The more you know, the more you can learn. The more you know, the greater the distance; the less you know, the less distance
You fall in love with a woman or a man - the day you fall in love there is no distance. There is only wonder, awe, excitement, ecstasy - but no knowledge. You don't know who this woman is. Without knowledge there is nothing to separate you; this is the beauty of the first moments of love. If you have lived with this woman for even twenty-four hours, knowledge has arisen. Now you have some ideas about this woman; you know who she is; there is a certain image. These twenty-four hours have created the past; those twenty-four hours left marks in the mind. You look at the same woman, but the old mystery is gone. You go down the hill, having lost its top.
To understand means to understand a lot. To understand that knowledge separates, that knowledge creates distance, is to understand the very secret of meditation.
Meditation is a state of not knowing. Meditation is clean space unclouded by knowledge. Yes, bible story it is true that man fell because of knowledge, having eaten the fruit of knowledge. None Holy Bible the world does not transcend it. This parable is the last word; no other parable has ever reached such heights of insight. It seems so illogical that man fell because of knowledge. It looks counterintuitive because logic is part of knowledge! Logic supports knowledge in everything - it looks illogical, because logic is the very root cause of the fall of man.
A person who is absolutely logical - absolutely normal, always sane, never allowing anything illogical in his life - is insane. Normality must be balanced by abnormality; logic must be balanced by illogicality. Opposites meet and balance each other. A man who is only rational is unreasonable - he will miss a lot. In fact, he will constantly miss everything that is beautiful and true. He will collect platitudes and his life will be an ordinary life. He will be a worldly person.
This biblical parable contains a great insight. Why did man fall in knowledge? Because knowledge creates distance, because knowledge creates: "I and you", because knowledge creates subject and object, the knower and the known, the observer and the observed. Knowledge is essentially schizophrenic; it creates a split, and there is no way to connect the split parts.
That is why man becomes more and more knowledgeable and less and less religious. The more educated a person is, the less opportunity he has to approach the whole. Jesus is right when he says, "Only children can enter my kingdom." Only children... What quality is there in a child, but is lost in you? There is a quality of ignorance, innocence in a child. He looks with surprise, his eyes are absolutely clear. He looks deep, but he has no prejudices, no judgments, no ideas. priori. It does not project and therefore recognizes what is. The child knows the truth, you know only everyday reality. This reality is that you have surrounded yourself with projection, desire, thinking. This reality is your interpretation of the truth.
Truth is just what it is; reality is what you are able to perceive; your idea of truth. Reality consists of things, and they are all separate. Truth consists of only one cosmic energy. Truth consists of unity, reality consists of plurality. Reality is the crowd, truth is integration.
Jiddu Krishnamurti said: "To be silent is to reject." Reject what? To reject knowledge, to reject the mind, to reject this constant inner preoccupation... to create an unoccupied space. When you are not busy, you are in tune with the whole. When you're busy, you're out of tune. So every time it happens that you reach a moment of silence, immense joy arises. In this moment life is meaningful, in this moment life is unspeakably magnificent. In this moment, life is dancing. At this moment, even if death will come, it will be a dance and a celebration, because this moment knows nothing but joy. This moment is joyful, this moment is blissful.
Knowledge must be rejected - but not because I or Jiddu Krishnamurti say it; then you would reject your knowledge so that my words would take its place; they would be a substitute. Then whatever I say becomes your knowledge, and you start clinging to it. You throw away old idols and replace them with new ones, but it remains the same game played with new words, new thoughts.
How then to reject knowledge? Not by crowding it out with other knowledge. You just have to see the fact that knowledge creates a distance - just see this fact intensely, totally - and that is enough. The point is not to replace one knowledge with another.
Intensity is fire; this intensity will reduce your knowledge to ashes. This intensity is sufficient. This intensity is what is called insight. Insight will burn your knowledge without replacing it with any other. Then there will be emptiness sunyata. Then there will be nothing, because there is no content: the unclouded, undistorted truth will remain.
You should see what I'm saying; do not study my words. Here, listening to me, don't start collecting knowledge. Don't start bullying. Listening to me should be an experiment in insight. You have to listen with intensity, with totality, with as much awareness as you can. In that very awareness you will see the essence, and that very vision will become a transformation. It's not about remembering and then doing something; seeing itself causes mutation.
If some effort is needed, it just shows what you missed. If tomorrow you come and ask: "I realized that knowledge is a curse, that knowledge creates a distance. How can I drop it now?" means you missed it. If there is a "how?", you've missed it. "How?" cannot arise, because "how?" asks for more knowledge. "How?" asks for a method, technique, instructions for action.
Insight is enough; he does not need to be helped by any other effort. Its fire is more than enough to burn away all the knowledge you carry within you. Just see the point.
