Spiritual Forum

Information about objects can be collected, but this is knowledge you have obtained from the outside. You perceive objects from four sides; you can walk all around them. For example, when you go to a hindu temple you walk around the idol of God, but this walking only happens outwardly. And so it has become phony, a mere ritual. No matter how much you may know about something from the outside, your information about it is never inner, never from your own experience.

As long as we do not enter the depths of something our information about it will always be surface. It is like going to see the ocean and coming back home simply having glanced at the waves. The real ocean, the depths and treasure of the real ocean, are hidden beaneath the waves. On the surface there is only foam; on the surface there is only conflict, competition, enmity. In the waves, only mischief and upheavel exist. The real ocean is hidden beneath them. There is only one way to know that ocean and that is to dive deeply into it. And there is only one kind of diving, the diving into yourself.

No matter how deeply you penetrate the inner reaches of another, you will never be able to touch his soul. Your journy will be just an orbiting on his outer boundary. So if you want to know the ocean through and through, than even diving into it is not enough. Than you have to become one with the ocean, just like a chunk of rocksalt that is thrown into a sea dissolves and becomes one with it. Then and only then will you know there is an infinite depth to the ocean.

The experience of knowledge can only be of ones own self, never of anothers. Love is only satisfying when it is established in God, not in someone else. God is you; He is not someone else. And there, with God, the distance disappears completely. Kabir calls such an experience knowledge. Such an experience can only be of the self. Self knowledge is the only knowledge; the rest is information.Knowledge is only that which man has tested for himself; it cannot be achieved without experience.

There are many things in this world that can be known through others, many things that can be known with no personal experience.Whatever we know about this world, whatever information we have about it, for the most part is given to us by others. Scientists give us information about the various sciences; experts in geography tell us where the Himalayas are and where Tibet is, and this is how we gather information.The information received from others about the world can be accepted, but you cannot accept information from others about yourself.

Whatsoever another tells you about yourself will be untrue. No matter what you have learned about yourself from the Upanishads, from the Vedas, from the Koran, from the Bible, from the saints, from scholars - give it no credence at all. After all, you are not a stranger to yourself! The idea that someone else can show you what you are is outragous. What greater impotency can there be than your powerlessness even to know yourself! What greater blindness can there be than your inability to know yourself!

Are you so enveloped in darkness that you need someone else to show you the light, to show you who you are? If you need someone else, then it is clear you have no concept whatsoever of your being, of who you are. And how can another person give you that knowledge? There is no way to achieve that experience than for yourself.

The master can indicate to you how to dive into yourself, but he cannot show you anything, he cannot tell you anything about yourself. He can lead you to the bank of the river, but you will have to drink the water. And when you drink the water your thirst will be quenched. And that will be your own experience.

I can tell you everything there is to know about water - its whole chemistry, how it is composed of oxygen and hydrogen, its different properties, at what temperature it becomes vapor, at what temperature it turns into ice - but that will not quench your thirst. Your throat will remain parched and dry. No matter how great or complete  the information may be, it will not quench your thirst. Mere information about chemistry of water will not help you.

Understand what the master is indicating first - then go in search of water and drink.Then you will have the experience of water yourself. Then the dryness will disappear and your throat will feel cool; then the fires of deprivation and of uneasiness will vanish, and a kind of peace, a kind of satisfaction will well up within you. No one else can give you this experience, but you are quite capable of having it for yourself if you want to.

So far you have tried to obtain this experience from someone else. You do not even wish to exert yourself enough to drink. It is your thirst, so how can my water hep you? You will have to find your own water. This is why all the enlightened men, all those who know, say there is no knowledge except that which comes from experience.

So free yourself quickly as possible from whatever knowledge you have gathered, from whatever information you have accumulated that is not from your own experience. You will never start out in search of that spring of fresh water as long as this burden is on your head because you are under the illusion you have known, without really having known, under the illusion you have drunk, without really having drunk, under the illusion you have acquired something, without really having acquired anything.

Knowledge of inner experience
Many come asking for,
Struck dumb savoring the sweet
Whose mouth will tell the taste?

The great difficulty is that the man who has known the truth cannot give it to you even if he wishes to. You have no comprehension of the affliction of the wise. You only know one affliction, the affliction of the ignorant. The enlightened man has known the real thing. He knows. He sees you groping in the dark and he wants to give you all that he knows, but he is helpless. That is his affliction.

Struck dumb savoring the sweet
Whose mouth will tell the taste?

He has already tasted the sweet and he sees you still wandering all over in search of it. He sees you becoming more and more downcast, more and more entangled in your problems, in your cares and sufferings. he wishes you could have the taste too; he wants the door of heaven to open for you as well. He wants to help you. He wants to cry out and say " it tastes so sweet!" But just as a man who is dumb is unable to cry aloud, the throat of the enlightened man is blocked; his lips cannot form the words. He is in the same position as the dumb man.

But the difficulty of the enlightened man is even greater than that of the man who is dumb. A remedy for dumbness may be possible, but for the enlightened man there is no way out.

From "The Great Secret" (not "The Secret", its two different books) by Osho