The Empty Boat - Osho.pdf - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 9. MEANS AND ENDS
wants to get out, it is not open for anything that is incoming. It is closed, it is a one-way traffic –
double traffic is not possible.
When you are aggressive through words going out, nothing can penetrate you, neither love, nor
meditation, nor God. And all that is beautiful happens as an ingoing process. When you are silent,
no words knocking within to get out, when you are waiting – in that moment of waiting beauty
happens, love happens, prayer happens, God happens. But if a man is too addicted to words, he
will miss it all. In the end he will have a long collection of words and theories, logic, everything – but
nothing is worthwhile because the content is missing.
You have the net, the trap, but no fish are there. If you had really caught the fish you would have
thrown away the net immediately. Who bothers? If you have really used the ladder, you forget it.
Who thinks about it? You have transcended it, it has been used.
So whenever a man really comes to know, knowledge is forgotten. That is what we call wisdom.
A wise man is one who has been able to unlearn the knowledge. He simply drops all that is
nonessential.
Says Chuang Tzu:
WHERE CAN I FIND A MAN
WHO HAS FORGOTTEN WORDS?
HE IS THE ONE I WOULD LIKE TO TALK TO.
He is worth talking to. It may not be so easy to persuade him to talk, but just to be near him, just
to sit by his side will be a communion, will be a communication, the deepest that is possible. Two
hearts will melt into each other.
But why this addiction to words? – because the symbol appears to be the real. And if it is repeated
again and again, through repetition you become autohypnotized. Repeat anything, and by and by
you will forget that you don’t know. The repetition will give you the feeling that you know.
If you go to the temple for the first time, you go in ignorance. It is hypothetical whether this temple
really contains anything, whether God is there or not. But go every day, again and again, and go
on repeating the ritual, the prayers; and whatsoever the priest says, go on doing it day after day,
year after year. You will forget the hypothetical state of mind that was there in the beginning. With
continuous repetitions the thing goes into the mind and you start feeling that this is the temple, God
lives here, this is the abode of God. Now you have moved into the world of appearance.
That is why every religion insists on teaching children as young as possible, because once you miss
childhood it is very difficult to convert people to foolish things, very difficult. Psychologists say that
everybody should be caught before the age of seven. The child can be conditioned to be a Hindu, a
Mohammedan, a Christian or anything, a communist, theist or atheist, it doesn’t make any difference
– but grab the child before seven. Up to the age of seven the child learns almost fifty percent of all
he will ever learn in his whole life.
The Empty Boat 156 Osho