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It is through knowledge that man becomes divided from the whole. Knowledge creates the distance.

You come across a wildflower in the mountains, you don’t know what it is; your mind has nothing to say about it, the mind is silent. You look at the flower, you see the flower, but no knowledge arises in you – there is wonder, there is mystery. The flower is there, you are there. Through wonder you are not separate, you are bridged.

If you know that it is a rose or a marigold, or something else, that very knowing disconnects you. The flower is there, you are here, but there is no bridge – you know!

Knowledge creates distance. The more you know the bigger the distance; the less you know the less the distance. And if you are in a moment of not knowing, there is no distance, you are bridged.

You fall in love with a woman or a man – the day you fall in love there is no distance. There is only wonder, a thrill, an excitement, an ecstasy – but no knowledge. You don’t know who this woman is. Without knowledge, there is nothing to divide you; hence the beauty of those first moments of love.

You have lived with the woman for only twenty-four hours; knowledge has arisen. Now you have some ideas about the woman: you know who she is, there is an image. Twenty-four hours have created a past. Those twenty-four hours have left marks on the mind: you look at the same woman, there is no longer the same mystery. You are coming down the hill, that peak is lost.

To understand this is to understand much.

To understand that knowledge divides, knowledge creates distance, is to understand the very secret of meditation. Meditation is a state of not knowing. Meditation is pure space, undisturbed by knowledge.

Yes, the biblical story is true – that man has fallen through knowledge, by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. No other scripture of the world surpasses that. That parable is the last word; no other parable has reached to that height and insight.

It looks so illogical that man has fallen through knowledge. It looks illogical because logic is part of knowledge. Logic is all in support of knowledge. It looks illogical, because logic is the root cause of man’s fall.

A man who is absolutely logical, absolutely sane, always sane, never allows any illogic in his life is a madman. Sanity needs to be balanced by insanity; logic needs to be balanced by illogic. The opposites meet and balance.

A man who is just rational is unreasonable – he will miss much. In fact he will go on missing all that is beautiful and all that is true. He will collect trivia, his life will be a mundane life. He will be the worldly man.

That biblical parable has immense insight.

Why has man fallen through knowledge? – because knowledge creates distance, because knowledge creates “I” and “thou,” because knowledge creates subject and object, the knower and the known, the observer and the observed.

Knowledge is basically schizophrenic; it creates a split. And then there is no way to bridge it. That’s why the more knowledgeable man has become, the less religious he is. The more educated a man, the less the possibility is for him to approach God.

Jesus is right when he says, “Only children will be able to enter into my kingdom.” Only children… What is that quality that a child has and you have lost? The child has the quality of non-knowledge, innocence.

He looks with wonder, his eyes are absolutely clear. He looks deep, but he has no prejudices, no judgments, no a priori ideas. He does not project, hence he comes to know that which is.

The other day we were talking about the distinction between reality and truth. The child knows the truth, you know only the reality. The reality is that which you have created around yourself – projecting, desiring, thinking.

The reality is your interpretation of truth. Truth is simply that which is; reality is that which you have come to understand – it is your idea of the truth. Reality consists of things, all separate.

Truth consists of only one cosmic energy. Truth consists of oneness, reality consists of “many-ness.” Reality is a crowd, truth is integration.

Before we enter into the sutras, this has to become the foundation: that knowledge is a curse. J. Krishnamurti has said, “To negate is silence.” To negate what? – to negate knowledge, to negate mind, to negate this constant occupation inside you; to create an unoccupied space.

When you are unoccupied you are in tune with the whole. When you are occupied you have fallen out of tune. Hence, whenever it happens that you can attain a moment of silence, there is immense joy.

In that moment life has significance, in that moment life has a grandeur beyond words. In that moment life is a dance. In that moment if even death comes it will be a dance and a celebration, because that moment knows nothing but joy. That moment is joyous, it is blissful.

Knowledge has to be negated – but not because I am saying so or because J. Krishnamurti says so or because Gautam Buddha has said so.

If you negate because I am saying so, then you will negate your knowledge, and whatsoever I am saying will become your knowledge in its place; you will substitute it.

The negation has not to come from the mind, otherwise the mind is very tricky. Then whatsoever I say becomes your knowledge, you start clinging to it. You throw away your old idols and you replace them with new ones. But it is the same game played with new words, new ideas, new thoughts.

Then how to negate knowledge?

