Whole Existence is a celebration !

ISLAM — THE SWORD OF PEACE?

"I would not like to be put in the company of these people called messiahs, paigambaras, avataras, tirthankaras. I am just an ordinary man, and I feel their company is disgusting.

Let me give you a few examples: Hindus believe that Parasurama is one of the incarnations of God. Parasurama murdered his mother because his father was suspicious.... In fact, almost every husband is suspicious of the wife, every wife is suspicious of the husband. The very phenomenon of marriage exists because you cannot trust, hence you have to bring the law in between you.

Otherwise, love would have been enough. 

I am not an avatara. I would prefer just to be an ordinary man. And there is so much beauty in just being ordinary, so much peace, so much joy, so much blessedness, that who wants to be a messiah? Who wants to be a paigambara?

Mohammed is the paigambara. He had nine wives. It suits a paigambara, because in those days a person's prestige was counted by how many wives he had — he had nine wives, and God has chosen him to be his messenger to the world? This man is behaving with the women as if they are cattle. He has no respect for women, he does not believe them to be human beings.

But this is nothing. If you look at his whole life, he was continuously killing, fighting. He was killing to spread the word of God, he was killing to spread the message of peace. The word Islam means peace; that is the name of his religion. He used to carry a sword on which these words were written:

"Peace is my Message." On the sword, "Peace is my Message." But there is a condition: if you are converted to Mohammedanism, to Islam, then you are saved; otherwise, it is better for your good that you should be killed, because at least by killing you, you will be prevented from committing many sins. He was compassionate in killing you for your own good. Would you like me to sit with Mohammed?"

— OSHO, From Unconciousness to Consciousness, Chapter #5 - Fri, 3 November 1984 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

If they are deeply kissed, Smoking will disappear.

The mind is a manipulator.

In the name of good, in the name of doing good, it tries to manipulate; it is a politician.

A wife says, Because you are smoking I will have to fight with
you; you have to change your smoking, this is not good, you are destroying your health –

And I have seen that a nagging wife destroys health more than any smoking.

And the wife goes on nagging, and she says, It is because of your health – I love you.

And for thirty years she has been nagging.

Now they have been experimenting on nagging; and a very rare phenomenon has been revealed.

They have tried it on the food that you eat: bread, butter, vegetables, fruit juice; they have put the fruit juice and the other food on a tray and the wife is nagging and screaming:
it destroys the juice – on the tray!

The juice becomes toxic, poisonous.

So just think what will be happening in the stomach, because on the tray everything is still non organic, dead in a way.

The juice in a glass is destroyed, so what will be happening to the juice in the stomach?
Because then it has become part of your life stream, it is more alive.

Nagging destroys life, health – and your wife is nagging for your health because you are smoking.

If she really loves you how can she nag?

Impossible.
How can she scream?

She will simply love you, and she will love you so much and so deeply that the need for smoking will disappear.

In fact, people smoke because they have not really been deeply kissed.

If they are deeply kissed, with tremendous love flowing,
Smoking will disappear.

OshO 
Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 3

It is Morning Swan, Wake Up!

There is an ancient story:

The last initiation was going to be given to the disciple.

The Master said, "Your last initiation will be given in a very indirect way." The disciple had passed all the hurdles that the

Master had put in his way; he had proved his mettle. Now the last initiation ... and once he has passed the last initiation, he will be declared enlightened

The disciple touched the feet of the Master and said, "I am ready. Just order me and I will do whatsoever needs to be done."

The Master said, "You will have to go to the King, and go early in the morning; be the first visitor to the King. Because the King has a habit: whosoever comes to him first, whatsoever he asks, the King gives.

But the country is so rich that it is very rare that anybody goes.

Years pass and nobody goes to ask for anything. But don't take any chances -- be there very early.

The King comes in the morning into his garden, as the sun rises the King enters the garden --be there.

And he will ask you, 'What do you want?' And whatsoever you want, ask him."

The disciple could not understand what kind of initiation this last one was. But the order had to be followed.

He went. He didn't take any chance: three o'clock early in the morning he was waiting for the King.

As the sun was rising, the King entered. The young man bowed down to the King; the King said, "Have you come to ask for something?
You can ask for anything! Whatsoever you ask, I will give it to you."