Listen to me, move with me. Listen to me, take my hand and move into the spaces that I'm trying to help you get into, and see what I see. Do not argue - do not say yes, do not say - no; do not agree, do not argue. Just be with me in this moment - and suddenly there is an insight. If you listen carefully... and by attention I don't mean concentration; by attention I simply mean that you are listening with awareness, not with a dull mind; that you listen intelligently, lively, openly. You are not somewhere else. You don't mentally compare what I'm saying with your old thoughts. You don't compare at all, you don't judge. You don't judge inside, in your mind, whether I'm saying right or wrong things, or how right they are.
Just yesterday I was talking to a seeker. He had the quality of a seeker, but burdened with knowledge. As I spoke to him, his eyes filled with tears. His heart just wanted to open, and in that moment the mind attacked him and destroyed all beauty. He was just moving towards the opening of the heart, but the mind immediately intervened. Those tears ready to be shed are gone. His eyes dried up. What's happened? - I said something he couldn't agree with.
He agreed with me up to a certain point. Then I said something that doesn't fit with his Jewish upbringing, that goes against Kabbalah, and immediately the energy changed. He said: "That's right. Everything you say is right, but on one thing - that God has no purpose, that existence exists without a purpose - I cannot agree with you. Because Kabbalah says the exact opposite: that life has a purpose, that God has a purpose, that he leads us to a certain destination, that there is a destination."
Maybe he didn't even look at it from that point of view - which he missed at the moment when the comparison arose. What does Kabbalah have to do with me? When you are with me, put aside all your knowledge of Kabbalah, Yoga, Tantra, and whatever. When you are with me, be with me. And I'm not asking you to agree with me, remember - there is no question of agreeing or disagreeing.
When you see a rose, do you agree with it, do you argue? When you see the dawn, do you agree or argue? When you see the moon at night, you just see it! Either you see it or you don't; but there is no question of agreement or dispute.
I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I am not trying to convert you to any theory, philosophy, dogma, any church - no. I'm just sharing what happened to me, and in the process of it, if you're a participant, it can happen to you too. It's an infection.
Insight is transformative.
When I say that knowledge is a curse, you can agree or argue and you will miss! Just listen, see it, go into the whole process of knowing. You can see how knowledge creates a distance, how knowledge becomes a barrier... How knowledge comes between you and reality, how the distance grows as knowledge increases... How innocence is lost, how surprise is destroyed, crippled, killed by knowledge, how life in knowledge becomes dull and boring business... The secret is lost. The secret disappears because you start living with the idea that you already know. If you know, what could be the secret? Mystery is only possible if you don't know.
And remember, man has never known a single thing! Everything we have collected is rubbish. The highest remains beyond our reach. What we have collected is only facts, but our efforts have not touched the truth. And it is not only the experience of Buddha, Krishna, Krishnamurti and Ramana; even Edison, Newton, Albert Einstein survived it. This is the experience of poets, artists, dancers. All the great minds of the world - be they mystics, poets or scientists - absolutely agree on one thing: the more we know, the more we understand that life is an absolute mystery. Our knowledge does not destroy secrets.
Only very stupid people think that the more they learn, the less secrets there are in life. Only the mediocre mind becomes too attached to knowledge; the intelligent mind remains above knowledge. He uses it, undoubtedly uses it - it is useful, utilitarian - but he knows very well that everything true is hidden, remains hidden. We can go on learning and learning, but the mystery will remain inexhaustible.
Listen with insight, with attention, with totality. And in that very insight you will see something. And this vision will change you - don't ask how. This is the meaning of what Krishnamurti says: "To be silent is to reject." Insight rejects. And then something is rejected and nothing is put in its place. Something is destroyed and nothing is put in its place. Silence remains because space remains. Silence remains, because the old has been thrown out, and the new has not been brought in. This silence Buddha calls sunyata. This silence is emptiness, nothing. And only nothing can work in the world of truth.
Thought cannot work in it. Thought works only in the world of things, because thought is also a thing - subtle, but still material. That is why thoughts can be written down, that is why they can be communicated, transmitted. I can throw a thought at you; you can catch it, get it. It can be given and taken, it is transferable, like a thing. This is a material phenomenon.
Emptiness cannot be given, emptiness cannot be thrown into you. You can participate in it, you can move into it, but no one can give it to you. It is not transferable. And only emptiness can work in the world of truth.
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You fall in love with a woman or a man - the day you fall in love there is no distance. There is only wonder, awe, excitement, ecstasy - but no knowledge. You don't know who this woman is. Without knowledge there is nothing to separate you; this is the beauty of the first moments of love. If you have lived with this woman for even twenty-four hours, knowledge has arisen. Now you have some ideas about this woman; you know who she is; there is a certain image. These twenty-four hours have created the past; those twenty-four hours left marks in the mind. You look at the same woman, but the old mystery is gone. You go down the hill, having lost its top.
To understand means to understand a lot. To understand that knowledge separates, that knowledge creates distance, is to understand the very secret of meditation.
Meditation is a state of not knowing. Meditation is a pure space, unclouded by knowledge. Yes, the biblical story is true - that man fell because of knowledge by eating the fruit of knowledge. No scripture in the world surpasses this. This parable is the last word; no other parable has ever reached such heights of insight. It seems so illogical that man fell because of knowledge. It looks counterintuitive because logic is part of knowledge! Logic supports knowledge in everything - it looks illogical, because logic is the very root cause of the fall of man.
