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Question - Beloved Osho, Does
knowledge of the Esoteric play any role on the path of awareness? Osho - No. No knowledge -- esoteric or otherwise -- plays any role on the path except that of hindrance. Innocence helps, knowledge hinders. Be a child -- full of wonder, without knowing anything. One Indian saint was very much respected in India. There were only two men in India who were called mahatma. One was Mahatma Gandhi -- `mahatma' means `the great soul' -- and the second was Mahatma Bhagwandin. This second man used to stay with me whenever he passed the city I was living in. I used to go for a morning walk, for a night walk, and he was also very much in love with going for a walk. He was an old man, but immensely knowledgeable; he knew the names of all the trees -- Latin names, Greek names -- all the flowers. He was almost a walking encyclopedia. I told him, "You have wasted your whole life. What is the point of remembering all the names of all the trees in the garden, all the flowers? You are so much concerned with knowledgeability that you cannot enjoy the beauty. I don't know any of the names of these trees and I don't have to -- because they don't talk, I don't have to call them. What is the point of knowing their names? You are not a botanist. You are not a physician" -- because he knew what flower, what leaves can be used for what disease. I said, "These things are for experts. You are considered to be a spiritual man, and these things I don't think belong to spirituality." He was very angry. He said, "Everybody has appreciated my knowledge. In fact, everybody feels awe at my knowledge of things around the world. You are the first person who has insulted me." I said, "I have not insulted you. I have simply been trying to make you aware that now you are seventy, soon death will be coming and death will not ask all these names. Death will ask, `Can you be aware or not?'" But at that time he was very angry and he wouldn't listen. And after eight years he died. Before he died, just two days before, I passed through his city -- he used to stay in Nagpur. So I went to see him, hearing that he is very sick. He was very sick. He had become almost a skeleton. It was sad to see that man. And I said, "What happened?" He said, "What you have said that day, it seems it is going to happen. Death is coming. I can hear the footsteps. Life is slipping out of my hands. And please forgive me for my anger. You were right. All my knowledgeability is of no use. Had I listened to you, even eight years was enough time to meditate, to become aware, and this time I would not have been sad that death is coming, I would have been excited that the greatest experience in life -- death -- is coming close and I am going to watch it. But I don't think I can. I will become unconscious. I am already losing my consciousness, I am becoming more and more sleepy." I said to him, "Just try to remember in the next life at least, don't get too much bothered by unnecessary knowledge -- just to impress people. The essential is very small, and if you can understand the essential your life has been that of a glory, a victory." Source - Osho Book "The Transmission of The Lamp" Related Osho
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