A great desire possessed the young man. He was a poor man, had come from a very poor family, "And the King says whatsoever ...?

" To be certain, he asked again, "What do you mean by 'whatsoever'?"
The King said, "Exactly that I mean -- whatsoever. Even if you demand my kingdom I will give it to you. You can ask for as much money as you want ..."

The poor young man could not think much. He thought, "Maybe ten thousand rupees will do." But a desire came that "Why ten thousand? You may never get such a chance again -- why not one hundred thousand?"

And then another desire, and desires upon desires ... because mind constantly asks for more. So

whatsoever he decided, the mind was still asking for more.
The King said, "It seems you are not yet ready to ask.

I will go for my morning
walk,meanwhile you decide. And when I return, whatsoever you ask will be given to you."

That half an hour was a torture. He went on and on, "I can ask for this and that, and a golden chariot, and so many millions of rupees, and so much land -- I will create a small kingdom of my own."

Desires and dreams ... and the King came; that half hour had passed so fast.

The King was standing there and he said, "Young man, have you not decided yet?"

And then suddenly the young man thought, "Whatsoever I ask will be less than the King has, so why not ask for all?
Be finished with the figures!"

So he said, "Sir, if you are so willing to give, I ask for everything! -- all that you have.
Your whole kingdom, all your riches, your palaces -- everything. You simply get out of the palace!

And you cannot go back in. You may take something. You simply get out -- forget all about it.
I can allow you only these clothes that you are wearing."

Even that he did reluctantly; even that much he would have less.

The King fell on his knees, started praying to God, tears rolling down from his eyes -- of great joy, ecstasy!

And he was thanking God saying "I have been waiting for such a man. How long I waited!

But finally you heard my prayer, and now he has come and I am free of all this nonsense. Thank you!

You heard my prayer, although it has been so long and I had to wait so long, but still you heard it.
I am grateful."

When he was saying these things to God, the young man was standing there and he started thinking, "What is the matter? If this man is feeling so happy renouncing the kingdom, what am I getting into?

If this man has been praying for thirty years, as he is saying, 'Send a man
who can take my whole kingdom, who can ask for my whole kingdom!' -- if for thirty years he has been praying, then it is not worthwhile at all.

I am getting into unnecessary trouble."

He also fell on his knees, touched the King's feet and said, "Sir, I am a young man -- I am a young fool.

Please excuse me. I don't want anything. Your prayer to God, your thankfulness to God has finished my whole mind.

I am going back to the forest to my Master." The King tried to persuade him, "Don't go. Just have a look. Come into the palace!

I will not only give you my palace, my kingdom, my riches, but my beautiful daughter also.

Come and just have a look!"

But the young man said, "I cannot stay here, not even a single moment -- because the mind can betray me.

An insight has happened, and I am thankful to you just as you are thankful to God. I am finished!"

And when the young man reached back to his Master and told the whole story, the Master said, "Your last initiation is over.

Now nothing will ever make a slave of you. Now you are alert, conscious, free. You have passed -- I am happy.

I was watching from here, and when you had asked for the whole kingdom, my heart was crying.

I was thinking, 'So, fifteen years' work on this fool, and all finished.'

You can't imagine my happiness," said the Master, "that you are back, that you could see the point, that you were observant."

OshO 
Chapter 7 - It is Morning Swan, Wake Up!
Osho - The Fish in the Sea Is Not Thirsty

A Real Family !

A family is a real family when it allows space for the other to be.

Even if it hurts you sometimes,
you allow the freedom to the other and then the other allows freedom to you.

A family means ’I will protect your freedom, you protect my freedom’; that is the agreement.

Freedom means ’I will help you to be yourself, you please help me to be myself’.

It is not a bondage, it is a mutual agreement to give freedom to each other.

OshO 
CHAPTER 23.
The Zero Experience

all is gone; Hare Krishna Rama, all is gone.

You go to the church, you read the Bible, you read the Gita, you do chanting, you do prayer, but it is all formal.

Your heart is not in it.

And your animal inside goes on laughing at you, he ridicules you.

He knows you perfectly well, who you are, where you are. 
And he knows how to manipulate you.

You can go on chanting for hours, and then a beautiful woman passes by and suddenly all chanting disappears and you have forgotten all about God.

Just the smell from the bakery ... and all is gone; Hare Krishna Rama, all is gone.

