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Thread: The Art of Dying

  1. #31
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    The Three Types of Fool....
    Question 5
    WHO CAN BECOME THE BETTER TRUTH SEEKER: A LEARNED FOOL OR AN UNLEARNED FOOL?

    AND FOR THE INTELLIGENTSIA, PLEASE EXPLAIN YOUR DICTUM: 'BLESSED ARE THE FOOLS'...


    The Blessed Fool

    I don't see any intelligentsia here -- except blessed fools. Maybe the questioner can be excluded -- Pundit Swami Yoga Chinmaya. He can be excluded. But otherwise I don't see any intelligentsia here.

    There is a very strange saying of Mohammed -- that 'heaven is mostly occupied by fools'. When I came across it even I was surprised. I had never expected Mohammed to be so revolutionary. A tremendous saying! What does he mean by it -- that heaven is mostly occupied by fools'? But by and by, looking at you, I felt that he was right! Here also it is mostly occupied by fools.

    Let me explain to you how many types of fools there are...
    The first: one who knows not, and knows not that he knows not. The simple fool. Then the second: one who knows not but knows that he knows. The complex fool, the learned fool. And the third: one who knows that he knows not -- the blessed fool.

    Everybody is born as a simple fool -- that is the meaning of 'simpleton'. Every child is a simple fool. He knows not that he knows not. He has not yet become aware of the possibility of knowing -- that is the Christian parable of Adam and Eve.

    God said to them, 'Don't eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge.' Before that accident of eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge, they were simple fools. They knew nothing. Of course, they were tremendously happy, because when you know not, it is difficult to be unhappy. Unhappiness needs a little training; unhappiness needs a little efficiency to create it; unhappiness needs a little technology. You can not create hell without knowledge. How can you create hell without knowledge?


    Adam and Eve were like small children. Every time a child is born an Adam is born. And he lives for a few years -- at the most four years, that time is becoming less and less every day. He lives in paradise because he knows not how to create misery. He trusts life; he enjoys small things -- pebbles on the shore, or seashells. He gathers them as if he has found a treasure. Ordinary coloured stones look like Kohinoors. Everything fascinates him -- the dew-drops in the morning sun, the stars in the night, the moon, the flowers, the butterflies -- everything is a sheer fascination.

    But then by and by he starts knowing: a butterfly is just a butterfly. a flower is just a flower. There is nothing much in it. He starts knowing the names: this is a rose, and that is a champa and that is a chameli and this is a lotus. And by and by those names become barriers. The more he knows, the more he is cut off from life as such. He becomes 'heady'. Now he lives through the head, not through his totality. That is the meaning of the fall. He has eaten of the tree of knowledge. Every child has to eat of the tree of knowledge.

    Every child is so simple that he has to become complex -- that is part of the growth. So every child moves from simple foolishness towards complex foolishness. There are different degrees of complex foolishness -- a few people only matriculate, a few people become graduates, a few become post-graduates, a few become doctors and PhD's -- there are degrees. But every child has to taste something of knowledge because the temptation to know is great. Anything that is standing there unknown becomes dangerous, a danger. It has to be known because with knowledge we will be able to cope with it. Without knowledge how are we going to cope with it? So every child is bound to become knowledgeable.

    So the first type of fool necessarily, out of necessity, has to become the second type of fool. But from the second the third may happen or may not happen, there is no necessity.

    The third is possible only when the second type of foolishness has become a great burden -- one has carried knowledge too much, to the extreme; one has become just the head and has lost all sensitivity, all awareness. all living; one has become just theories and scriptures and dogmas and words and words whirling around in the mind. One day, if the person is aware, he has to drop all that. Then he becomes the third type of fool -- the blessed fool.


    Then he attains to a second childhood; again he is a child. Remember Jesus saying, 'In my kingdom of God only those who are like small children will be welcomed.' But remember, he says LIKE small children, he does not say small children. Small children cannot enter; they have to enter the ways of the world, they have to be poisoned in the world and then they have to clean themselves. That experience is a must.

    So, he does not say 'small children' he says those who are like small children. That word 'like' is very significant. It means those who are not children and yet are like children.

    Children are saints but their sainthood is only because they have not yet experienced the temptations of sin. Their saintliness is very simple. It has not much worth in it because they have not earned it, they have not worked for it, they have not yet been tempted against it. The temptations are coming sooner or later. A thousand and one temptations will be there and the child will be pulled in many directions. I am not saying that he should not go in those directions. If he inhibits himself, represses himself from going he will remain always the first type of fool. He will not become part of Jesus' kingdom, he will not be able to fill Mohammed's paradise -- no.

    He will simply remain ignorant. His ignorance will be nothing but a repression, it will not be an unburdening.

    First he has to attain to knowledge, first he has to sin, and only after sin and knowledge and disobeying God and going into the wildness of the world, going astray, living his own life of the ego, will he become capable one day to drop it all.

    Not everybody will drop it all. All children move from the first foolishness to the second, but from the second only a few blessed ones move to the third -- hence they are called blessed fools.

