Can a Yogi attain to a state of consciousness in which he can know all things, answer all questions, relating even to abstruse scientific problems, such as, for example, the theory of relativity? Theoretically and in principle it is not impossible for a Yogi to know everything; all depends upon the Yogi. But there is knowledge and knowledge. The Yogi does not know in the way of the mind. He does not know everything in the sense that he has access to all possible information or because he contains all the facts of the universe in his mind or because his consciousness is a sort of miraculous encyclopaedia. He knows by his capacity for a containing or dynamic identity with things and persons and forces. Or he knows because he lives in a plane of consciousness or is in contact with a consciousness in which there is the truth and the knowledge.If you are in the true consciousness, the knowledge you have will also be of the truth. Then, too, you can know directly,by being one with what you know. If a problem is put before you, if you are asked what is to be done in a particular matter,you can then, by looking with enough attention and concentration, receive spontaneously the required knowledge and the true answer. It is not by any careful application of theory that you reach the knowledge or by working it out through a mental process. The scientific mind needs these methods to come to its conclusions. But the Yogic knowledge is direct and immediate; it is not deductive. If an engineer has to find out the exact position for the building of an arch, the line of its curve and the size of its opening, he does it by calculation, collating and deducing from his information and data. But a Yogi needs none of these things;he looks, has the vision of the thing, sees that it is to be done in this way and not in another, and this seeing is his knowledge.
— The Mother, Sri Aurobindo Ashram