OshO 
Chapter 13 - Very Few Find the Path
The Fish in the Sea Is Not Thirsty

All prayers are complaints.

All prayers are saying to God, ”We know better than you do.”

One man came to me – his wife was dying. He was a very religious man. Every day from three o’clock in the morning up to seven – for four hours – he was doing all kinds of crazy things.

He had so many gods.

In India they are not so miserly about gods. About everything else they are poor, but about gods they are the richest people in the world: thirty-three million gods.

So everybody who is really religious has a whole roomful.

Thirty-three million of course you cannot... but a few representatives, the topmost, the bigshots, you can keep around.

This man had at least sixty. Now, sixty gods, and only four hours – you can see, it was not much time.

He was in such a hurry, doing a prayer to this god and rushing to another, then rushing to another, and looking at his watch continuously because in four hours he has to finish.

And the fear that if he leaves any god, and the god becomes angry....
Such a religious man – and his wife was dying, and the doctors were not able to do anything.

They simply said, ”She has lost the will to live. Deep down she does not want to live; hence, no medicine
is effective.” Unless you have a will to live you lose resistance; you really
want to die.

Just medicines cannot do much unless a great support from your will is there.

So he came to me one day and said, ”What should I do? I have done four hours of prayers each day my whole life, and still my wife is dying, and out of those sixty gods not a single one is helping.

And I cry and weep.”
I said, ”Please answer me one question.

Do you think yourself more intelligent than God?”
He said, ”No. How can I think myself more intelligent than God?”

Then I said, ”If God wants your wife to be freed from the body you should be happy, you should be thankful.

But your prayer is against God’s will. Those sixty gods that you have cannot help you in any way.
You are not a religious man at all.”

But he said, ”I have done prayer four hours every day for years.”

I said, ”You can pray twenty-four hours, that too will not make any change, because your whole attitude is wrong.

You are demanding from existence, you are not surrendering to existence.”

Meditation is a surrender, it is not a demand.

It is not forcing existence your way, it is relaxing into the way existence wants you to be. 
It is a let-go.

But all the religions have been doing prayers in the name of meditation.

And what kind of stupid prayers!

OshO 
CHAPTER 2. HERE WE CALL WORK, WORSHIP
From the False to the Truth

LIFE is a mystery to be lived not a problem to be solved.

LIFE is not a problem.

Rather, it is a mystery to be lived not a problem to be solved.

But it becomes a problem; and it becomes a problem because you go on
postponing things,postponing
them for tomorrow.

That which can be done today, that which should be done today, cannot be done tomorrow.

That which would have been a beautiful phenomenon today, a mystery to be lived, Tomorrow will become a very very hard and cold problem to be solved

OshO 
CHAPTER 7. DIFFICULT AND EASY
Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 3

To live dangerously means to live vertically.

And after nine years, when I resigned from the professorship, the first thing I did was burn all the certificates.

My father was there; he said, ”Even if you have resigned, there is no need to burn the certificates.

They can remain here. What is the trouble? You give them to me, I will keep them.”

I said, ”No, that means you are still hoping that someday I may need them.

No, once I have passed a bridge I want to destroy it, so that I cannot go back. I am not going to give these certificates to you.”

I burned them in front of him, and he said, ”You are strange. I am not preventing you from resigning.”

I said, ”Once I have resigned, I am never going to need these certificates in my life, so why carry them?”

Rules of any kind I have never followed, so it is very natural for me to forget.

Yes, I forgot to tell you that it is one of my requests to you to live dangerously.

What does it mean exactly?

It simply means that in life there are always alternatives. You are always at a crossroad, always and always.

Each moment is a crossroad, and you have to choose where you are going, what is going to be your path; each moment you have to choose.

Each moment is decisive because you are discarding many ways and choosing one.

Now, if you choose the comfortable, the convenient, then you will never be able to live intensely.

The comfortable, the convenient, the conventional, which the society approves, means that you are ready to become a psychological slave.

That’s why all this convenience....

The society will give you everything, if you give your freedom to it. It will give you respectability, it will give you great posts in the hierarchy, in the bureaucracy – but you have to drop one thing: your freedom, your individuality.

You have to become a number in the crowd.

The crowd hates the person who is not part of it. The crowd becomes very tense seeing a stranger amongst it, because the stranger becomes a question mark.

