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There is a lot of difference, and the difference is not quantitative, it is qualitative. Knowledge is belief. Knowledge is others’ experience, not your own. They say there is a God and you believe in it. This is knowledge. A young man can become very knowledgeable. There is no trouble in it: you need a good memory, you need to make a little effort. The same thing can be done someday by a computer: you can carry a computer in your pocket, no need to make your head too heavy with the libraries, the computer can carry all the knowledge.

Remember, soon computers will replace all your knowledge. The pundit is going to disappear from the world; the computer will take its place. And I say “its” place knowingly, consideredly, because a pundit is a mechanism, he is not a man. That’s all you have been doing with the brain – you go on feeding it information. Knowledge is borrowed. Others know it; you believe they must be true.

Wisdom comes through your own experience. Knowledge is an accumulation, wisdom is also an accumulation. But knowledge is an accumulation of others’ experiences; wisdom is an accumulation of your own experience. A young man can never be wise; he can be knowledgeable – because for wisdom, time is needed. Old people are wise because you have to pass through experiences. You can read many books on love and you can know much about love, what others have said about it, but to know love itself you will have to pass through experience – which is time-absorbing. By the time you know something about love, the youth, your young age, will have gone. You will be old, but wise. Old age is wise, youth can be knowledgeable. Wisdom is one’s own experience accumulated; knowledge is others’ experience accumulated by you.

Then what is understanding? Understanding is non-accumulative. What difference does it make whether somebody else experienced and you believed, or you experienced and then you believed? That experience is of the past. It is no longer there, and you have changed so much – and everybody is changing every moment – that an old man who says, “In my youth I experienced this,” is talking about somebody else because he is no longer the same. Wisdom is a little closer than knowledge, but not very close.

Understanding is non-accumulative; you don’t accumulate either others’ experiences or your own. You need not accumulate, you grow. Understanding is always fresh; wisdom is a little dusty and old, wisdom is always of the past, your own past. Knowledge is also of the past – of others’ pasts. But what difference does it make finally? Because your own past is as far away from you as others’ pasts; you are no longer the same. Every moment the river is flowing: says old Heraclitus, you cannot step in the same river twice.

Your own youth – you cannot step in it twice. You have learned something from your experience, you carry it. Knowledge can be washed away, wisdom also. They can be brainwashed, completely wiped from your mind. Understanding can never be brainwashed, it is not part of the brain, it is non-accumulative. All that is accumulative is accumulated in the brain.

Understanding is of your being, it cannot be washed away – you cannot brainwash a buddha. In fact he has brainwashed himself completely, he has cleaned his slate himself, how can you clean him? He is non-accumulative, he lives moment to moment. Through living his being grows. If through living your knowledge grows, it is wisdom; if through living your being grows, it is understanding – and if without living your accumulation grows, it is knowledge.

Understanding is the real flowering of being. A man of understanding is mirrorlike. A mirror carries nothing. A mirror always lives in the immediate present: whoever comes before it, it reflects. You ask me a question. The question can be answered through knowledge, that is, the experience of others. The question can be answered through wisdom, experience of my own. The question can be answered through understanding – then I am just a mirror, I simply respond.

You ask, you come before my mirror, I simply respond. That’s why a man of understanding will always be felt contradictory, inconsistent, because what can he do? He does not carry the past, his answers are not coming from the past; his answers are coming right now this very moment from his being. And every moment the world is changing, it is a flux, so how can an old answer be given again? Even if the words appear to be old the answer cannot be old. Understanding is non-repetitive and non-accumulative. Wisdom is accumulative, repetitive; knowledge is accumulative, repetitive. Knowledge is sheer belief, wisdom has a little experience in it, understanding is totally different. It is your presence, your mirrorlike presence. It is a response.

Old people can be wise, young people can be knowledgeable, only children can be understanding. That is the meaning when Jesus says, “Only those who are like children will be able to enter my Kingdom of God.” When you again become childlike, fresh, carrying no past, carrying no ready-made answers within you – carrying no answers, just a deep emptiness – then something echoes in you. Somebody asks a question… No answer comes from the memory, no answer comes from experience, but the answer is a response this very moment.

Understanding is always of the now and the here. Understanding is the most beautiful thing that can happen to a person. Drop knowledge, and then drop wisdom also. Don’t believe in others’ experiences and don’t believe in your own experiences either, because they are of the past. You have passed from there, they are no longer a part of existence – things have flowed on. The river has passed under a thousand and one bridges, and it is not the same river even if you see it flowing. It is not the same river, it is constantly changing. Except for change, everything is changing. Change is the only permanent factor in existence – so how can you rely on the past? If you rely, you will always miss the present.

Old people, wise, are always ready with great advice to give to anybody – full of advice, nobody listens to them. It is good, never listen, because you will never live the same experiences as they have lived. The river will never be the same again. If you follow them you will become false, inauthentic, untrue – you will be a lie.

And never listen to your own experience either, because you are also getting old every day and yesterday will always be giving advice. A new situation arises and yesterday is ready there, and yesterday – the old man within you – says, “This is the advice, do this because we did this yesterday and it was good and it worked, and you succeeded.”

Don’t listen to your own inner old man. Be alert, aware of the total situation. And don’t react: respond. If everything is new let your answer also be new. Only the new can meet the new, only the new can solve the new. Only with the constantly fresh and new do you remain alive and true to life.