KNOWING and KNOWLEDGE

The more the mind knows, the less it becomes capable of knowing; knowledge is the only hindrance
towards knowing. Knowing is something quite different from knowledge. Knowledge means
thoughts, and knowledge means borrowed learning. Knowing means a mind which is unburdened of
everything that is known; a mind in the state of knowing is simply ignorant – it doesn’t know anything,
it is humble. And to be humble, one has to unlearn what has become a burden.
The known must cease for the unknown to be. And life is unknown, and truth is unknown, yet we
are all burdened with knowledge. This attitude of knowledge becomes a hindrance towards the void,
which goes into the unchartered, into the unknown, the unacquainted, the unlearnt.
So to me there is nothing to be preached or to be taught – I am not a teacher in that sense. Rather,
I am awakened – not a teacher. And the first awakening that is required today is the awakening of
the humble attitude of an unlearnt, unknowledgeable mind, a mind that is open and not closed.

There are things which can be known by others; information can be imparted. As far as science is
concerned – the complete knowledge known as scientific knowledge – there are things that can be
imparted. Then there is the possibility of a school, of a teacher, of a mission.... But there are things
as far as the inner is concerned... as far as the divine is concerned, and these things cannot be
made part and parcel of a dead knowledge. They cannot be condensed into maxims, nor is there
any possibility for any objective experimentation or for a laboratory where more than one person
can experiment and come to a conclusion. There is no such possibility. The inner, the divine, is
basically individual, is basically subjective. One knows, but cannot impart the knowledge to others.
One knows and lives.... Others may feel the perfume, may feel the scent, may feel the song, may
feel the unknown presence, but that too is intuitive, that too is indirect.

You cannot preach the divine directly, so there is no mission-like activity for me. When there is
no mission, there is no question of how to work it out, how to implement it, how to organize it. I
am against all sorts of organizations. Truth cannot be organized, and the moment one thinks of
organizing it the truth is killed, only the dead remains. What is living goes out of any organization,
because to know the truth is so individual, it cannot be organized. You can organize around an
ideology, not around a realization. You can organize around a mission, not around the unknown, not
around the realization of the unknown.