Peasant_Wisdom_ at The Turiya Files

Whatsoever I am saying to you - it has to be experienced by you. Just by my saying it and just by your listening to it and understanding it intellectually, it is not going to help much.

Mulla Nasrudin refused the cow-puncher's command to drink, for three reasons. "Name them!" roared the terror of the town.

"First," said the Mulla, "it is prohibited in my religion. Second, I promised my grandmother on her death-bed that I would handle not, touch not, taste not, the accursed stuff."

If you only listen to me, if you only understand me intellectually and never experiment in your own inner lab of consciousness, whatsoever I am saying will remain just in your head. It will never become a lived experience.And unless it becomes a lived experience it is worthless knowledge, it is junk. Again you can start collecting knowledge, then again you are into the same trip - the dimension of having. And you can go on collecting as much knowledge as is available. It is one of the misfortunes of modern man that so much knowledge has become available. It was never so.

The thing that has proved the greatest calamity for modern man is the tremendous amount of knowledge which has become available. It was never available before. A Hindu used to live with Hindu scriptures; the Mohammedan used to live with Mohammedan scriptures; the Christian used to live with the Bible - and they were all secluded and nobody went into the other's world of knowledge. Things were clearcut; there was no overlapping.

Now everything is overlapping and a tremendous amount of new knowledge has become available. We are living in a 'knowledge explosion'. In this explosion you can start gathering information; you can become a great scholar very cheaply, very easily, but it is not going to transform you at all.

Again, remember, knowledge belongs to the dimension of having; knowing belongs to the dimension of being. They look alike but they are not. Not even are they not alike, they are diametrically opposite to each other. A man who goes on collecting knowledge goes on losing knowing. Knowing needs a mirror-like mind - pure, uncorrupted. I am not saying that knowledge is useless. If you have your knowing, clear, mirror-like, fresh, you can use your knowledge in a tremendously useful way. It can become beneficial. But the knowing has to be there in the first place.

Knowledge is very easy; knowing is very difficult. For knowing you have to pass through many fires. For knowledge nothing is needed - as you are you can go on adding more and more knowledge to yourself.

A gay man-about-town, long on charm but short on cash, surprised his friends by his sudden marriage to an extremely ugly woman whose only virtue was her well-padded bankroll.

After the marriage, his friends were doubly mystified by his insistence on taking his wife everywhere with him. "I can understand your marrying that painfully ugly woman for her money," one of his close friends remarked frankly, "but why do you have to bring her with you every time you go out?"

"It's simple," the husband explained. "It's easier than kissing her good-bye."

It is easier to have knowledge, very cheap, costs nothing; it is very difficult, arduous, to attain to knowing. That's why very few, very rare people try to meditate, very rare people try to pray, very rare people ever make any effort towards knowing what truth is. And whatsoever you have not known on your own is meaningless. You can never be certain about it. The doubt never disappears; the doubt remains like a worm underneath, sabotaging your knowledge. You can shout loudly that you believe in God but your shouting does not prove anything. Your shouting only proves one thing: that there is doubt. Only doubt shouts loudly. You can become a fanatic believer but your fanaticism simply shows one thing: that there is doubt.

Only a man who has doubt within himself becomes a fanatic. A fanatic Hindu means one who does not really trust that Hinduism is right. A fanatic Christian simply means one who has doubts about Christianity. He becomes fanatic, aggressive - not to prove anything to others, he becomes fanatic and aggressive to prove to himself that whatsoever he believes he really believes. He has to prove it.

When you really know something, you are not a fanatic at all. A man of knowing, one who has come to know even glimpses of God. glimpses of his being, becomes very, very soft, sensitive, fragile. He is not fanatic. He becomes feminine. He is not aggressive. He becomes deeply compassionate. And, by knowing, he becomes very understanding of others. He can understand even the diametrically opposite standpoint.

He was saying, "Life is like a river."

A disciple asked, "Why?"

The Rabbi said, "How can I know? Am I a philosopher?"

Another day the rabbi was saying, "Life is like a river."

Another disciple asked, "Why?"

And the rabbi said, "Right you are. Why should it be?"

This is tremendous understanding. No fanaticism. A man of knowing attains to a sense of humour. Let this always be remembered. If you see someone who has no sense of humour, know well that that man has not known at all. If you come across a serious man, then you can be certain that he is a pretender. Knowing brings sincerity but all seriousness disappears. Knowing brings a playfulness; knowing brings a sense of humour. The sense of humour is a must.

If you find a saint who has no sense of humour, then he is not a saint at all. Impossible.

His very seriousness says that he has not achieved. Once you have some inner experiences of your own you become very playful, you become very innocent, childlike.