You have been living a certain life, a certain style, a certain religion, a certain politics.

You have been following the way of the mob, and you were very comfortable, cozy, because those surrounding you were all people just like you.

What you were doing, they were doing. Everybody else was doing the same; that gave the feeling that you were doing the right thing.

So many people could not be wrong.
And in gratitude that you are following them, they give you respectability, honor.

Your ego is fulfilled.

Life is convenient, but it is flat. You live horizontally – a very thin slice of life, just like a slice of bread cut very thin. In a linear way you live.

To live dangerously means to live vertically.

OshO 
CHAPTER 30. THE ONLY GOLDEN RULE IS THERE ARE NO GOLDEN RULES
From Unconciousness to Consciousness page 361

A child has to be prepared for both softness and hardness

The child needs both,because this is how life is: if a child only gets love he will suffer; if he only gets hardness, then he will suffer.

He needs both. That’s the function of the mother and the father:

The mother should go on giving love so the child knows that love is possible and the father remains hard so the child knows life is not so easy.

It is how life is!

There are thorns and there are roses and the child has to be prepared for both.

The world is not going to be a mother; the world is going to be a hard struggle.

So if you just go on giving him love he will not have any bone.

When life is there in reality he will simply collapse, because he will wait for the mother and [she] is not there; life does not bother about him.

Then he will be grateful to [his
father] because life will put him out the door many times, will shout at him, and then he will know that he can tackle that too; he has been prepared for that too.

A child has to be prepared for both softness and hardness, yin and yang both, and that’s the function of the father and mother.

The feminine and the masculine both have to be given so the child is ready:
whatsoever the situation he will be able to respond.

If life is hard, he can be hard too; if life is loving, he can be loving too; he will not have any fixation.

OshO 
CHAPTER 15.
The Zero Experience

Before u speak 3 gates

God is contemporary !

You are asking, Michael Tomato, that CAN YOUR KISSING AND HUGGING SANNYASINS EVER ENTER HEAVEN?

I think you don’t know anything up-to-date about heaven. You must be having very old ideas.

Yes,in the old days it was difficult, but God always remains up-to-date. 
He is always contemporary.

Who else can be more contemporary than God?

In fact, now your so-called saints cannot enter into heaven, only my sannyasins.

Things are changing, Mr. Tomato. Your old idea of heaven just exists in your scriptures, in your head.

It has disappeared from existence.
I am preparing my people in the latest possible way.
They will be the first to enter.

Three nuns die and they meet at the main gate of heaven.

Saint Peter comes out and says, ”So girls! Before you come in I must ask you one question:

What did you use your pussy for when you were in the world?”
”Only for pissing!” answers the first one.
”Good, and what about you?”
he asks the second one.
”Just for pissing,” answers the second nun.
”Good,” he says and he turns to the third one.
”Well...” she starts and then hesitates. ”Ahem... well... you know... I met this nice young priest and...
he was so nice that... well, I couldn’t resist, so I gave him my pussy!”

”Okay,” says Saint Peter to the last one, ”you can come in.

But you two, I’m sorry, you’re not allowed!”

The two nuns, very offended, ask, ”Why?” and Saint Peter answers,

”Heaven is not a piss house!”

OshO 
Tao: The Golden Gate, Vol 2

Heaven & Hell

Jnana

If one’s outlook is changed into Jnana, seen through That, this same world, seen previously as a hell of misery, will be found to be a heaven of Bliss.

('Guru Vachaka Kovai', v. 53)

I am

Jealous !

Jealousy is one of the greatest devices.
Look at it very closely: what does it mean?
Jealousy means to live in comparison.

Somebody is higher than you, somebody is lower than you. You are always somewhere on a middle rung of the ladder. Perhaps the ladder is a circle because nobody finds the end of the ladder.

Everybody is stuck somewhere in the middle, everybody is in the middle. The ladder seems to be a round wheel. Somebody is above you – that hurts.

That keeps you fighting, struggling, moving by any means possible, because if you succeed nobody cares whether you have succeeded rightly or wrongly.

Success proves you are right;
failure proves that you are wrong.

All that matters is success, so any means will do. The end proves the means right.

So you need not bother about means – and nobody does bother.

