Bharadvaja spends three entire lifetimes as a Vedic student. Old, decrepit, lying down — Indra comes and offers him a fourth lifetime, asking what he'd do with it. "I'd spend it studying," he says. So Indra shows him three mountain-like heaps, takes a fistful from each: "These are the Vedas. The Vedas are infinite. In three lifetimes you recited this much — a fistful. The rest is unrecited. Come — learn this one thing instead: the all-knowledge," the Savitra fire. Knowing it, he became immortal. Against an infinite corpus, the rational move isn't coverage — it's the single master-key. (TB 3.10.11)

— In our words · Source: The Taittiriya Brahmana (Vedic tradition)