The man of knowledge is very serious. The man of knowledge always carries a serious, gloomy atmosphere around him. Not only does he carry a serious atmosphere, he makes anybody he comes into contact with, serious. He forces seriousness on them. In fact, deep down, he is worried that he does not know anything. He cannot relax. His seriousness is a tension. He is anguished. He knows that he knows only for its name's sake, he knows that his knowledge is all fake - so he cannot laugh at it.

Hasidism has created a few of the greatest saints of the world. And my respect towards them is immense because they are not serious people. They can joke and they can laugh - - and they can laugh not only at others, they can laugh at themselves. That's the beauty. If you go on collecting knowledge, you can have a great amount of knowledge but it is not going to be of any help when the need arises. You can go on throwing it around and showing and exhibiting it, but whenever the need arises and the house is on fire you will suddenly see you have forgotten all that you knew - because you never knew in the first place. It was just in your memory.

Wherever there is an emergency situation...for example, when a person is dying. He will forget all his knowledge. In that moment he will not remember that the soul is immortal.

That was advice for others. In that moment he will not remember that he is going back to God - and that one should go happily and dancing. In that moment he will start clinging, to life; all his knowledge will be gone.

I used to know a very learned man, a very intellectual man, famous all over the country. He was not only learned, he was a follower of J. Krishnamurti. He used to come to see me sometimes and he would say that there is no need for any meditation - Krishnamurti says so.

I used to listen to him and laugh. He would ask me, "Why do you laugh whenever I say these things?" I told him again and again, "I listen to YOU, I don't listen to what you say. Your being gives me a totally different message. If there is really no need for meditation, there is no need for scriptures, there is no need for any methods, there is no need even for prayer - and you have understood it, then this would have transformed you totally." He would answer seriously, "That's right. I have understood intellectually but some day I will understand it nonintellectually also. I have taken the first step, the second will be coming."

Then one day his son came running to me to tell me, "Father is very ill, it seems like a heart attack and he remembers you." So I rushed to him. He was lying on the bed repeating Ram, Ram, Ram. I shook his head and I said, "What are you doing? Your whole life you said there is no meditation - what are you doing repeating Ram, Ram, Ram...?"

He said, "Now don't disturb me at this moment. Death is at the door. I am dying. Who knows? Maybe God is. And who knows, maybe the people who have always said remember his name and he will forgive you, are right. This is no time to create a debate or an argument; let me repeat it."

For forty years he had not said a single mantra, but now, suddenly, forty years of knowledge is discarded. It is of no use - in this dangerous situation when death is there, he forgets Krishnamurti completely. He becomes again an ordinary Hindu. It was okay for an ordinary Hindu villager to repeat Ram, Ram - he can be forgiven - but this man?

He had written books, he had lectured all over the country, he had helped many people to drop their mantras and to drop their meditations and their scriptures. And now suddenly he is repeating a mantra.

But he survived the heart attack and he came to see me after two or three months - and again he was back to his knowledge. I said, "Now stop your foolishness. Death will come again and you will repeat Ram, Ram, Ram. So what is the point of it all?"

A very rich old man had remained a bachelor. Now he was nearing seventy-five. Then suddenly a friend, a married friend, convinced him that he should get married. 'You should not miss this pleasure,' he said.

So he decided to get married. Because he had so much money he immediately found a beautiful girl. Off they went on their honeymoon.

He took the married friend and his wife with him as guides in this new exploration. The next morning they met in the motel at breakfast. The friend had given him every bit of information about sex and how to make love and what to do and what not to do. "What a fantastic time I had last night," said the married man. "We went to bed last night. My wife was eager, I was eager and we had a marvellous night of love. What about you, old man?"

After a whole life of bachelorhood, even if somebody guides you, tells you things and you memorise them, they don't have any deep contact with your being - they simply float above your head. They don't touch you.

The old man said, "Oh my God! I forgot clean about it!" Seventy-five years of sleeping alone creates a mechanical habit of its own.

If you go on accumulating knowledge, it creates a habit; it never gives you any knowledge but it gives you a habit, a habit for accumulating more, a very dangerous habit. Even if you come across a Buddha or a Jesus, you will miss, because there also you will be accumulating. You will be taking notes inside the mind - 'Yes, this is right, worthy of being remembered.' Your accumulation will become bigger and bigger but you will be just a dead museum, or, a museum of dead things.

And the more you are concerned with this 'having knowledge', the less will be the possibility for the real knowledge to be there; the knowledge that comes by knowing being, by BEING, will be missed.

Remember, the mind is nothing but that which you have collected up to now. The mind is all that you have inside your being. Beyond the mind is your real being, beyond having is your real being. Outside you have collected things; inside you have collected thoughts - both are in the dimension of having.

When you are no longer attached to things and when you are no longer attached to thoughts, suddenly - the open sky, the open sky of being. And that's the only thing worth having and the only thing that you can really have.