    The blessed fool is the greatest possibility of understanding because he has come to know that knowledge is futile, he has come to know that all knowledge is a barrier to knowing.

    Knowledge is a barrier to knowing so he drops knowledge and becomes a pure knower. He simply attains to clarity of vision. His eyes are empty of theories and thoughts. His mind is no Longer a mind; his mind is just intelligence, pure intelligence. His mind is no longer cluttered with junk, his mind is no longer cluttered with borrowed knowledge. He is simply aware. He is a flame of awareness.

    Tertullian has divided knowledge into two categories: one he calls ignorant knowledge -- that is the second fool, the ignorant knowledge. The pundit knows and yet does not know, because he has not known it as his own experience. He has listened, memorized; he is a parrot, a computer at the most.

    Just yesterday I received a letter from a sannyasin, Ninad, from America. He says, 'Osho, I am very happy. And in the office where I work the computer every morning welcomes me. The computer says, 'Swamaji, Namaste."' Now he is very happy. And he knows well it is a computer which is saying, 'Swamaji, Namaste.' There is nobody. But even the word makes him happy. He knows it is just a machine -- there is nobody, there is no heart in it. Nobody is saying it.

    When a pundit says something he is a computer. He says, 'Swamaji, Namaste.' It is parrot-like. Tertullian says this is the knowledge which is really not knowledge, but ignorance in the garb of knowledge, ignorance in the disguise of knowledge. It is a fall, a fall from the childhood innocence. It is a corruption. It is a corrupt state of mind. Cunning, clever, but corrupt.

    Then, Tertullian says, there is another type of knowledge which he calls 'knowing ignorance'. This is when a person drops all knowledge, theories, looks directly, looks into life as it is, has no ideas about it, allows reality as it is, encounters reality immediately, directly, with no knowledge about it, faces and encounters reality, allows that which is to have its flowering. He simply listens to reality, looks into reality -- and he says, 'I don't know.' He is the child Jesus talks about -- he is not really a child, he is like a child.

    And I say, 'Yes, blessed are the fools because they shall inherit all the blessings of God.' From the first, the second is automatic; from the second, the third is not automatic. From the second to the third the leap has to be a decision -- that's what sannyas is. You decide that you have had enough of knowledge; now you would like to be ignorant again, you would like to be a child again, reborn. I am a midwife here. I can help you to become fools.

    And remember, unless you have attained to the third, your whole life is a sheer wastage. Adam disobeyed God. Every Adam has to disobey. Adam fell from grace. Every Adam has to fall. Adam ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Every Adam has to become knowledgeable, it is a natural process. I have come across thousands of parables but nothing to compare with this parable of Adam's fall. It is the most pregnant parable ever.

    That's why I come to it again and again with new meanings, it goes on revealing new meanings.

    And when Adam turned into Christ he became the third type of fool. Christ is the third type of fool -- the blessed fool. What Adam did, Christ undid. Christ returns back in tremendous obedience, innocence.


    The rabbis, the Jewish religious people, the priests of the temple of Jerusalem, they were learned fools. They could not tolerate Jesus. The learned fools are always disturbed by the blessed fools. They had to murder him because his very presence was uncomfortable; his very presence was such a pinnacle of peace, love, compassion and light, that all the learned fools became aware that their whole being was at stake. If this man lived then they were fools, and the only way to get rid of this man was to destroy him so they could again become the learned people of the race.


    Socrates was killed by knowledgeable people; Mansoor was killed by other knowledgeable people. There has always been a great conflict whenever the third type of fool arises in the world. All the pundits gather together; their whole business is at stake.

    All that they know is what this man says is foolish. And they also know deep in their hearts that it is foolish because it has done nothing for them. No bliss, no benediction has come out of it. They are as they always have been -- their knowledge has not touched their hearts, has not become a transformation at all. They know it deep in their hearts, that's why they become even more uncomfortable. They want to destroy such men because with the very possibility of such a man they are nobodies. Without Jesus they were the great priests of the temple; with Jesus suddenly they were nobodies.

    In the presence of Jesus there was God himself and all the priests felt their glory had been taken away.

    From the second to the third only very courageous people take the jump. It is a quantum leap. Religion is only for the very courageous, in fact, for dare-devils. It is not for cowards.

    A few anecdotes....

    The elderly man who liked his drink, but was also learned and bookish, was hauled before the bar of justice in a country town. 'You're charged with being drunk and disorderly,' snapped the judge. 'Have you any reason why sentence should not be pronounced?'

    'Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn,' began the prisoner in a flight of oratory. 'I am not so debased as Poe, so profligate as Byron, so ungrateful as Keats, so intemperate as Burns, so timid as Tennyson, so vulgar as Shakespeare, so....' 'That'll do,' interrupted the judge. 'Ninety days -- and, officer, take down those names he mentioned and round up those guys also. They're as bad as he is.'

    Now the judge is the first type of fool and the judged is the second type of fool. And the earth is mostly inhabited by these two types of fools. The third type -- a Jesus, a Buddha -- rarely happens.