A person who is absolutely logical - absolutely normal, always sane, never allowing anything illogical in his life - is insane. Normality must be balanced by abnormality; logic must be balanced by illogicality. Opposites meet and balance each other. A man who is only rational is unreasonable - he will miss a lot. In fact, he will constantly miss everything that is beautiful and true. He will collect platitudes and his life will be an ordinary life. He will be a worldly person.
This biblical parable contains a great insight. Why did man fall in knowledge? Because knowledge creates distance, because knowledge creates: "I and you", because knowledge creates subject and object, the knower and the known, the observer and the observed. Knowledge is essentially schizophrenic; it creates a split, and there is no way to connect the split parts.
That is why man becomes more and more knowledgeable and less and less religious. The more educated a person is, the less opportunity he has to approach the whole. Jesus is right when he says, "Only children can enter my kingdom." Only children... What quality is there in a child, but is lost in you? There is a quality of ignorance, innocence in a child. He looks with surprise, his eyes are absolutely clear. He looks deep, but he has no prejudices, no judgments, no ideas. priori. It does not project and therefore recognizes what is. The child knows the truth, you know only everyday reality. This reality is that you have surrounded yourself with projection, desire, thinking. This reality is your interpretation of the truth.
Truth is just what it is; reality is what you are able to perceive; your idea of truth. Reality consists of things, and they are all separate. Truth consists of only one cosmic energy. Truth consists of unity, reality consists of plurality. Reality is the crowd, truth is integration.
Jiddu Krishnamurti said: "To be silent is to reject." Reject what? To reject knowledge, to reject the mind, to reject this constant inner preoccupation... to create an unoccupied space. When you are not busy, you are in tune with the whole. When you're busy, you're out of tune. So every time it happens that you reach a moment of silence, immense joy arises. In this moment life is meaningful, in this moment life is unspeakably magnificent. In this moment, life is dancing. In this moment, even if death comes, it will be a dance and a celebration, because this moment knows nothing but joy. This moment is joyful, this moment is blissful.
Knowledge must be rejected - but not because I or Jiddu Krishnamurti say it; then you would reject your knowledge so that my words would take its place; they would be a substitute. Then whatever I say becomes your knowledge, and you start clinging to it. You throw away old idols and replace them with new ones, but it remains the same game played with new words, new thoughts.
How then to reject knowledge? Not by supplanting it with other knowledge. You just have to see the fact that knowledge creates a distance - just see this fact intensely, totally - and that is enough. The point is not to replace one knowledge with another.
Intensity is fire; this intensity will reduce your knowledge to ashes. This intensity is sufficient. This intensity is what is called insight. Insight will burn your knowledge without replacing it with any other. Then there will be emptiness sunyata. Then there will be nothing, because there is no content: the unclouded, undistorted truth will remain.
You should see what I'm saying; do not study my words. Here, listening to me, don't start collecting knowledge. Don't start bullying. Listening to me should be an experiment in insight. You have to listen with intensity, with totality, with as much awareness as you can. In that very awareness you will see the essence, and that very vision will become a transformation. It's not about remembering and then doing something; seeing itself causes mutation.
If some effort is needed, it just shows what you missed. If tomorrow you come and ask: "I realized that knowledge is a curse, that knowledge creates a distance. How can I drop it now?" means you missed it. If there is a "how?", you've missed it. "How?" cannot arise, because "how?" asks for more knowledge. "How?" asks for a method, technique, instructions for action.
If reading the news seems boring to you, then you are doing it wrong. To develop the habit of reading the news, as trite as it may sound, you need to read only those articles whose titles interest you. This way you will enjoy the time spent reading the newspaper, even if you only read sports news and gossip columns. Over time, you will enjoy reading the newspaper and you will read another section. Then you will try to read articles on a topic that did not interest you before. At first, you will linger on the headings. Over time, you will notice that you are immersed in reading. Reading newspapers will seem to you something simple and natural, and this good sign. If I were to suggest starting each morning by reading the big news in the Wall Street Journal, it might be intimidating, and it is unlikely that many people would be able to master it. The best approach is to think about gaining knowledge when you are open to all topics, primarily those that interest you.
The only warning to those who have started reading the news every day is that they can really ruin your mood. For example, I try to avoid articles about tragic events and focus on articles about encouraging discoveries in science, technology, and business. I don't ignore bad news, but I don't dive into it. The more time you spend on bad news, the more it weighs on you and drains your energy. I prefer cleantech breakthrough stories, even if I know 99 percent of them are lies. I don't read the news to find the truth, because then it would be a waste of time. I read the news to expand my understanding of new topics and patterns, which makes me more knowledgeable in general, and I generally enjoy it because learning interesting things raises my energy and charges me with optimism. Do not treat news as information. Think of them as a source of energy.