Knowledge is the curse, the calamity, the cancer. It is through knowledge that man becomes divided from the whole. Knowledge creates the distance. You come across a wildflower in the mountains, you don’t know what it is, your mind has nothing to say about it, the mind is silent. You look at the flower, you see the flower, but no knowledge arises in you — there is wonder, there is mystery. The flower is there, you are there. Through wonder you are not separate, you are bridged.

 

If you know that this is a rose or a marigold, or something else, that very knowing disconnects you. The flower is there, you are here, but there is no bridge — you know! Knowledge creates distance. The more you know the bigger is the distance; the less you know the lesser the distance. And if you are in the moment of not knowing, there is no distance, you are bridged.

 

You fall in love with a woman or a man — the day you fall in love there is no distance. There is only wonder, a thrill, an excitement, an ecstasy — but no knowledge. You don’t know who this woman is. Without knowledge, there is nothing to divide you. Hence the beauty of those first moments of love. You have lived with the woman only for twenty-four hours; knowledge has arisen. Now you have some ideas about the woman: you know who she is, there is an image. Twenty-four hours have created a past. Those twenty-four hours have left marks on the mind: you look at the same woman, there is no longer the same mystery. You are coming down the hill, that peak is lost.

 

To understand this is to understand much. To understand that knowledge divides, knowledge creates distance, is to understand the very secret of meditation. Meditation is a state of not knowing. Meditation is pure space, undisturbed by knowledge. Yes, the biblical story is true — that man has fallen through knowledge, by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. No other scripture of the world surpasses that. That parable is the last word; no other parable has reached to that height and insight.

 

It looks so illogical that man has fallen through knowledge. It looks illogical because logic is part of knowledge. Logic is all in support of knowledge. It looks illogical, because logic is the root cause of man’s fall. A man who is absolutely logical, absolutely sane, always sane, never allows any illogic in his life, is a madman. Sanity needs to be balanced by insanity; logic needs to be balanced by illogic. The opposites meet and balance. A man who is just rational is unreasonable — he will miss much. In fact he will go on missing all that is beautiful and all that is true. He will collect trivia, his life will be a mundane life. He will be the worldly man.

 

That biblical parable has immense insight. Why has man fallen through knowledge? — because knowledge creates distance, because knowledge creates ‘I’ and ‘thou’, because knowledge creates subject and object, the knower and the known, the observer and the observed. Knowledge is basically schizophrenic; it creates a split. And then there is no way to bridge it. That’s why the more man has become knowledgeable, the less he is religious. The more educated a man, the less is the possibility for him to approach God.

 

Jesus is right when he says, “Only children will be able to enter into my kingdom”… only children. What is that quality that a child has and you have lost? The child has the quality of non-knowledge, innocence. He looks with wonder, his eyes are absolutely clear. He looks deep, but he has no prejudices, no judgments, no a priori ideas. He does not project, hence he comes to know that which is.

 

The other day we were talking about the distinction between reality and truth. The child knows the truth, you know only the reality. The reality is that which you have created around yourself — projecting, desiring, thinking. The reality is your interpretation of truth. Truth is simply that which is; reality is that which you have come to understand — it is your idea of the truth. Reality consists of things, all separate. Truth consists of only one cosmic energy. Truth consists of oneness, reality consists of ‘many-ness’. Reality is a crowd, truth is integration.

 

- Osho, “The Heart Sutra, #3”