    The Indian term for fool is 'BUDDHU' -- it comes from Buddha. When Buddha renounced his kingdom and many, many people started following him, the whole country was in a turmoil. People started saying to others, 'Don't be a buddhu, don't be a fool, don't follow this man.' People started calling those who followed Buddha, buddhus.

    He is a buddhu, he is a fool, because he renounced the kingdom. Who else would renounce a kingdom? People hanker, desire, dream for the kingdom, and he has renounced it -- he must be a fool.

    The third type is a very rare phenomenon. But it happens. And if you are courageous enough you can take the jump.

    The second anecdote.

    When somebody tells me that he did the best he could and I figure that it was not good enough, I put this fellow in the same class as the motorcycle cop who stopped a motorist and started to write a ticket.

    'Officer,' this motorist protested with great indignation, 'I was not speeding! You are permitted to go fifty miles an hour, and I was only going forty.'

    'I know that,' the motorcycle cop answered defensively, 'but I can't catch up with the really fast ones.'

    The third fool is very fast. Where angels fear to tread, there too he goes unheeded. The third fool is very fast, that's why I call his leap the quantum leap. The third fool rushes out of sheer courage and energy. The second fool is not so courageous. He goes on collecting pieces from here and there. He does not have that much courage or that great a speed. He borrows knowledge -- rather than knowing it himself, he borrows knowledge. That way it is cheaper and he can purchase it wholesale.

    If you want to know reality directly, it is very arduous. It asks for total sacrifice. The second fool only tries up to a certain limit. The limit is: if he can get knowledge cheaply he is ready, but if there is anything to be put at stake then he recoils back.

    Be courageous. Unless you have infinite courage you will not be able to become the third type, the blessed fool.

    And the last anecdote.

    Ordinarily nobody remains in the first state, that is only a theoretical state. Everybody has to pass out of it, more or less -- the difference is of degrees, of quantity but not quality.

    So people are almost always found in the second category. From the second to the third, wherever you are, remember this rule....

    Don't have a closed mind. Be like the old maid who caught a burglar in her room. He pleaded with her, 'Please, lady, let me go. I ain't never did anything wrong.'

    The old maid answered him, 'Well, it is never too late to learn.'

    And that's what I would like to say to you. If you are in the second category' if you think you are the intelligentsia, then it is never too late to learn. Knowledge you have enough, now learn knowing. Knowledge clutters the mind as dust gathers on the mirror.

    Knowledge is not knowing -- knowing has a totally different quality and flavour to it. It has the flavour of learning.

    Let me tell you the distinction. Knowledge means that you go on gathering information, experience, categorizing, memorizing, learning means you don't gather anything, you simply remain available to what is happening or is going to happen. Learning is a state of open mind. The more you know, the more you become closed because then you cannot avoid the knowledge that you have, it always comes in-between.

    If you are listening to me and you are a knowledgeable man, a pundit, then you cannot listen to me directly & simply. You cannot listen to me. While I am speaking, deep inside you are judging, evaluating, criticizing -- there is no dialogue, there is a debate. You may look silent but you are not silent, your knowledge goes on revolving. It destroys everything that I am saying. It distorts. And whatsoever reaches you is not the real thing, whatsoever reaches you is only that which your knowledge allows to reach to you.

    A learning mind is one which listens attentively with no interference from the past, which is just an opening, a mirror-like phenomenon, which simply reflects whatsoever is. If you start learning, you will attain knowing. And knowing will help you to see that you don't know at all. A person who has come to know reality becomes aware of his ignorance -- he knows that he knows not. In this knowing, ignorance is the mutation, the transfiguration, the revolution.

    So take a jump from the second state of foolishness to the third state of being a blessed fool. All my blessings are for those who are blessed fools.

    The Art of Dying, Chapter 5
    Last edited by turiya, 24th December 2018 at 18:08.

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  3. #32
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    Quote Originally posted by Chris View Post
    Did you ever meet him? I wonder what he was like in real life. I can only base my opinion about him on second and third-hand accounts, which tend to be biased.
    I agree with you Chris :

    If it is from hearsay it is a believe. Just like all of the other propaganda. Only meeting one and being with one is the way to experience someone. Just like life itself.
    Last edited by Black Panther, 24th December 2018 at 23:09.

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  5. #33
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    Quote Originally posted by turiya View Post
    Question 5
    WHO CAN BECOME THE BETTER TRUTH SEEKER: A LEARNED FOOL OR AN UNLEARNED FOOL?

    AND FOR THE INTELLIGENTSIA, PLEASE EXPLAIN YOUR DICTUM: 'BLESSED ARE THE FOOLS'...


    The Blessed Fool
    Great post, Turiya

    Yes, The Fool. Nice one. It's the Jump we can make by letting go of the ego. The ego death and thrusting oneself by jumping into who we really are
    We can only experience flow if we can let go of every-thing and every-one. Totally unattached.

    Have you Jumped already ?

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    That is the best Fool yet. I really like the image.

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