According to Osho, spiritual teachers oppose pandits out of compassion: pedantry is the deepest pit, built of borrowed knowledge that blocks awakening. A pandit parrots scriptures; a Buddha knows from direct experience. He is not against persons but the habit of secondhand knowing. Teachers warn so seekers stop echoing others’ words and become the scripture through their own lived awareness.
They warn against being book-smart only, because copying others’ ideas stops you from finding your own inner light.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, why are you so opposed to politics?
I am not against politics. Politics is only a symptom. I am against the inferiority complex in man; that inner sense of smallness. And politics is a symptom of that very disease. The more a person suffers from an inferiority complex, the more he hankers after position. The more he is filled with inferiority, the more he hankers after wealth. Understand this. An inferiority complex means: inside you feel, “I am nothing, a nobody, a two-bit fellow.” But this rankles. “I—and two-bit!” The mind cannot swallow it. “I will show the world that I am somebody. I’ll become a prime minister, a president. I’ll amass the world’s wealth and prove to the world that I am somebody.” Politics is the device to fill that inner sense of two-bit-ness, meaninglessness, emptiness. Politics means ambition—whether for money or for office, it makes no difference. Sometimes it is even the ambition for renunciation;…
Question: Third question: Osho, why is Gorakhnath against pandits? This is the language of experience. A well-read parrot cannot speak like this. The well-read parrot begins to whimper; he forgets the name of Ram and starts praising the cat—“Mother, spare me! I made a mistake. From today I’ll worship and pray only to you—why was I lost in Ram-ram!” Gorakh says: The one who merely mouths doctrine, call him a student; the one who reads the Vedas is but a grandson. The one who lives the way is our master; we are companions of the one who lives. The one who only repeats hearsay is a student; not a knower—at best a student: all right, he is studying. And even this—only if what he repeats has been heard from a living master—then he is a disciple; that is his status.
Osho, why have priests and pundits always opposed awakening human beings? And why do the masses keep getting caught in their nets again and again?
I went to Surat. A friend said, “Listening to you felt refreshing. I was born in a sect where there is a strange arrangement. You donate a lakh rupees to the sect’s chief mullah now, and he writes a letter in God’s name—an official certificate—detailing everything that will be arranged for you in heaven for that lakh. And when you die, that letter is placed on your chest in the grave. People are doing this. The money doesn’t reach God. Nor does the letter—because it stays right there in the grave! Who is going to carry it?” I said, “Dig up a few graves and see—you’ll find the letters lying right there.” He said, “They are still there; they haven’t gone anywhere!” Yet people keep giving. Greed! Man is so weak he is easy to exploit. It is easy to frighten him, to unnerve him. And the whole art of…
Osho, what is the definition of God?
Words are very small. If you say God is light, then what of darkness? The scriptures have said that God is light. Suppose we accept this as a definition—then what about darkness? Where will darkness go? Darkness is too; in fact it is far more than light. Light sometimes is and sometimes is not; darkness is always, eternal. Where will you place darkness? If you say God is light, darkness is left out. If you say God is darkness, then light is left out. If you say God is both darkness and light, a contradiction arises: they cannot be together. Try to have both darkness and light in the same room. If you bring in light, darkness disappears; if you preserve darkness, you cannot have light. Then how can both be together? That becomes an impossibility. So you cannot say “both” either. Then the fourth device is to say: it…
These so-called knowers have not the tiniest drop of knowing. They cannot receive it either. They have plastered themselves with the oil of scriptures—they are slick pots; the rain falls and not a drop clings. Have you seen anything slicker than a pundit? Water cannot touch him. When I was small, our neighbor sold ghee. His clothes were soaked with ghee—an extreme miser; perhaps he owned no second set of clothes. I saw him bathe—he did not remove them; he poured water over himself and it would not wet the cloth. I have seen no such wonder again! Such is the pundit. Knowledge the size of a sesame seed does not enter them—better to keep quiet. Do not knock your head against pundits. Paltu says: avoid them; they are great fools. Neither love’s arrow nor meditation’s shaft has pierced them; no dawning of wisdom.