There is a schoolmaster who is very much interested in religion. He has spent his life in the study of religious scriptures. If one mentions the topic of religion, there is no end to the flow of his thoughts. Like an endless string, his thoughts go on uncoiling. It is difficult to say how much he can quote and how many aphorisms he has learned by heart. No one remains unimpressed by him. He is a walking encyclopaedia, or is reputed to be so.
Many times I have heard his thoughts and have remained silent. Once he asked me my opinion about him. I said only the truth. I said, in accumulating thoughts about God, he had lost God. Certainly, he appeared to be shocked.
Truth Is Not Contained in the Scriptures
Later he came again to question me further in this connection. Coming to me he said, “It is only by study and contemplation that truth can be attained. There is no other way. Knowledge, of course, is everything.”
How Many People Have This False Notion?
I ask only one question to all such people; I asked the same to him: What is study, and what thereby happens within you? Does a dimension of new vision take birth in you? Does consciousness rise to new heights and levels? Does any revolution take place in your being? Do you become different from what you are now? Or do you remain the same with only a few more thoughts and bits of information becoming part of your memory?
Through study, only the memory is trained, and on the surface of the mind more dust of thought settles. Nothing more happens, nor can happen, through it. No change happens at the center through it: the consciousness remains the same, the dimensions of experience remain the same.
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Can There Be Knowledge of the Unknowable?
To know something about truth and to know truth are two totally different things. ‘To know about truth’ pertains to intellect; ‘to know truth’ pertains to consciousness.
In order to know truth, a total awakening of consciousness — the absence of the unconscious — is essential. By training memory and so-called knowledge, this cannot happen.
What has not been known from oneself is not knowledge. The intellectual information about truth, the unknown truth, is only an appearance of knowledge. It is false and is an obstacle on the path of right-knowledge.
There is no path through the known for knowing what is in fact unknowable. It is totally new; it is such that it has never been known before. Hence, memory is not capable of delivering it, or even of recognizing it. Memory can deliver or recognize only that which has been known before. It is only a repetition of the known.
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Want to Know the Truth? Empty Your Mind
But for the arrival of the new, the entirely new, the unknown and unfamiliar, the memory has to stand outside. The memory and all known thoughts will have to stand aside so that the new may be born, so that ‘what is’ may be known exactly as it is. All of man’s conceptions and prejudices have to stand aside for its arrival.
Only the mind devoid of thoughts, memories and conceptions is conscious, awakened. Only with an empty mind does the transformation at the center take place, and the door to truth opens up. Before this, everything is a mere wandering and a waste of life.
Excerpted from Seeds of Wisdom: 120 Letters by Osho | Courtesy: Osho International Foundation
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