When the whole world is running after knowledge and information technology, there is a voice of caution raised by Osho. He warns us of the downside of pursuing borrowed knowledge.
And one of the genius music composers of the world, A.R. Rehman has heard this voice and heeds the warning. In a recent interview to a TV channel Rehman said: “The music has got something in it which is unexplainable. We are all filled with knowledge, we are all filled with facts and figures, things, Internet and they put a screen on your wisdom, they put a screen on your divine knowledge inside. Somewhere I read a quote of Osho, saying: ‘You use knowledge and switch it off whenever you don’t need it.’ And I think it’s bang on, it’s absolutely right. We need to hear our internal voice. We get carried away with intellect and information. We need to switch it off and switch it on when we need it.”
A knowledge-focus is said to be the third wave of human socio-economic development. The first wave being the Agricultural Age with wealth defined as ownership of land. In the second wave, the Industrial Age, wealth was based on ownership of factories. In the Knowledge Age, wealth is based upon the ownership of knowledge and the ability to use that knowledge. Knowledge-worker is a new term coined by Peter Drucker, the founder of modern management, in 1959 to describe what was then a new trend, an important segment of the workforce concerned primarily with knowledge and the manipulation of information.
But this knowledge is merely gathering information collected by others. And Osho is warning us against this kind of knowledge. He says, “When you know too much — you have known the scriptures, you have known the past, the tradition — then suddenly you become aware of the futility of it all, suddenly you become aware that this is not knowledge. This is borrowed! This is not your own existential experience, this is not what you have come to know. Others may have known it, you have simply gathered it. It is just rubbish gathered from other doors. Remember, knowing is alive only when you know, when it is your immediate, direct experience. But when you know from others it is just memory, not knowledge. Memory is dead. You can drop all this knowledge. In that dropping a new type of ignorance arises within you. This ignorance is not the ignorance of the ignorant, this is how a wise man is.”
Creative composers like Rehman feel the burden of knowledge because they need a virgin empty space in the mind, so that it can generate new ideas. Switching off the knowledge button is such a relief! It is the source of creative energy.
Amrit Sadhana is in the management team of Osho International Meditation Resort, Pune. She facilitates meditation workshops around the country and abroad.
