Does awareness and knowledge enrich and deepen a person's life?

Osho, you said one night that awareness brings knowledge and knowledge makes man aware of many problems and sufferings within himself. But isn't it true that awareness and knowledge give more richness, growth and depth to man's life? Please explain about this dialectical situation in man and the way to transcend the knowledge as well.

One rises into knowledge by throwing ignorance, and then one rises into Enlightenment by throwing knowledge. So it is good to teach knowledge to the ignorant, and it is good to teach again a different kind of ignorance to the knowledgeable ones. One has to become ignorant in a different dimension, with a different quality, just by throwing knowledge. So it is inevitable that one must come to knowledge, but then it is not inevitable that one must remain there. You must pass through it. That is a must, it cannot be avoided; but you must not remain there. You must move -- move from knowledge: this is what is meant. How to move from this knowledge? As I said, if you become aware of suffering, you transcend it. If you become aware of your knowledge, you transcend knowledge. Awareness is the only technique of transcendence, whatsoever may be the…

Osho, I feel that as awareness grows, sensitivity grows too—and I simply cannot bear it. Please guide me. Guide this blind one, Osho; I keep stumbling as I walk!

Certainly, as awareness grows, sensitivity will grow. Ordinarily we live in a kind of fog—unconscious, stupefied. Like a man drunk, lying in a gutter—he doesn’t smell the stench. You think, “Poor fellow, lying in a drain.” But he’s enjoying himself. He may be dreaming he’s resting in a palace, that he’s become president and is holding court! You see mud, filth, the gutter running past his nose. You imagine a terrible stink must be assailing him. But he’s unconscious. For stench to be felt, a little awareness is needed. In the morning when he wakes up and comes to, he’ll dust himself off and run home, bathe, put on sandalwood paste, do his prayers, dress up and sit in the living room. Then if you tell him, “Just go and lie down in that gutter again,” it will be impossible—now all the senses are alert. Just so it happens. As…

it remains the same universe but because you are no more the same your perspective is no more the same your attitude is no more the same your understanding is no more the same then in a sense it is the same universe but in another sense it is a totally different universe you have never known it before then everything starts having a tremendous beauty a luminous quality then everything is surrounded by a beautiful aura then everything has a tremendously graceful vibe about it one starts living in the mysterious, the miraculous then the whole life is poetry the whole existence is a song the whole universe is nothing but dance and celebration knowledge needs no awareness you can remain as unconscious as you like still you can go on accumulating knowledge because it is borrowed, it needs no awareness you are simply functioning like a computer you…

Man can make efforts for pleasure but not for bliss. Pleasure will not come on its own. You have to make efforts for it, because pleasure belongs to the outside world. The pleasure that comes through having money, the pleasure that comes through food, through sex, through political power, respectability -- these things never come as gifts. One has to work hard, struggle for them, one has to be aggressive and violent. If one simply sits silently and waits for a miracle to happen those miracles never happen, they have never happened. You have to run and you have to run faster than others because it is a competitive game. You are not alone; millions of people are running for the same goals. Pleasure is of the outside -- competitive; hence one has to make a tremendous effort to gain it.

Beloved Osho, does knowledge of the esoteric play any role on the path of awareness?

No. No knowledge -- esoteric or otherwise -- plays any role on the path except that of hindrance. Innocence helps, knowledge hinders. Be a child -- full of wonder, without knowing anything. One Indian saint was very much respected in India. There were only two men in India who were called mahatma. One was Mahatma Gandhi -- `mahatma' means `the great soul' -- and the second was Mahatma Bhagwandin. This second man used to stay with me whenever he passed the city I was living in. I used to go for a morning walk, for a night walk, and he was also very much in love with going for a walk. He was an old man, but immensely knowledgeable; he knew the names of all the trees -- Latin names, Greek names -- all the flowers. He was almost a walking encyclopedia. I told him, "You have wasted your whole…