Wisdom

 

 

Man can have knowledge but not wisdom. Man can achieve as much knowledge as he wants. It is easy, you just need a little mind effort, a little exertion. You can go on feeding your memory system. It is a computer; you can accumulate whole libraries. But wisdom is not something that you can accumulate because it does not happen through the mind at all. It happens through the heart, it happens through love, not through logic.

 

When the heart is open with love, with trust, when the heart is surrendered to the whole, then a new kind of insight arises in you, a clarity a tremendously deep understanding of what life is all about, of who you are, of why this whole existence exists in the first place. All the secrets are revealed, but through love not through logic, through the heart not through the head. God has a direct connection with the heart, no connection with the head at all. So if one wants to approach god the way goes through the heart.

 

Once you have known wisdom through the heart then you can use your mind also as a good servant, then you can use even the knowledge accumulated by the mind in the service of wisdom -- but not before you have known through the heart. Hence, rather than wasting time in accumulating unnecessary information, and people go on accumulating such stupid information, which is utterly ridiculous. If you look in the history books ... children are forced to remember the names of stupid kings and queens and their birth date and their death date -- and what do they have to do with this poor child?

 

Once a teacher asked a child 'If Adam had never left the garden of Eden what would have happened?' child said 'One thing is certain: there would have been no history and no history class! It all began with Adam getting out of the garden of Eden.'

 

It is rumoured that the first words that Adam uttered when he was coming out of the gate... to Eve he said 'We are passing through a great crisis.'And since then we have always been passing through a great crisis. It is always a crisis. Not for a single moment have the crises stopped: one crisis after another crisis. And the poor children have to read history.

 

When I was a student in the school that was a constant problem for my teachers, because I would insist 'What is the purpose? Why should I know about this man? Did he know anything about me? Then why should I bother?' My history teacher would simply close his eyes and sit silently -- what to do? Many times he sent me to the principal saying 'Please explain to this boy. He asks such questions that cannot be answered. And in a way he is right...' because what do I have to do with some Henry, some Edward? What do I have to do with these people/ And still I am wondering because I have not come across any situation in which they were needed. And I don't think they will ever be needed. And all kinds of geographies...

 

Don't waste your time with information. All the universities are wasting peoples' lives. Almost ninety-nine per cent that they teach is rubbish.

 

The one per cent, it seems enters the rubbish without their knowledge, otherwise they would stop that too. Somehow it gets mixed into the rubbish and enters the curriculums and the texts; otherwise it is all absurd.

 

D.H. Lawrence had the suggestion that if for one hundred years we could close all the schools and universities humanity would be immensely benefitted. And I agree with him: it would be the greatest blessing to humanity if for one hundred years there were no school, no college, no university -- all were finished. For one hundred years, a holiday. Man would become fresh, young again and he would forget all about Alexander the Great and Napoleon and Ivan the Terrible and Genghis Khan and Tamerlane. It would be such an unburdening and man could start from ABC.

 

But each person can do it. It may not be possible to persuade the whole of humanity to stop all the colleges and universities, but individuals can be persuaded. And that's what I go on doing with my sannyasins: I persuade them to drop all nonsense and give the uttermost priority to their heart.

 

Move your energy to the heart, be more loving and you are in for a great surprise. As your love grows, as your love petals open and your heart becomes a lotus, something tremendously beautiful starts descending on you -- that is wisdom. And wisdom brings freedom.

 

Knowledge brings information, wisdom brings transformation.

 

Even a drop of bliss is an ocean. One can be drowned in a single drop of bliss. In fact a single drop of bliss is immeasurable. It is enough, more than enough, because bliss has no boundaries, it is infinite, and even a drop of infinity is infinite. It is as vast as the sky.

 

The only reason why we cannot attain it is that we are clinging to the ego which keeps us confined, which makes us very small. If we want to be blissful we have to drop our boundaries. We have to forget that we are Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, that we are communists, socialists, fascists. We have to forget all boundaries that ideologies draw around us -- religions and cultures, traditions, conventions, moralities. Once all these boundaries are dropped, suddenly you are moving into a totally new world, a world which is unbounded. You are getting out of the prison.

 

To be a Christian is to be in a prison. Jesus was never a Christian, remember. And he rebelled against the Jews, that's why they crucified him. He rebelled against all boundaries, against all that was past, He was a rebel. So was Buddha, so was Lao Tzu, and so is the case with everyone who has ever experienced bliss.

 

Drop the boundaries, definitions, identities and the doors are open -- there is nobody barring the path -- and one immediately plunges into the world of bliss.

 

Knowledge never makes you blissful; on the contrary it makes you more and more miserable. And it can be easily observed, it is a factual phenomenon. As man has grown more and more in knowledge, he has become more and more miserable. Whenever a society is well-educated, people start feeling life is meaningless, people start feeling a kind of deep boredom.

 

Move to the primitive societies, go to the aboriginals who are still living five thousand years back and you will be surprised by one thing: they don't have anything to be blissful about but they are blissful. They don't have big aeroplanes and palaces and television sets, they have no technology, they are living in a primitive way, but one thing is very clear, very obvious, they are blissful -- poor, but blissful. Why is it so?

 

Move to a very knowledgeable society where education has become available to almost one hundred per cent of the people and you will be surprised: people look very miserable. They have lost something rather than gaining. In accumulating knowledge they have forgotten to move into the world of wisdom. They have made knowledge a substitute, and remember substitutes never fulfil. [....]

 

Knowledge is a substitute. You can go to any university, to any library, to any museum, and you can accumulate much knowledge, but for wisdom you cannot go anywhere. In fact you have to stop going, you have to be very still and silent. You have to dig deep within yourself, to the very rock-bottom of your being. It is arduous, but when you are absolutely silent, when all thoughts have disappeared, when your eyes are as clear as a mirror without any dust, you become capable of seeing that which is. That is wisdom.

 

And simultaneously, as wisdom happens your heart starts dancing. In fact for the first time you hear the REAL heart beat. For the first time you hear the song of the heart. For the first time your whole being -- body, mind, heart, soul -- are all dancing together and there is tremendous grace. My sannyasins have to achieve it. That's the only thing worth achieving, a blissful wisdom.

 

-Osho, "The Golden Wind, #28"