The greatest secret of all: become a hollow flute to allow

the divine songs to start flowing through you.....

What is knowledge?
And why are all those who have become awakened deeply against it?
Knowledge is a device to fight with existence.
Knowledge is a tool in the hands of the ego. Knowledge is the basic ego trip.

Just as money is, power is, knowledge is also - but more dangerous than money, more dangerous than
power, because knowledge is more subtle.
Lets revisit the old story of Adam's expulsion from paradise. That parable has multi dimensional
meanings.
One of the meanings is Lao Tzuan: God created the world, and he told Adam not to eat the fruit of the
tree of knowledge - but why particularly the tree of knowledge? In fact it seems absurd. Had he
prohibited Adam from murder, we could have understood; had he prohibited Adam from moving in sex,
then all the world religions would have understood. But God prohibited neither sex nor violence but
knowledge. Knowledge seems to be the original sin. But why should God prohibit it?
Why is knowledge dangerous? Because the very effort to know the secrets is aggression. The deepest
aggression. The very effort to unveil mysteries is violence. And the very effort to know means you are
getting ready to fight.
The part is trying to rebel; the part is trying to have its own centre of being separate from the whole. The
part is trying to become the centre of the whole itself!
Once I heard a great philosophical dialogue. I was sitting in a rich man's house, in his beautiful drawing-
room; he was chattering constantly, but then the phone rang in the other room and he had to leave me. It
was good that he left otherwise I would have missed this great dialogue. Just by my side there was a big
bowl, and two goldfish were swimming in it. The younger one suddenly stopped and asked the other: Do
you believe in God? The younger fish looked very philosophic - a seeker. The old one said in a guru-like
way: Yes, If there is no God who do you suppose changes our water every day? All concepts of God are
like this - Who do you suppose created the world? Who do you suppose goes on controlling the world,
managing the world? Just  small minds, small concepts.

God is not a concept. So remember when I say 'God prohibited' I don't mean that there is somebody who
prohibited. I simply mean that this is a way of saying something. EXISTENCE prohibits knowledge.
Existence allows innocence and prohibits knowledge because  in innocence the part merges with the
whole, remains one with the whole - and the moment it starts knowing, ego arises, ego crystallizes. The
part is no more flowing with the whole now, now it has its own mind - to do certain things, not to do certain
things; now it has its own choices, now it has its own likes and dislikes.
This is the meaning of the story: suddenly Adam and Eve were expelled from paradise. You must have
wondered where that paradise is. It is not a geographical place, it is a psychological state of
mind. Innocence is paradise, knowledge is expulsion.
Every child is born as Adam or Eve and remains in paradise. But then we start teaching him, we start
conditioning him. All these teachers and people who condition, all these people who try to make a child
knowledgeable, are the serpent who convinced Eve that if you eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge you
will become like God, you will have your own centre as God has his centre. If you know, you will become
something other than you are. The whole of knowledge is a seduction to become something which you
are not.
All knowledge is creating future, all knowledge is creating desire to become something which you
are not. Innocence is to enjoy that which you are, knowledge is to make the effort for that which you are
not. That serpent was the first teacher of the world. That serpent created a rift, and the rift was between
being and becoming. All knowledge creates this rift between your being and your becoming. It creates a
DREAM. It creates an allurement, an illusion that you can become like gods. But - you are not gods, you
can become like gods.
Innocence says you ARE, there is no need to become. Otherwise is not possible - you are part of the
whole, you have the same quality as the whole has, you are HOLY. Innocence says you are already that.
Nothing is to be done. You have simply to enjoy it and celebrate it and delight in it. Knowledge says: Try!
Make effort! Do things! Discipline yourself!
Remember, the day a child starts thinking of the future he loses innocence. Only up to that
moment, while he goes on enjoying the present, is he a child, innocent; uncorrupted is his being.
Becoming has not entered in, he is still in paradise. Paradise is nothing, paradise is a capacity to enjoy
yourself right here and now. You are in paradise, but still you have lost it because you cannot enjoy
here and now. You are thinking, planning for the future, somewhere when you become like gods, then
you will enjoy it. Knowledge creates future. Knowledge creates desire. Knowledge creates
becoming. Knowledge is SANSAR, the wheel. When you are in the wheel you go on round and round
and round reaching nowhere. Knowledge is the world.
Does a rose flower try to become a lotus flower, or a lotus flower try to become something else... they are
not stupid, but they are still part of paradise. The rosebush just by your side is still in paradise but you are
not. The child just sitting by your side may be still in paradise but you are not. I am just here before you,
and in paradise, but you are not. So paradise is not a question of geography, it is a question of inner
space. Knowledge creates the rift, it corrupts innocence, it makes you old, otherwise you would remain
always like children. And when God says, and he says perfectly rightly, that 'unless you become like
children you will not enter my kingdom of God,' that is the secret key to open the closed doors of
paradise again. Knowledge expels you, not God.
The moment you become knowledgeable you are expelled automatically, nobody expels you. And the
moment you drop knowledge and become innocent again you are accepted back, nobody accepts you.
Knowledge is a device to fight with the whole, and how can you fight with the whole? It is just like a drop
of ocean fighting with the ocean; it is going to be a miserable, very very miserable, hellish phenomenon.
How can the drop fight with the ocean? It can go on fighting, but there is no possibility of it ever
conquering the whole. It will be always in defeat, and that is the hell, always defeated, always a failure.
And Lao Tzu says: Knowledge is the only sin. And all those who have awakened to their inner
innocence say the same. Drop knowledge, and become innocent, childlike again. Regain your lost
childhood, and suddenly you have become a sage, a saint.
THE STUDENT OF KNOWLEDGE AIMS AT LEARNING DAY BY DAY,
THE STUDENT OF TAO AIMS AT LOSING DAY BY DAY.
Those who are interested in knowledge, their whole effort is to know more and more and more. They go
on accumulating, and the more they accumulate, the more they are burdened. You can look around
- everybody seems to be carrying such a heavy load, crushed under his own accumulations; suffering,
but still clinging to it because he thinks it is something precious. If you watch yourself you will be surprised
that you go on clinging to your agony; you go on desiring that some day, somewhere, the ecstasy will
happen, but you go on clinging to your agony, you never drop it. Remember, it is not clinging to you, it
cannot cling to you, knowledge cannot cling to you, you cling to it. Not only do you cling, you go on
growing it, you go on helping it to grow more and more. 
The whole effort is to learn more, to accumulate more, to know more. And the more he knows the less he
becomes inside, because then the being is lost more. Then he becomes a heap of information, a
junkyard, and he cannot find himself, where he is. He is lost in the jungle of his own knowledge.
Just the opposite is the student of Tao, the student of truth, not of knowledge, the student of being, not of
becoming. He is just the opposite. He goes on losing day by day, he unburdens himself, he unlearns.
A German philosopher came to see Maharishi Ramana. Of course he had travelled long, and he must
have thought much about what he was going to ask. When he reached Ramana he said, I have come to
sit near you, to learn much. Ramana looked at him with deep compassion and said, Then you have come
to the wrong person because here I teach only unlearning. If you have come to learn you have come to
the wrong place, go somewhere else; but if you are ready to unlearn, mature enough to unlearn, then you
can stay here. He was right. Near a sage you go to unlearn.
You come to a sage to unlearn. And that is the greatest surrender. It is easy to surrender your wealth,
because it is outside you.