The whole question is how to climb on up the ladder. But you never come to the end of it. And whosoever is above you is creating jealousy in you, that he has succeeded and you have failed.

One would think that spending your whole life passing from one ladder to another ladder, always finding that somebody is still ahead of you – can’t you simply jump off the ladder?

No, you cannot jump.

The society is very cunning, very clever. It has polished, refined its methods over thousands of years. Why can’t you get out of the circle? – because somebody is below you and that gives you tremendous satisfaction.

You see the strategy? Somebody is above you; that creates jealousy, misery, suffering, humiliation,a feeling of worthlessness, that you have not been able to prove your mettle, that you are not man enough.

While others go on moving, you are stuck. It makes you feel just worthless, meaningless,useless, a burden on the earth and nothing more.

OshO 
CHAPTER 4. JEALOUSY: SOCIETY’S DEVICE TO DIVIDE AND RULE
From Personality to Individuality

— with Devi Keerthi.

Belief in God

If you are firm in your belief in the guidance of God, stick to it, and do not concern yourself with what happens around you.

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi

(Talk 595)

Complications of Hypertension

”It is true – it can wake up!”

By the way, it happened that I used to live outside Jabalpur, near a graveyard of Mohammedans.

Mohammedans believe that when a man dies, his soul remains in the grave till the last judgment day.

Then God will come and wake up all the souls from all the graveyards and decide who is good and who is bad.

I had found a house just near the graveyard for the simple reason that the house was very beautiful and nobody was ready to purchase it or rent it – because people were afraid of the graveyard.
So many souls are there, so many ghosts!

The bungalow that I had rented was called a ghost bungalow.

I approached the owner; he said, ”If you simply live there, there is no need for any rent.

Just take care of my bungalow, because it has not been maintained.

I have put so much money into it, but I had never thought that this graveyard would create trouble.”

So he gave me the bungalow free.

I started Dynamic Meditation, and it was the right place because no neighbors, only ghosts!

So nobody was disturbed.

But I was surprised: after two or three days, a group of Mohammedans with a Maulvi – a Mohammedan priest – reached me and they said, ”You cannot do this Dynamic Meditation here.”

I said, ”What is the problem? –because here is no neighbor, nobody is disturbed.

You don’t live here.
One said, ”It is not a question of neighbors – you are disturbing our graveyard!

And the way you do Dynamic Meditation, the souls may escape from the grave.

Then at the last judgment day how is God going to find them?”

I said, ”This is really a problem!

I have never thought about it, that Dynamic Meditation would frighten the ghosts and they would escape from their bodies and the graveyard, and God would have difficulty
finding where they had gone....”

So I had to stop because they were very angry.

They said, ”It is a religious question, and it is not one soul – so many souls.

And from where have you got this Dynamic Meditation?

We have never heard about it.
It can wake up any sleeping soul.”

I said, ”It is true – it can wake up!”

OshO 
CHAPTER 16. I WANT A MEETING OF EAST AND WEST
Light on the Path

Love has eternity in it -- timelessness, deathlessness.

If you have loved me, I will live for you forever.

In your love, I will live.

If you have loved me, my body will disappear, but I cannot die for you.... Even if I am gone, I know you will search for me.

Yes, I can trust you will hunt for me in every stone and flower, in every eye and star...

And I can promise you one thing: if you hunt for me, you will find me... in every star and in every eye... because if you have really loved a Master, you have moved into eternity with him.

The relationship is not of time, it is timeless. There is going to be no death.

My body will disappear, your body will disappear -- that will not make any change.

If the disappearance of the body makes any change, that simply shows that love has not happened.

Love is something beyond the body.

Bodies come and go, love remains. Love has eternity in it -- timelessness, deathlessness.

OSHO...☆☆☆
The Divine Melody,
January 10, 1977

Why should u bike?

bliss is the door to the divine.

Kahlil Gibran says: Every river, before it meets the ocean, hesitates, looks back.

All those beautiful mountains and the plains and the people and the trees and the birds, the whole life of the river... and now suddenly a moment has come when it is going to disappear.

It can't do anything, it has to disappear. But man can do something -- that is the trouble.

Man can turn back, man can run away.

Many times in our lives we come very close to the ocean but because of our old patterns we start running away.

We cannot gather enough courage to lose our identity, and without losing it one cannot feel bliss -- and bliss is the door to the divine.

