From Darkness to Light Chapter 9 contd....

Knowledge has done immense harm.
The knowledgeable person goes on living with this false idea that he knows. And because he knows,
there is no need to enquire any more. The ignorant man is continuously on the verge of enquiry;
always a question mark is there. And this is one of the traits of human nature, that you cannot live
with a question mark. Either you have to cover it with false knowledge – which becomes your answer
– or you have to find the real answer so that the question disappears.
Knowledge is not the answer but only a pretension of an answer.
You say, ”Knowing perfectly well” .... Drop this idea of knowledge. Please just accept your ignorance.
Be courageous and capable of saying, of many things, ”I do not know.”
If somebody asks you about God, do you have the courage simply to say, ”I do not know”?
The atheist has no courage; he says, ”I know there is no God.”
The theist has no courage; he says, ”I know there IS God.”
Only the agnostic is a little courageous; he says, ”I do not know yet.” He leaves the question without
any definite answer. He is enquiring, he is searching.
From my very childhood I have been continuously questioning knowledgeable people. My house
was a guest house of many Jaina saints, Hindu monks, Sufi mystics, because my grandfather was
interested in all of these people. But he was not a follower of anybody. He, rather, enjoyed me
bothering these saints.
Once I asked him, ”Are you really interested in these people? You invite them to stay in the house
and then you tell me to harass them. In what are you really interested?”
He said, ”To tell you the truth I enjoy their being harassed, because these guys go on pretending that
they know – and they know nothing. But anywhere else it would be difficult to harass them because
people would stop you. People would tell me, ‘Your grandson is a nuisance here – take him away.’
So I invite them, and then in our own house you can do whatever you want. And you have all my
support: you can ask any questions you want.”
And I enquired of these people, just simple questions: ”Be true and just simply tell me, do you
know God? Is it your own experience or have you just heard? You are learned, you can quote
scriptures, but I am not asking about scriptures: I am asking about you. Can you quote yourself,
your experience?”
And I was surprised that not a single man had any experience of God, or of himself. And these
were great saints in India, worshiped by thousands of people. They were deceiving themselves and
they were deceiving thousands of others. That’s why I say that knowledge has done much harm.
Ignorance has done no harm.
Ignorance is innocent. Knowledge is cunning.
Knowing is far beyond both.
Knowing has the innocence of ignorance and the knowing of knowledge, both together. It is innocent
knowing.
And knowing is authentically yours.
Unless any knowledge is yours, it is better not to have such ideas of having perfect knowledge.
Do you understand, when you use words like ”perfect”? Is there anything in life perfect?
The moment anything is perfect, it is dead.
Life is continuous imperfection.
Yes, it is moving towards perfection – but always moving and never arriving. That’s the whole stance
of evolution, that it goes on evolving higher and higher but there is no point where it can say, ”Now
the journey is finished.” The book of life has no beginning and no end. It is a continuum; infinite
continuity.
Never use words like ”perfect”. Everything is imperfect here, has to be – except idiots like pope the
polack. These are perfect people, infallible. Only idiots can claim infallibility. The wise ones will say,
”Perhaps it is so. I do not know absolutely. Yes, I have glimpses. There are moments of clarity; there
are times it seems, ‘Yes! This is it!’ but there is no full stop anywhere.”
If you ask me how many times I have said, ”This is it!” and the next day, something bigger .... And
I think, ”My God! So this is it!” But slowly slowly, when it was happening more and more, more and
more, bigger and bigger, I dropped the idea of saying, ”This is it!”
This is always becoming it, but there is no full stop. It is never perfect.
Knowing is a process.
Knowledge is a dead thing, with a full stop.
You don’t know, and it will be of immense help to you to know that you don’t know, because from
there a true journey can start. Your question gives enough evidence of ignorance because you say,
”By understanding and then dropping it.” Alas, after understanding there is nothing to drop. You will
be at a loss.
Before understanding there is so much to drop, but you cannot drop it.
After understanding, when you can drop it, there is nothing to drop.
These are the mysteries of life, real mysteries of life – tremendously enjoyable.

From Darkness to Light Chapter 9 contd....

