Gaining knowledge is a good thing, but only if you put it to use in some way. I'm not saying, as some others have, that we should only bother to learn those practical things we need to do our job and related skills like driving a car. I'm saying that all knowledge has a purpose and, if we are going to go to the trouble of learning something, we should make use of what we have learned. You don't loose weight by reading a diet book and you don't get rich by reading financial advice. You have to put the ideas into practice to get the benefit. Mark Twain said: “The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.” That is true, not only of reading, but of all knowledge. If you have information, data or knowledge and don't use it, you may as well not have that knowledge at all. Of course, there are many ways to “use” knowledge. Sometimes, all you can do is pass that knowledge on to others. That is still a way of using it. 
    When it come to spiritual growth, this is even more important than with mundane things like learning to drive or swim. In the past dozen years or so, there has been a huge growth in the number of schools forming and the number of books being published on spiritual development. Granted, many of the books contain little that is true or original, but nearly all contain some useful spiritual information. The same is true of those schools. Yet, while millions are reading the books and hundreds of thousands are attending the school, it doesn't seem that very many people are actually developing spiritually. It seems that many think that they become spiritual just by having the books in there home library. Unfortunately, that is simply not the case. We need to gain spiritual knowledge and we need to use it to grow spiritually and to help others to do so as well. And we can't keep waiting until some future date when it becomes convenient. Time is running out.