Not by other knowledge: just seeing the fact that knowledge creates distance, just seeing this fact intensely, totally, is enough. Not that you have to replace it with something else; that intensity is fire, that intensity will reduce your knowledge to ashes.

That intensity is enough. That intensity is what is known as “insight.” Insight will burn your knowledge, and it will not be replaced by other knowledge. Then there is emptiness, shunyata. Then there is nothingness, because then there is no content; there is undisturbed, undistorted truth.

You have to see what I am saying, you are not to learn what I am saying.

Here, sitting with me every day, listening to me, don’t start collecting knowledge. Here, listening to me, don’t start hoarding. Listening to me should be an experiment in insight.

You should listen with intensity, with totality, with as much awareness as is possible for you. In that very awareness you will see a point, and that very seeing is transformation.

Not that you have to do something else afterward; the seeing itself brings mutation.

If some effort is needed, that simply shows you missed. If you come tomorrow and ask me, “I have understood that knowledge is the curse, that knowledge creates distance. Now, how do I drop it?” – then you missed. If the “how” arises, then you missed.

The “how” cannot arise, because the “how” is asking for more knowledge. The “how” is asking for methods, techniques: “What should be done?” And insight is enough; it need not be helped by any efforts. Its fire is more than enough to burn all knowledge that you carry within you.

Just see the point.

Listening to me, go with me. Listening to me, hold my hand and move into the spaces that I’m trying for you to move into. And see what I am saying, don’t argue. Don’t say yes, don’t say no. Don’t agree, don’t disagree.

Just be with me in this moment – and suddenly the insight is there. If you are listening attentively… And by attention I don’t mean concentration; by attention I simply mean you are listening with awareness, not with a dull mind; you are listening with intelligence, with aliveness, with openness.

You are here, now, with me. That’s what I mean by attention: you are nowhere else. You are not comparing in the mind what I am saying with your old thoughts. You are not comparing at all, you are not judging. You are not there judging inside, within you, whether what I am saying is right or not, or how much is right.

Just the other day I was talking to a seeker. He has the quality of a seeker but is burdened by knowledge. While I was talking to him his eyes became full of tears. His heart was just going to open, and in that very moment the mind jumped in and destroyed the whole beauty of it.

He was just moving toward the heart and opening, but immediately his mind came in. Those tears that were just on the verge of dropping, disappeared. His eyes became dry.

What had happened? – I said something with which he could not agree. He was agreeing with me, up to a certain point. Then I said something which goes against his Jewish background, which goes against the Kabbala, and immediately the whole energy changed.

He said, “Everything is right. Whatsoever you are saying is right, but this one thing: that God has no purpose, that existence exists purposelessly – with this I cannot agree, because the Kabbala says just the opposite: that life has purpose, that God is purposive, that he is leading us toward a certain destiny, that there is a destination.”

He may not have even looked at it this way – that he missed in that moment because comparison came in. What does the Kabbala have to do with me? When you are with me, put away all your knowledge of the Kabbala, of Yoga, of Tantra, of this and that. When you are with me, be with me. If you are totally with me… And I am not saying that you are agreeing with me, remember. I am not saying that you are agreeing with me: there is no question of agreement or disagreement.

When you see a roseflower, do you agree with it or disagree with it? When you see the sunrise, do you agree or do you disagree? When you see the moon in the night, you simply see it! Either you see it or you don’t see it, but there is no question of agreement or disagreement.

Be with me that way; that is the way of being with a master. Just be with me.

I’m not trying to convince you about anything. I’m not trying to convert you to some theory, philosophy, dogma, to some church, no! I’m simply sharing what has happened to me, and in that very sharing, if you participate, it can happen to you too. It is infectious. Insight transforms.

When I am saying knowledge is a curse you can agree or disagree – and you have missed!

Just listen to it, just see into it, go into the whole process of knowledge. You see how knowledge creates distance, how knowledge becomes a barrier, how knowledge stands in between, how knowledge goes on increasing and the distance goes on increasing, how innocence is lost through knowledge, how wonder is destroyed, crippled, murdered through knowledge, how life becomes a dull and boring affair through knowledge.

Mystery is lost, and with the mystery God is lost.

Mystery disappears because you start having the idea that you know. When you know, how can there be mystery? Mystery is possible only when you don’t know.

Remember, man has not known a thing! All that we have gathered is just rubbish. The ultimate remains beyond grasp. What we have gathered are only facts, truth remains untouched by our efforts.

