CHAPTER 2.

NO MISSION, NO MESSAGE

which has been got through living not through scriptures, not through teachers – not borrowed, but
lived.

Religious knowledge is only knowledge. Why do I say so? Because science can know something
about things. When science knows something, it knows something about it. It is always about and
about; it is always an acquaintance from the outside. A scientist knowing a flower... he knows
something about it! Everything that can be known about it, he knows. He tries to know more and
more, but it always remains information. He has not gone into it, he has not become one with the
flower. He has not known it from the inside, he has known it from the outside. Knowing from the
outside is what I mean by information. Knowing from inside is what I mean by knowledge. And
man can know only himself from the inside; everything else will be known from the outside. So only
religious knowledge, knowledge which means a knowing of oneself, knowing the true inner reality...
such knowledge only is true knowledge, because it knows, it is not information about oneself. But
we can gain and cultivate information about ourselves. Then again it becomes non-religious. So,
scriptures are not religious. They may be scientific or not scientific, but no scripture can be religious
because it can only give information: it can give what Mahavira knows, what Buddha knows. I can
know what Buddha knows, but that is not my knowledge.

SECOND QUESTIONER: HOW IS THAT A HINDRANCE?

It is a hindrance because when someone comes to conceive that he knows and really he does not
know – he has only been collecting information and this collection of inner information gives him a
conception of knowledge – then he won’t try for further knowledge, then he won’t try for himself.
Then it will become a hindrance, because he has come to conclude that he knows, and really he
doesn’t know. This misconception of knowing will be the hindrance. And further, when the mind is
enclosed in information - and there is much information around the mind, much knowledge, much
scripture – a barrier is erected between oneself and that which is. When you come to a flower, if you
don’t know anything about it, you have to contemplate it. But if you know something about it, then
you pass it by, because the barrier of knowledge... you know, I know about it: this is a rose, this is a
beautiful flower, you say, and you pass on. There has been no living contact between that which is
called the rose and the mind which is in a wrongly conceived enclosure of knowledge. There is no
living contact. The rose can be known, not through any knowledge about the rose, but through the
direct contact with its living existence. But still a rose is something outside. You cannot even think
about yourSELF, because who is to think? And every type of information is a part of your thinking.
It makes your mind a thinking machine. You go on thinking and thinking, and reading and reading,
and you go around and around a concept. But if one is to know oneself, one has to cease to think.
Because, the very thinking leads you afar.

SECOND QUESTIONER: THEN WE SHOULD NOT READ BOOKS ABOUT...?

No, I am not saying that. I am not saying that you should not read, neither am I saying that the
information is of no use. I am not saying that. I am saying this: you must read, you must know,
but you must know also that this knowing is simply information, and not knowledge for you. If you
are aware of it, then it can’t become a hindrance, then your mind is always open. You are always
ready to learn, you are always ready to discover. Then you have not arrived, you are still searching,
discovering. But a man of knowledge comes to think of himself, that he has arrived. A pundit, thinks
of himself as a man who has arrived. Then there is no travel, then there is no mutation, then there

Early Talks 6 Osho