 It is outside! You can drop it easily. But your knowledge becomes an inner phenomenon, it gets inside
you, it is difficult to surrender it. It is easy to learn a thing, it is very very difficult to unlearn it.
Unless you move beyond the mind, for you are identified with the mind, you cannot drop it. All meditations
are techniques to move from the mind, to gain a little distance from the mind. When you are separate
from the mind, only then is there a possibility to drop something, to drop knowledge, to unlearn. That is
his gain. He gains by losing day by day. That is his learning, he learns by unlearning day by day.
Medicine is medicinal, just like that, meditation is also medicinal. It makes you whole, integrated, healthy.
Pay attention, listen to it as meditatively as possible.
When you listen meditatively you understand,
when you listen concentratedly you learn.
If you listen with concentration, you will gain knowledge,
if you listen meditatively, you will lose knowledge.
And the difference is very subtle. When you listen attentively, attention means a tension, it means you are
tense, too eager to learn, to absorb, to know. You are interested in knowledge, concentration is the way
towards knowledge; mind focussed on one thing of course, learns more.
Meditation is unfocussed mind, you simply listen silently, not with a tension in the mind, not with an urge
to know and learn, no, with total relaxedness, in a let go, in an opening of your being.
You listen, not to know, you simply listen to understand.
All schools, colleges, universities, teach concentration, because the goal is to memorize. Here, the goal is
not to memorize, the goal is not to learn at all, the goal is to unlearn. Listen silently, and don't think that
you will forget. There is no need to remember; only that which is rubbish has to be remembered, because
you go on forgetting it. Whenever you hear the truth there is no need to remember it because it
cannot be forgotten. You may not be able to remember the words but you will remember the essence -
and that will not be part of your memory, it will be part of your being.
This is the greatest secret of all, the greatest miracle that can happen to anybody, and that is - you
simply become a passage, a vehicle, a hollow flute, and divine songs start flowing through
you. You just don't come between you and yourself. That is the whole of all yoga, tantra, religion. Please,
put yourself aside, don't come in the way. Just stand by the side and let the chariot of God pass.
If you can learn only one thing - how to stand aside, you have learnt all.  And then you become aware
that everything is going on by itself. The whole is working. The part is not needed to work, it only needs to
participate. It only needs not to create trouble and conflict. It only needs to be with the whole.
To be with the whole is to be religious. 
To be against the whole is to be worldly. 
-Leslie Gelb.
Especially for the traders who keep chattering about their "doings", it is important to surrender the doer at
the end of the day and start being innocent again. It is only by dissolving the doer...either by a small
meditative talk with God at the temple or at your own sacred place, expressing gratitude for choosing you
as His flute to pass divine songs..both success & failures are His alone..that you keep your sanity to face
another day with humility. And this must roll on till your last day on this earth. Get rich quietly.