And that is the experience not only of Buddha, Krishna, Krishnamurti and Ramana; that is the experience even of Edison, Newton, Albert Einstein. That is the experience of poets, painters, dancers.

All the great intelligences of the world – they may be mystics, they may be poets, they may be scientists – are in absolute agreement about one thing: that the more we know, the more we understand that life is an absolute mystery.

Our knowledge does not destroy its mystery. It is only stupid people who think that because they know a little bit, now there is no more mystery in life. It is only the mediocre mind that becomes too attached to knowledge; the intelligent mind remains above knowledge.

He uses it, certainly uses it – it is useful, it is utilitarian – but knows perfectly well that all that is true is hidden, remains hidden. We can go on knowing and knowing, but existence remains unexhausted.

Listen with insight, attention, totality, and in that very vision you will see something, and that seeing changes you. Don’t ask how.

That is the meaning when Krishnamurti says, “To negate is silence.” Insight negates. And when something is negated and nothing is posited instead, something has been destroyed and nothing has been put, replaced in its place, there is silence – because there is space.

There is silence because the old has been thrown and the new has not been brought in. That silence Buddha calls shunyata. That silence is emptiness, nothingness. And only that nothingness can operate in the world of truth.

Thought cannot operate there. Thought works only in the world of things, because thought is also a thing – subtle, but it is also material. That’s why thought can be recorded, that’s why thought can be relayed, conveyed. I can throw a thought at you; you can hold it, you can have it. It can be taken and given, it is transferable, because it is a thing. It is a material phenomenon.

Emptiness cannot be given, emptiness cannot be thrown at you.

You can participate in it, you can move into it, but nobody can give it to you. It is nontransferable. And only emptiness operates in the world of truth. Truth is known only when mind is not. To know truth mind has to cease, it has to go out of functioning. It has to be quiet, still, unmoving.

Thought cannot operate in truth, but truth can operate through thoughts. You cannot attain to truth by thinking, but when you have attained it you can use thinking in its service. That’s what I am doing, that’s what Buddha has done, that’s what all the masters have done.

What I am saying is a thought, but behind this thought is emptiness. That emptiness has not been produced by thought, that emptiness is beyond thought. Thought cannot touch it, thought cannot even look at it.

Have you observed one phenomenon? – that you cannot think about emptiness, you cannot make emptiness a thought. You cannot think about it, it is unthinkable.

If you can think about it, it will not be emptiness at all. Thought has to go for emptiness to come; they never meet. Once emptiness has come, it can use all kinds of devices to express itself.

Insight is a state of no-thought. Whenever you see something, you always see when there is no thought. Here also, listening to me, being with me, sometimes you see. But those moments are gaps, intervals.

One thought has gone, another has not come, and there is a gap; and in that gap something strikes, something starts vibrating. It is like somebody playing on a drum: the drum is empty inside, that’s why it can be played upon. That emptiness vibrates. That beautiful sound that comes out is produced out of emptiness.

When you are, without a thought, then something is possible, immediately possible. Then you can see what I am saying. Then it will not be just a word heard, then it will become an intuition, an insight, a vision. You have looked into it, you have shared it with me.

Insight is a state of non-thinking, no-thought. It is a gap, an interval in the process of thought, and in that gap is the glimpse, the truth.

The English word empty comes from a root which means at leisure, unoccupied. It is a beautiful word if you go to the root. The root is very pregnant: it means at leisure, unoccupied.

Whenever you are unoccupied, at leisure, you are empty.

And remember, the proverb that says that the empty mind is the Devil’s workshop is just nonsense. Just the opposite is the truth: the occupied mind is the Devil’s workshop. The empty mind is God’s workshop, not the Devil’s.

But you have to understand what I mean by “empty”– at leisure, relaxed, non-tense, not moving, not desiring, not going anywhere, just being here, utterly here. An empty mind is a pure presence. And all is possible in that pure presence, because the whole existence comes out of that pure presence.

These trees grow out of that pure presence, these stars are born out of this pure presence; we are here – all the buddhas have come out of this pure presence. In that pure presence you are in God, you are God.

Occupied, you fall; occupied, you have to be expelled from the Garden of Eden. Unoccupied you are back in the garden, unoccupied you are back at home.

When the mind is not occupied by reality, by things, by thoughts, then there is that which is. And that which is, is the truth. Only in emptiness is there a meeting, merging. Only in emptiness do you open to truth and truth enters in you.

Only in emptiness do you become pregnant with truth.