Let us take two other valid means of knowledge, which people respect, shruti, and smruti. Shruti means Scriptures, Upanishads, and Vedas. Smruti means realizations. Shruti is a revelation and smruti is a realization. Shruti is like Vedas. There is no authorship for that. It has come from Brahman directly, from Consciousness directly. There is no human mind or human being who has authored the shrutis.
The examples are all Upanishads, Vedas. There is no human mind which has come into the picture. It is called revelation. It is revealed. Whereas, the smrutis are realizations. There are many sages, who do meditation, they have realizations. They write texts called ‘Smrutis’. Now, because of their meditation, because of dharmic practices, they have developed extraordinary siddhis or spiritual powers. Because of that, they are able to see something, which ordinary human beings cannot see. This is called realization.
We have to give respect to realization, no doubt about that. Because they are all great beings, they have done a lot of tapasya and they have acquired a lot of power, through which they are able to understand something, which normal human beings cannot understand. Even these smrutis fail to reveal Brahman because still there is a limitation of human beings. Even though this realizations have happened through the Rishis, even though their mind is pure, but still there is a mind. Because there is a different spiritual practice, different Rishis may say in different ways. So, still, there is a limitation. That is called realization. Pancharatra, these are some scriptures like puranas, ithihasas, Ramayana, Mahabharatha, etc, they are all coming under the category of smrutis, realizations. Whereas Vedas and Upanishads come under the category of revelations. It has come directly from the pure Consciousness. No human mind has come into the picture.
Of these two (shrutis and smritis), shrutis are able to give direction to the Truth. Tatvamasi (You are That), Ahambrahmasmi, Sarvam Khaluvida Brahma – all these are revelations or shrutis. Shrutis are more authentic. But, even, shrutis can only point to the Brahman. They cannot show you, Brahman. They can only show direction. Because, even in shrutis, the sentences have a duality in it. Tat Tvam Asi, which means ‘That You Are’ where ‘you’ and ‘that’ both are real. But, Brahman is non-dual. There is no other. So, at best, Shrutis can show in the clearest way directions way to Brahman, but Shrutis themselves cannot reveal Brahman to you.
If somebody is studying a lot of scriptures, will he realize Brahman? No. It can help, but it cannot show you, Brahman, directly.