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A celebrated pundit received a similar jolt. With ostentatious zeal, the
scholar shook the ashram rafters with scriptural lore. Resounding
passages poured from the Mahabharata, the Upanishads, the bhasyas of
Shankara.

"I am waiting to hear you." Sri Yukteswar's tone was inquiring, as
though utter silence had reigned. The pundit was puzzled.

"Quotations there have been, in superabundance." Master's words
convulsed me with mirth, as I squatted in my corner, at a respectful
distance from the visitor. "But what original commentary can you supply,
from the uniqueness of your particular life? What holy text have you
absorbed and made your own? In what ways have these timeless truths
renovated your nature? Are you content to be a hollow victrola,
mechanically repeating the words of other men?"

"I give up!" The scholar's chagrin was comical. "I have no inner
realization."

For the first time, perhaps, he understood that discerning placement of
the comma does not atone for a spiritual coma.

"These bloodless pedants smell unduly of the lamp," my guru remarked
after the departure of the chastened one. "They prefer philosophy to be
a gentle intellectual setting-up exercise. Their elevated thoughts are
carefully unrelated either to the crudity of outward action or to any
scourging inner discipline!"

Master stressed on other occasions the futility of mere book learning.

"Do not confuse understanding with a larger vocabulary," he remarked.
"Sacred writings are beneficial in stimulating desire for inward
realization, if one stanza at a time is slowly assimilated. Continual
intellectual study results in vanity and the false satisfaction of an
undigested knowledge."

( http://crystalclarity.com/yogananda/chap12.html )

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