Bhagwan: Knowledge is Not Power

From [HERE] You can go on thinking, accumulating information — but those are paper boats, they won't help in an ocean voyage. If you remain on the shore and go on talking about them, it is okay — paper boats are as good as real boats if you never go for the voyage; but if you go on the voyage with paper boats, then you will drown. And words are nothing but paper boats — not even that substantial. 

No original mind 

And when we accumulate knowledge, what do we do? Nothing changes inside. The being remains absolutely unaffected. Just like dust, information gathers around you — just like dust settling on a mirror: the mirror remains the same, only it loses its reflective quality. What you know through the mind makes no difference — your consciousness remains the same. In fact it becomes worse, because accumulated knowledge is just like dust around your consciousness; the consciousness reflects less and less and less.

The more you know, the less aware you become. When you are completely filled with scholarship, borrowed knowledge, you are already dead. Then nothing comes to you as your own. Everything is borrowed and parrot-like. 

Mind is a parrot. Mind is a computer, a bio-computer. It accumulates. It is never original, it cannot be. Whatsoever it has is borrowed, taken from others.  

Ideas are borrowed

You become original only when you transcend mind. When the mind is dropped, and consciousness faces existence directly, immediately, moment to moment in contact with existence, you become original. Then for the first time you are authentically your own. Otherwise all ideas are borrowed. You may quote scriptures, you may know by heart all the Vedas, the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, but that makes no difference — they are not your own. And knowledge that is not your own is dangerous, more dangerous than ignorance, because it is a hidden ignorance, and you will not be able to see that you are deceiving yourself. You are carrying false coins and thinking that you are a rich man. Sooner or later your poverty will be revealed. Then you will be shocked. 

This happens when death comes near, when you die. In the shock that death gives to you, suddenly you become aware that you have not gained anything — because only that is gained which is gained in being. 

How not to follow

You have accumulated fragments of knowledge from here and there, you may have become a great encyclopaedia, but...knowledge has to be transcended.

When there is no knowledge, knowing happens, because knowing is your quality — the quality of consciousness. It is just like a mirror: the mirror reflects whatsoever is there; consciousness reflects the truth that is always in front of you.

But the mind is in between — and it goes on chattering.... And you go with the mind. You miss. 

First: knowledge is borrowed, realise this. The very realisation becomes a dropping of it.... Learning means being responsive to whatsoever is around you.... This is a great learning, but not knowledge.

Become the truth

There is no way to find truth — except through finding it. There is simply no way unless you are without any mind within you — because mind is like a breeze, continuously flowing, and the flame goes on wavering. When mind is not there, the breeze stops, and the flame becomes unmoving. When your consciousness is an unmoving flame, you know the truth. You have to learn how not to follow the mind.

Nobody can give you the truth, nobody, not even a Buddha, a Jesus, a Krishna.... It is beautiful that truth is not transferable in any way. Unless you reach it, you cannot reach. Unless you become it, you never have it.