What is the significance of understanding in the context of the ashram?

Osho, on seeing and understanding what did you give even someone as foolish as me a place in the ashram? For what?

The question is from Krishna Priya. That’s why. One who becomes aware of their foolishness is no longer a fool. The real fools are those who imagine themselves wise, who think they know. When the remembrance arises, “I am a fool,” a ray begins to enter one’s life; dawn draws near; the night starts breaking. “I don’t know”—this is the first step toward knowing. “I know”—this creates an obstruction. Hence learned scholars never reach the divine. Simple-hearted people, plain, guileless, who make no claims, who have no support from scriptures, no grip on doctrines, who say, “We don’t know anything”—such people arrive quickly. You ask: “On what seeing and understanding did you grant even someone as foolish as me a place in the ashram?” Exactly this—that you are not a scholar. And if there is awareness of foolishness, foolishness will break. There are things that die through awareness. As when,…

Osho, you say the same thing in countless ways. But when I listen to you, it feels as if I am hearing it for the first time. And I feel so much joy that I don’t feel like going back home. What should I do—what can I do—so that I can just keep listening to you!

You will feel as if you have been made to rise out of season, before time—as if you were not yet to go and yet had to go. And if you go in that way, your home will become even more desolate than before. I do not want to make your home desolate; I want to make your home a temple. I want that when you go home, your home’s new form is revealed. I do not want to tear you away from home, from the world, from family life. That is the newness of my sannyas: I do not want to sever you from the world; I want to join you to the world in such a way that your connection with the world becomes a connection with the Divine. Let the world no longer be a barrier between you and the Divine; let it become a means. If…

Question: OSHO, WHAT IS UNDERSTANDING AND WHAT IS MISUNDERSTANDING? That's the difference here. I am not telling you Hinduism is right or Christianity is right or Judaism is right. I am simply telling you mind is wrong and no-mind is right. Now, no-mind cannot have any adjective: it cannot be Hindu, cannot be Mohammedan, cannot be Christian. Mind can have an adjective. Mind will have an adjective, is bound to have an adjective. It will have a certain definition, a certain limitation. No-mind is vast like the great space; it is void, it is clear. It is clarity, it is transparency. But we all live in our prejudices because we are all past-oriented. Whatsoever had been taught to us we go on repeating, whatsoever has been told to us we will go on telling to our children. That's how diseases are transferred from one generation to another generation.

The first step in sannyas is to get rid of knowledge and the second step is to get rid of ignorance and the journey is complete. But first one has to get rid of knowledge because it is knowledge that covers your ignorance, protects your ignorance. It gives you a false notion that you know, when in reality you know nothing. But people are even afraid to ask the question 'Do I know? Do I know god? Do I know truth? Do I know love? Do I know what this universe is? Who am I?' People are afraid of asking these questions, afraid because they will bring you to your ignorance, you will have to encounter your ignorance, and ignorance is very shattering to the ego. Knowledge is a nourishment to the ego, so everybody wants to remain knowledgeable.

Osho, you explain with so much love, yet nothing sticks with an ignorant fellow like me. Whereas the Vedas, Puranas, the Gita, etc., I understand perfectly well. Then why is it that I cannot understand you?

People aren’t ready to listen even to a living man; what to say of books! Put flowers on a book—it can’t do anything. Burn a book—it can’t do anything. But if you come and sit in my satsang… And Swaroopananda is a sannyasin! He has shown courage. For one who “understands” the Vedas, Puranas, Gita—to become a sannyasin is an act of bravery. If he had become a sannyasin in some old-style monastery—that was easy. He became my sannyasin—he is courageous. There is strength there, inner strength. Don’t be afraid! Perhaps my words are not getting through because the Vedas, Gita, Upanishads are stuffed in your head—rammed in. First they have to be taken out. I will take them out—don’t worry; that is my job. That is my skill. I speak on the Upanishads—and then I remove the Upanishads from your skull. I speak on the Gita—and you think, “We’re…