A Sudden Clash of Thunder

Drop Knowledge

Wisdom is not knowledge. Knowledge is borrowed, it can be gathered from a library. The heavier the load of knowledge, the more ignorant one becomes, says Osho. Wisdom comes from the heart; it is the voice of the inner being...

KNOWING always becomes knowledge -- and you have to be alert not to allow it. One of the most delicate situations on the path of a seeker: knowing always becomes knowledge -- because the moment you have known something, your mind collects it as knowledge, as experience.

Knowing is a process. Knowledge is a conclusion. When knowing dies it becomes knowledge. And if you go on gathering this knowledge, then knowing will become more and more difficult -- because with knowledge, knowing never happens. Then you carry your knowledge around you. A knowledgeable person is almost hidden behind his knowledge; he loses all clarity, all perception. The world becomes far away; the reality loses all transparency.

The knowledgeable person is always looking through his knowledge. He projects his knowledge. His knowledge colors everything -- now there is no longer any possibility of knowing. Remember: knowledge is not gathered only through scriptures -- it is also gathered, and more so, through your own experience.

You love a woman, for example. You have never known a woman before, have never fallen in deep love. You fall for the first time -- you are innocent, you are a virgin. You don't know what love is -- your mind is open. You don't have any knowledge about love. You are spontaneous. You move into the unknown. It is mysterious. Love opens doors of unknown temples, sings unknown songs into your ears and into your heart, dances with unknown tunes. And you don't know anything; you don't have any knowledge to judge by, to evaluate, to condemn, to say good or bad. It is ecstatic. You are gripped by the ineffable experience of love. You live in moments of grace.

But, by and by, you become knowledgeable -- now you know what love means; now you know what the woman means; now you know the geography, the topography of love. You have become knowledgeable.

You fall in love with another woman. Now, nothing like the first experience happens -- nothing like it. Dull. A repetition. As if you have gone to see the same movie again, or reading the same novel again. A little difference here and there, but not much. Now, why are you missing? Why is the same mysterious experience not gripping you? Why are you not throbbing with the unknown again? You are knowledgeable. Something so beautiful like love has become a repetition.

Knowing always becomes knowledge. So you have to be very alert: know something -- the moment it becomes knowledge, drop it. Go on dying to your knowledge. Never carry it -- because no other woman is the same. Your first woman was a totally different world; this new woman you have fallen in love with is a totally different world. It is not going to be the same. But if you move through knowledge it will look like the same.

Drop the knowledge. Be again innocent. Again move into the unknown -- because no two persons are alike. Every person is so unique that there has never been a person like that before and there will never be again. Learn again from A B C and you will be full of wonder. And then you have learnt a deep experience: never allow any knowledge to settle.

All knowing becomes knowledge. The moment it becomes knowledge, drop it. It is just like dust gathers on the mirror; every day you have to clean it. On the mirror of your mind dust gathers, dust of experience: it becomes knowledge. Clean it. That's why every day meditation is needed. Meditation is nothing but cleaning the mirror of your mind. Clean it continuously! If you can clean it every moment of your life, then there is no need to sit separately for meditation.

Remember, be alert that knowledge has not to be gathered, that you have to remain like a child -- full of wonder, full of awe. Every nook and corner is mysterious, and you don't know what it is. You cannot figure it out, what this life is. Enchanted you run in this direction and that direction.

Have you watched a child running on the sea-beach? So elated! in such euphoria! collecting shells and colored stones. Have you watched a child running in a garden to catch a butterfly? You will not run that way even if God is there; you will not run that way. You will not be so ecstatic even if God is there. You will move like a gentleman. You will not rush, you will not be mad. You will still keep your manners; you will still show that you are mature, you are not a child.

And Jesus says: "Only those who are childlike, they will be able to enter into my Kingdom of God" -- only those who are childlike, only those who are still capable of wonder. Wonder is the greatest treasure in life. Once you lose wonder, you have lost your life -- then you drag, but you no longer live. And knowledge kills wonder.

That is one of the most difficult problems the modern mind is facing, because knowledge has accumulated every day more and more. This century is so much burdened with knowledge. Hence religion has disappeared -- because religion can exist only with wonder, with wonder-filled eyes; eyes which don't know but are ready to rush into any direction to see what is there; innocent eyes, virgin hearts. So remember to remain capable of childlike wonder.