In understanding is the very dropping. There is no ”and to drop them.”
There is no action after understanding.
Understanding is the action itself.
It is not that you bring the light inside the room, then you throw the darkness out. You don’t say, ”I
will bring the lamp in and then throw the darkness out.” If you say that, anybody will know that you
are blind. You don’t know what you are saying. When you bring light in you will not find darkness at
all. What are you going to throw out?
Understanding is light.
The moment you understand, there is no suffering to be thrown out, to be dropped, to be got rid of.
Understanding simply cleanses you.
You may have a laugh after it, but there is no action. You may have a good laugh because you will
see how stupid you have been. You have been trying to get rid of things which only need to be
understood, and that very understanding becomes freedom from them.
No doing other than understanding is needed.
But perhaps you don’t have a clear-cut idea of knowing and knowledge. It is knowledge: you have
heard, you have listened, you have read.
Yes, you are knowledgeable, but knowledge helps nobody.
Sigmund Freud, a man of great knowledge, was afraid of ghosts – although he said continually,
”There are no ghosts, there is no evidence, no proof.” He was so much afraid of ghosts that a simple
incident became the breaking point between his chief disciple, Carl Gustav Jung, and himself.
Carl Gustav Jung was going to be his successor. Freud had already declared, ”Jung is going to
be my successor.” And Jung was the most intelligent, scholarly, impressive, charismatic personality
amongst all Freud’s disciples, but there were a few things which were troublesome. One was that
Jung was interested in ghosts; that was a constant trouble.
One day Sigmund Freud was sitting in his office with Jung in front of him; they were talking and
somehow the topic of ghosts came up. Jung said, ”Whatever you say, I still suspect that something
like ghosts exists.” Sigmund Freud became red with anger – and at that very time, in the cupboard
behind, there was a sound almost like an explosion. Sigmund Freud fell from his seat.
Jung opened the cupboard: there was nothing. He closed it again, put the seat right, placed Freud
there and said, ”There is nothing. I don’t know what happened, what caused this explosion.” They
started talking again, and again the ghost thing came up. Sigmund Freud said, ”I don’t believe in it
and you stop talking about it” – and the explosion!
This was too much: Sigmund Freud fell into unconsciousness. And that was the breaking point. He
simply informed Jung, ”Either you drop me, or you drop your ghosts.”
So knowledgeable, so much a pioneer, a great scientific mind .... But if you really know that there
are no ghosts then there will be a different response. You will not fall unconscious, you will not fall
from your seat. It is just knowledge, belief. Freud wants to believe that there are no ghosts, but deep
down he is just an ordinary human being like anybody else, with all the fears.
Jung was not different either. He was interested in ghosts, but he was very much afraid of death.
Now look at this strange thing. You are interested in ghosts; if you are really interested in ghosts,
you should be interested in death too, because without death ghosts can’t exist. A ghost is nothing
but a man who was once in the body and is no more in the body. If you are interested in ghosts, you
should be logically interested in death, in the very process of death.
But Jung was so afraid, more afraid than Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud at least had some excuse
in the explosion to fall unconscious. Jung was so afraid that even the word ”death” was enough.
Thrice in his life he became unconscious just because the word ”death” came into the conversation.
He was very much interested in seeing in Egypt the mummies of ancient Egyptian pharaohs, queens,
kings – which were very recently discovered, excavated, and were now available for the public to
see. He booked at least a dozen times to go to Egypt but at the very last moment he would find
some excuse not to go.
One time Jung even reached the airport in Zurich; finding no excuse not to go, he was very much
in trouble. He was trying to find some excuse not to go but there was no excuse. People had even
come to give him a good send-off and say, ”Have a good journey.” And finally he said, ”I am not
going.”
”But,” they said, ”why?”
He said, ”I have tried to find an excuse not to go – there is none. But if I don’t want to go, who are
you to force me to go? You have come with flowers, and I am dying with fear. I cannot look at a
corpse.”
It is the strange mind of man. You are obsessed with things of which you are afraid. Perhaps you
are obsessed only because you are afraid. Your fear and your obsession are almost always pointed
to the same thing. Jung never managed in his life to reach Egypt, and this was one of his cherished
desires. He was very knowledgeable, but as far as knowing was concerned – just nil.
Knowing transforms you.
Knowledge only gives you a false idea that you are wise.
It is better to be sincerely ignorant – because there is a chance of change – than to be a hypocrite
insincerely believing that you know.
Ignorance has done no harm to anybody.

From Darkness to Light Chapter 9 contd....

