without ideas the mind is not

The mind craves for experience, the memory of which it takes for knowledge. The jnani is beyond all experience and his memory is empty of the past. He is entirely unrelated to anything in particular. But the mind craves for formulations and definitions, always eager to squeeze reality into a verbal shape. Of everything it wants an idea, for without ideas the mind is not. Reality is essentially alone, but the mind will not leave it alone—and deals instead with the unreal. And yet it is all the mind can do—discover the unreal as unreal.