Managing Knowledge in Quest of the Ultimate


Knowledge is a very personal thing. It is not an object to possess, a property to own. Also, knowledge does not exist in books and scriptures, in software programs or prepared texts. When one knows, say the Buddhas, it becomes part and parcel of oneself. In spiritual traditions, therefore, it has been passed on from person to person. This is so much evident in the Upanishads, in the dialogues between Socrates and his students, Zen masters and their disciples.

Knowledge has several dimensions. It can be factual information, or an accumulated body of thoughts, ideas, and insights. In spiritual terms what matters is "knowing" which is more intuitive and subjective – hence very personal. In the Eastern tradition knowledge is identified as: Avidya, the worldly knowledge; Vidya, spiritual understanding; Pragya, Intelligence – which is beyond worldly knowledge and the spiritual understanding.

Osho’s insight is that, people love knowledge but in the sense of information. It is very ego-satisfying, he says. Whenever you can say that you know, whenever you can give some advice to somebody else, you feel very high. This way one loves to play the role of a teacher.

Beyond information and the worldly knowledge is "knowing" and, knowing is part of growth. "Grow, says Osho. "Each moment go on growing, expanding, exploding. Each moment should be a new birth. Why is it not so? Because, you go on carrying the past with you. If you want each moment to be a new birth, you have to die also each moment to the past. Die to the past so that you can be reborn here-now. All knowledge is of the past. Mind is always of the past. Consciousness is always of the present. A buddha helps you to become more conscious; he does not help you to become more knowledgeable."

Commenting on the second adhyaya (cantos) of the Bhagavadgita, Osho’s explains: "There is a very valuable saying of Socretes that, knowledge is virtue. He used to say, to know means to become alright. People would tell him, ‘we know that stealing is bad but even then we cannot give up stealing!’ And Socretes would say, you don’t know at all what stealing is because once you knew what stealing is, you will automatically drop stealing, then you won’t have to make any effort to give up stealing.

"We know, anger is bad; we know, fear is bad; we know, sexual lust is bad, desire is bad, greed is bad, all intoxicants are bad; we know all these things. But Samkhya, or Socretes, or Krishnamurti will say; no, you don’t know. You have only heard that anger is a bad thing, but you actually don’t know it is indeed a bad thing. You have heard from somebody else anger is bad, but you have never known it yourself it is bad. And knowing can never be a borrowed thing. If you wish to know something you have to know it yourself, others cannot make you know it. Only you yourself can know, and nobody else can know it for you. And there is a big difference between these two things."

…2 The secret of managing knowledge, therefore, is in knowing the difference Osho is explaining. He also makes it clear that knowledge of the ultimate is paradoxical for many reasons. But basically, the very claim that one knows becomes a hindrance because the moment one says, "I know," the person is not only emphasizing knowledge; one is also emphasizing 'I' -- and the 'I' is the barrier. The ego is the most subtle barrier, explains Osho, but the strongest. So when someone says, "I know," the 'I' destroys the knowledge.

"This is the paradox: those who are ignorant, they always think they know. This is part of ignorance. To think that you know is part of ignorance; it comes from ignorance. If you are ignorant you will think that you know much. The more ignorant, the more you will think that you know much. Ignorance is filled with knowledge. Ignorance, really, lives on knowledge, feeds on knowledge. The wiser you become the more aware and understanding, the more you will feel how ignorant you are. And a moment comes when you feel that you do not know anything. Simply, you are ignorant. All the burden of knowledge is thrown away. There is no heaviness of knowledge on you. You have become so weightless that you can fly. Knowledge is a burden."

Hence, Osho points out that, when one feels one does not know, the ego disappears; then it has no room to exist. It can exist only with knowledge. So, whenever a person claims knowledge, it is a claim by the ego: "I know." The emphasis obviously is not on knowing, the emphasis is on ‘I’. But when one says, "I do not know," the emphasis is not on ignorance; now the emphasis is on egoless-ness.

While explaining the paradox furtehr, Osho says: "The ultimate is not only the unknown; the Brahman is not only the unknown -- it is unknowable also. You can know it, but you cannot know it totally. That creates again a new puzzle. You can know it but you cannot know it totally because you are just a part to it and the part cannot know the whole. How can the part know the whole totally? But also the part cannot be totally ignorant either because it belongs to the whole; it is part of the whole. So it knows in a way, it feels in a way, it understands in a way, but it cannot comprehend the total because the total is so vast.