The Great Path - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 1. THE DARKNESS INSIDE
All kinds of people come to me – all kinds of patients. But no one among them is more afflicted
with cancer than the pundit, the scholar. There is no cure for him – he is beyond treatment. The
trouble with him is that he knows. Hence, he can neither listen nor understand. Before you say
anything to him he has already understood the meaning of it; before he has heard you, he would
have formed his own theory. A mind filled with words is incapable of knowing. He knows so much
without knowing, because all his knowledge is borrowed.
If knowledge could be attained through scriptures, everyone would have attained it. Knowledge is
attained when a person has become silent, when he has dropped all the scriptures, when he returns
to the world all the knowledge which he has borrowed from others, when he goes on a search of
that which is his original existence – the one which he has not attained from other people.
Try to understand this a little. You have received your body from your parents. You have nothing
in your body that is actually yours. One half of it is a contribution from your father, and the other
half from your mother. Then the body is made of the food you eat every day. And further, the body
contains the five elements – the air, the fire, and so on. You can’t claim any of these as yours.
But your consciousness consists of neither of these elements, nor have you obtained it from your
parents.
Whatsoever you know, you have learned it from your schools and universities, you have heard it
from your scriptures, you have obtained it from your gurus. But all of that is a part of your body, nor
of your soul. Your soul is that which you have obtained from no one. So your true nature consists of
that which you have received from no body – neither from your mother, nor father, society, guru, or
scripture. Until you have discovered that pure element which is innately yours, you won’t be able to
realize your true being.
So knowledge is the bondage because it doesn’t allow you to reach up to your true nature, your true
being. It is the knowledge that has divided mankind. You call yourself a Hindu, or a Mohammedan.
Have you ever thought why you are a Hindu or a Mohammedan? What is the difference between a
Hindu and a Mohammedan really? Can a physician ever find out on the basis of a blood test whether
the blood belongs to a Hindu or a Mohammedan? Can anyone determine whether a particular bone
has been taken from the body of a Hindu or a Mohammedan? There is no way.
You won’t know anything by investigating bodies because the bodies of both – the Hindu and the
Mohammedan – are made of the same five elements. But if you examine their minds you will surely
know who is a Hindu and who is a Mohammedan. For the simple reason that their scriptures are
different, their principles are different, their words are different. The difference between the two
consists of words. You are a Hindu because you received one kind of knowledge which is labelled
as ”Hindu”. Somebody is a Jaina because he received a different kind of knowledge which is named
as Jaina. All the differences between you, all the walls, are the walls of knowledge – and all your
knowledge is borrowed.
Raise a Moslem child in a Hindu household, he will grow to be a Hindu. He will wear the sacred
thread like a Brahmin does. He will quote from the Vedas and the Upanishads. Similarly, let a Hindu
child be brought up in a Muslim household, he will begin reciting the verses of Koran.
Knowledge binds you. It makes a wall around you. It makes you fight your fellow beings and it
brings malice, enmity in your life. Just think for a while, if you were not brought up as a Hindu,
The Great Path 18 Osho