Books

 

 

Beware of knowledge.

 

It is so cheap to become knowledgeable. Scriptures are there, libraries are there, universities are there; it is so easy to become knowledgeable. And once you become knowledgeable you are in a very sensitive space, because the ego would like to believe that this is your knowledge -- not only knowledgeability, it is your wisdom. The ego would like to change knowledge into wisdom. You will start believing that you know.

 

You know nothing. You know only books and what is written in the books. Perhaps those books are written by people just like you. Ninety-nine percent of books are written by other bookish people. In fact, if you read ten books, your mind becomes so full of rubbish that you would like to pour it down into the eleventh book. What else are you going to do with it? You have to unburden yourself.

 

Books go on growing. Each year each language goes on producing thousands and thousands of books. Never before was the danger so great as it is today, because never before was knowledge so easily available to you -- through all kinds of media. Now the book is not the only thing; you can get it from the newspaper, from the magazine, from the radio, from television, and these sources will be becoming more and more available. The danger will become even stronger.

 

I have been a professor in two universities, and I have watched hundreds of professors. That is the most snobbish tribe in the whole world. The professor thinks himself to be a different species altogether -- because he knows. And what does he know? Just words, and words are not experience. You can go on repeating the word love, love, love, millions of times; then too it won't give you the taste of love. But if you read books on love -- and there are thousands of books on love, novels and poetries, stories, treatises, theses -- you can come to know so much about love that you may forget completely that you have never loved, that you don't know what love is all about... and you know all about love that is written in the books.

 

So the third thing is to beware of knowledge, to be so alert that whenever you want, you can put your knowledge aside and it will not block your vision. It will not come between you and reality. You have to go to reality utterly naked. But if there are so many books between you and reality, then whatsoever you see will not be the real. It will be distorted by your books in so many ways, by the time it reaches you it may have no connection at all with the reality.

 

-Osho, “From Unconciousness to Consciousness, #28“