize that we have to go beyond what we have accepted as true and probe deeper to get at a fuller, more universal aspect to the question. We all know that the tendency of the mind, when trying to understand something new, is to view it merely in terms of our existing knowledge, following an easy line of thought which perhaps makes us fly off at a tangent, so that we rarely get beyond speculating. Speculation is viewing the information in the light of our own experience and knowledge and is quite useless to us. Realizing that "the writer cannot do the reader's thinking for him" (Preface to The Key to Theosophy), we see why it is that to the mentally lazy or obtuse Theosophy will always be a riddle.
To reach beyond speculation or mere acceptance we need to realize that words and sounds are merely outer expressions of an idea. It is this fundamental idea or soul of the words that we have to reach in order to turn information into knowledge. To reach this inner basis it is absolutely necessary for us to apply what we learn. Only through application does the information become knowledge, become realized, and only then do we touch the universal aspect or soul of the information. Let us watch, therefore, if our application of what is learnt is in line with other aspects of the Teaching—whether they all fit into the puzzle of life.
We are given two hints as a basis for this inward digestion: the basis of our life and thought must be altruism, and we must be devoted to the Law. Hence the Gita says, "Seek this Wisdom by doing service, by strong search, by questions, and by humility." The truth is there to be uncovered by us; if we do not see it, it is our loss; the Teachings will not alter to fit into the framework of our ideas.
Inwardly digesting, we meditate, rising to contemplation and union with the soul of the words that we have read and studied. And we descend from those heights to apply that brilliant light of understanding in our daily life. What we need is more thinking and less reading; more attention to daily activities so that they become avenues of service to others; more and deeper devotion, not only to the Masters but also to the poor and suffering, to all men and creatures. Digesting the teaching of the unity of life, we can bit by bit dwell in the Eternal, bring out the highest in ourselves and in others, and lift up by our creative thinking the level of world thought.
There is, and can be, but one absolute truth in Kosmos. And little as we, with our present limitations, can understand it in its essence, we still know that if it is absolute it must also be omnipresent and universal; and that in such case, it must underlying every world-religion—the product of the thought and knowledge of numberless generations of thinking men. Therefore, that portion of truth, great or small, is found in every religious and philosophical system, and that if we would find it, we have to search for it at the origin and source of every such system, at its roots and first growth, not in its later overgrowth of sects and dogmatism. Our object is not to destroy any religion but rather to help to filter each, thus ridding them of their respective impurities. In this we are opposed by all those who maintain, against evidence, that their particular pitcher alone contains the whole ocean. How is our great work to be done if we are to be impeded and harassed on every side by partisans and zealots? It would be already half accomplished were the intelligent men, at least, of every sect and system, to feel and to confess that the little wee bit of truth they themselves own must necessarily me mingled with error, and that their neighbours' mistakes are, like their own, mixed with truth.—H. P. Blavatsky