Existence IS – Unexplained, unexplainable, unknown – not only that, but unknowable also. There is no way to know it, because there is nobody who is separate from it. Knowledge needs separation. You can love existence because love depends on union, and we are already united with it. But you cannot know it, because knowledge needs division, and there is no way to be divided from it.
Knowledge means the knower is separate from the known. We are not separate from existence – we are it. It is our suchness – how can we know it? The claim to know is the greatest conceit. The claim to know is the greatest ego there is. Hence the knowledgeable man goes on missing it. Only lovers know, scholars never. But to be a lover needs courage – you have to dissolve and disappear.
To be knowledgeable needs no courage. That is the hiding place of the cowards. All cowards become scholars. Because they cannot love, the only thing left for them is to try to know. And because knowledge is impossible in the very nature of things, all that they claim is false.
All knowledge is false, absolutely false. Not even a bit of it is true. It cannot be true. Only love is true, only love can be true.
Do you see the point? The way of love is the way of union, and the way of knowledge is the way of separation. Love is marriage: knowledge is divorce. Love understands: knowledge only pretends.
Remember it, because the mind is always trying to become knowledgeable. It is always collecting information and avoiding transformation. Information is a way of avoiding transformation. You go on collecting… you can become a walking encyclopedia, but still you will remain the same, exactly the same. Because this is not the way to grow in being, this is not the way to become wise.
The knowledgeable man is never wise, he cannot be. He collects rubbish and thinks it is precious. But the first step has been wrong so the whole journey goes wrong. The more he thinks he knows, the less he knows. The more he thinks he is coming closer to knowing the truth, the farther away he is moving from truth.
Existence is. If you are also in that state of isness you will understand what it is. But that is not knowledge. That’s a totally different dimension. You will know, yet you will not be able to reduce it to knowledge. You will see, but you will not be able to describe it. The mystery will not be demystified by your knowing it – it will be deepened, it will be thickened. Life will become more joyous.
One cannot know, but one can dance it. One cannot know, but one can sing it. It can never become knowledge, but it can become ecstasy, great ecstasy. A great orgasmic life is possible.
-Osho
Excerpt from The Perfect Master, V.1, Discourse #9
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