In plain words
We paid money for it and got it. The fruit we got we ate: praveṣṭuṃ. Only when these three, first jñātuṃ, then draṣṭuṃ, then praveṣṭuṃ, have taken place, do we come to enjoy the fruit we wished for. Merely by wishing for it we cannot enjoy this fruit. Merely by seeing it we cannot enjoy this fruit. What we have seen we must get. What we have got we must digest. Only then does it give the fitting satisfaction. So, students! Whatever matter you want to know, you must go to one who knows it well and try to learn it. You must not give room to the Ahaṅkāra that says, ‘We know everything; we need not go to anyone.’ In the world today, what has been known is small. What is not known is endless. What any scientist has come to know is small. What is still to be known is endless. Only when we know the endless can we gain real satisfaction. This very thing is awareness. What does awareness mean? All the students today take it to mean knowing. What is this knowing? If we hold all this in the hand (a handkerchief) and ask, ‘What is this?’, what will they say? They say it is a piece of cloth. That is not knowing. That is knowing only a little. When we open it out fully, we call it a handkerchief. To know fully is itself awareness. Full Jñāna itself is awareness. It is not knowing a little of this and that. We use today's words for everything. We do not keep in mind when, by whom and in what way each word should be used. So, when there is the wish to know: by going to whom can we learn this? We must recognise who is the authority on it. Only then can we understand it in the right way.
This Praśnopaniṣad is of great importance to students. It clears every kind of doubt that arises in students today. How were the students of those days? Showing humility and obedience, with purity of heart, sacrificing everything through mastery of the senses, they kept as their aim only what they had to know. How is our aim today? It goes running off in every direction. Our aim is one thing at dawn, another at noon, yet another at night. Even though the time changes, the aim must not change.