He said, ”I know, but when you are telling a story, and you say a small dog was following you, and you
were not afraid – that does not fit. A lion is needed. And as far as exaggeration is concerned, you
are telling me that you have told me one thousand times not to exaggerate. You are exaggerating
yourself.”
Everybody is making himself look, in every possible way, like somebody special.
You are talking about your suffering and somebody says, ”It is nothing.” You will be hurt, you will not
like this response. You were telling such a great story; you were opening your wounds and that man
said, ”This is nothing. You should know my suffering.”
Suffering also becomes a support to your ego. A man without suffering, without pain, without any
misery – how can he manage his ego? He won’t have any props for the ego.
I used to stay with one of the presidents of the Indian National Congress – which has been the ruling
party since independence. His name was Uchchhangrai Dhebar, and he loved me very much. He
was the only politician of that status who used to come to the camps to meditate, to participate. He
was really a nice person. It is very difficult to find in politicians that quality of niceness.
He was talking about the great problems that he was facing. I listened, and I told him, ”You can
talk about these things to other people – don’t waste my time. If you can do something about those
things then do it; otherwise what is the point of unnecessarily talking? I am not the person interested
in that kind of thing.”
Just then the phone rang and he took it. The prime minister was calling, and Uchchhangrai Dhebar
said, ”I am very much engaged right now.” And he was not engaged at all – we were just gossiping!
He said, ”I am very much engaged right now; today it is not possible for me to meet you. Perhaps
tomorrow I can manage. I will have to enquire from my secretary.”
As their conversation was finished I said, ”I don’t see that you are engaged.”
He said, ”That is not the point. When a prime minister phones – and I am the president of the party
as far as organization is concerned, he is just a member of the organization .... He may be the
prime minister, but when a prime minister calls me, I am always engaged. When the president of
the country calls me, I am always engaged. These people understand only that language.
”If I just go and run to his house and say, ‘Yes, sir, I am here, what do you want?’ then what is
the point of being the president of the party? So much struggle, so much trouble, so much conflict,
quarreling, and then in the end I have been able to become the president. And you want me to say
to the prime minister that I am gossiping, I am free, I have nothing to do? Now I am engaged in
great problems.”
I said, ”Perhaps the same is true when you are talking about your great problems to me. At least
with me be sincere. I am not the prime minister or the president.”
He looked into my eyes for a moment and he said, ”You are right. I was just bragging about how
much puzzled I am, how much trouble my life is. To be the president of the ruling party of such a
vast country is to be lying on a bed of thorns.”
He was sleeping on a Dunlop mattress. I said, ”What are you talking about? I see you sleep on a
Dunlop mattress!”
I cannot sleep on one of those because it is so soft that the moment you move, it moves with you. It
keeps me awake; I am waking continuously the whole night.
Once Teertha brought for me a water bed. That night I will never forget. That water bed must be
supplied in hell, because you turn and the whole water inside moves just underneath you. That
much water movement – how can you sleep? I can sleep on a hard floor; it may hurt a little bit, but
sooner or later you will fall asleep. But on a water bed ... and that was the latest ”in thing” so Teertha
brought it for me. I had to suffer many latest in things.
You cannot get rid of your miseries for the simple reason that you don’t have anything else to cling
to. You will be empty – and nobody wants to be empty. People befool themselves in every possible
way.
I have visited areas where people were so hungry – starving; they had no food. I enquired, ”You
don’t have any food, how do you manage to sleep?” – because without food you cannot sleep. In
fact sleep is needed for one of the most basic reasons: to digest food. So all other activity is dropped
and your whole energy goes into digestion. But when you don’t have any food in the stomach, sleep
becomes difficult.
I have been fasting, so I know. Before the fasting day, the whole night you go on tossing and turning,
thinking of the next day and the delicious foods. And when you are hungry anything looks delicious.
But you cannot sleep. I asked, ”How do you manage to sleep?”
They said, ”We drink a lot of water to fill the belly, to deceive the body, and then sleep comes.” They
know perfectly well they are deceiving; water is not nourishment. The body is asking for food, and
they are giving water because only water is available. But at least something is in the stomach, it is
not empty.
This is the situation as far as your psychological emptiness is concerned: anything will do. Nothing
is not acceptable to you. And unless nothing is acceptable to you, you are not ready to get rid of
your pain, misery, and suffering.
You say, ”Knowing perfectly well ....” You don’t know at all, and you are saying, ”Knowing perfectly
well.” You know nothing. ”Knowing perfectly well” means that if you understand, all these sufferings
and miseries will drop of their own accord.
Knowing perfectly well and still continuing to suffer, to be miserable – no, it is not possible. Either
you don’t know or you cannot suffer. You cannot be allowed both together: knowing perfectly well
and still suffering. And your last sentence makes it clear that that knowledge is not knowing. It may
be knowledge.
You say, ”Knowing perfectly well that one just has to understand and drop them.” It is a little delicate
affair – to understand and drop them ... as if after understanding you will have to drop them. That’s
not how it happens.