you have about her or him? The image that you have is the past. So to know is to
know something that’s over, something that’s gone, something that you have
experienced. Right? When you say, “I know,” you are looking at the present with
the knowledge of the past.
Now, I want to know myself, understand myself. Myself is a very living
thing; it isn’t a static thing; it is changing all the time, adding, subtracting; it’s
taking on, putting off. One day I want joy, I want pleasure; the next day I am
frightened. Everything is going on in me. Now, I want to learn about that. If I
come to it saying, “I know what I am,” then I won’t learn, will I? I must come to
it each time as though I am learning about it for the first time. I look at myself
and in looking at myself I find I am ugly or extraordinarily sensitive, or this or
that. And in looking and translating what I am looking at it becomes knowledge,
and with that knowledge I look at myself the next minute. Therefore what I see
will not be fresh; it will be seen with the eyes of the known. So, to learn about
myself there must be the ending of knowing myself each time so that I am
learning; each time there is a learning about myself afresh.
Now, the one who says he knows does not know. Saying “I have experienced
God. I know what it means to have enlightenment” is the same as saying “I know
the way to go to the station, because the station is a fixed place.” There are many
paths to the “station” and there are many gurus for each path, and they all say, “I
know; I have experienced.” Which means what? They have known something
and they hold on to something that has been experienced, that is dead. There is
no path to truth because truth is a living thing; it isn’t a fixed, static, dead thing.
Like you. What are you? Are you static? Aren’t you changing every day for the
worse or the better? So I can never say, “I know you.” It’s a most stupid thing to
say. When I say, “I know you,” it is a kind of consolation, a kind of security for
myself to think I know you.
Do watch it; don’t bother about your questions. When you understand this
one question completely, you have understood so many things. So distrust
anyone who says he knows, anyone who says he will lead you to enlightenment,
who says that if you do these things you will achieve. Have nothing to do with
such people. They are dead people because they are only living in the past with
things they do not know. Enlightenment, truth, is a timeless state, and you cannot
come upon it through time. And knowledge is time. So, as we said, die every day
to every knowledge that you have and be fresh the next morning. Such a mind
never says, “I know,” because it’s always flowering, it’s always coming new.
Q: You don’t want us to read the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, or the great epics.
What’s wrong with them? Why are you so hostile toward our great saints?
[Laughter]
K: First of all, I don’t know your great saints. I don’t want to know them. I don’t
see the point of knowing them. I want to learn about myself, not about them.
They were probably conditioned by their culture, by the society, the religion they
were born in. A Christian saint is not accepted in India as a saint. Your saints are
conditioned by the culture in which they have lived. We are not hostile to them;