OSHO...☆☆☆

Book Name: Even Bein Gawd Aint A Bed of Roses

Trust God !

Even God comes next !

An intelligent person will make his life in such a way that it will have a poetry of spontaneity, of love, of joy.

It is your life and if you are not kind enough to yourself, who is going to be kind enough to you? If you are wasting it, it is nobody else’s responsibility.

I teach you to be responsible towards yourself. That is your first responsibility; everything else comes next everything else! Even God comes next, because he can come only when you are. You are the very center of your world, of your existence.

So be intelligent, bring in the quality of intelligence. And the more intelligent you become, the more capable you will become of bringing more intelligence into your life.

Each single moment can become so luminous with intelligence.. Then there is no need for any religion, no need to meditate, no need to go to the church, no need to go to any temple, no need for anything extra.

Life in its intrinsicness is intelligent.

Just live totally, harmoniously, in awareness, and everything follows beautifully. A life of celebration follows the luminousness of intelligence.

OSHO

MYSTERY BEHIND THE RITUAL OF YAGNA !

I say all this to explain to you how yajna came into being and how it became so significant in our life.

Yajna was our way of celebrating the discovery of fire; we danced around it with abandon and offered to it every good thing we had.

Our ancestors who initiated these sacrificial rituals did not have much to give. They had wheat and they made an offering of it to the fire. They had somras, the best wine of their times, and they offered it to the fire.

They sacrificed even their best cows to greet this god who had come to transform their life so radically. And everything was so impromptu and spontaneous.

It was an outpouring of a simple, innocent and unsophisticated heart-mind that our people had then. They were a rural people - cities had yet to come into being - who lacked sophistication.

By the time of Krishna and the GEETA civilization had made great strides - thanks to fire. And so fire became a household thing, the extraordinary be came ordinary.

Now it seemed meaningless to dance around fire and make sacrificial offerings to it. In the meantime thousands of people had opposed it.

Fire was no longer taken as the greatest blessing that it was when it was first discovered.

So Krishna grafted a new word onto the old stem of yajna and called it jnan-yajna or the ritual of knowledge. A new word, jnan or knowledge was added to the old word, yajna or ritual.

The society in which Krishna was born was a highly developed and sophisticated society. Now dancing around fire looked so primitive and backward.

So Krishna thought of igniting the fire of knowledge, which is the last luxury of a society that comes to the pinnacle of material prosperity.

But he used an old word, because a word to be a word has to be old. Krishna said, "If we want to dance we will dance around the fire of knowledge.

If we have to offer something to the sacrificial fire we will offer our selves in place of grains and wines and cows."

Jnan-yajna or sacrificial ritual of knowledge stands for a special spiritual path, and every traveler on this path burns his ego, his "I-ness" in the fire of the knowledge of reality.

Ordinary fire burns everything that is gross, but it cannot burn subtler elements like thoughts of arrogance, pride and ego. Only the fire of knowing can destroy it.

It is interesting to know that down the centuries the symbol of fire remains alive. And it is not without reason.

The most important reason was that in the life of the primitive man there was nothing like fire which by its nature moved upward.

Water moves downward: pour it anywhere and it will find a downward path to flow.

But no matter what you do, the flame will always rise upward.

Even if you turn a burning torch upside down, its flames will keep going up.

So fire became the symbol of ascension - upward journey; its flame reflects man's highest aspiration to reach the unknown.

Fire was the first thing in the knowledge of man that rebelled against the law of gravitation.

The earth seems to have no power over fire.

So those who danced around fire and rejoiced over its blessings also nursed a hope and prayer that a day might come in their life when they would go on the upward journey to the highest, the ultimate in existence.

Like water, human mind as we know it is inclined to move downward.

There is some similarity between man's mind and water.

Pour a container full of water on the hilltop and it will soon find its way down to the lowest lake in the valley. Such is man's mind.

Therefore the seers who first exalted the fire and danced around it in joyous homage declared their aspiration to become like fire and ascend to the heavens.

Their prayer said, "We want to turn our spirit into a flame so that even if it is put in an abyss it will continue to move upward and reach the zenith."

So the ritual of the sacrificial fire was symbolic and significant.

There is another attribute of fire which is still deeper and more meaningful; it is that first it burns its fuel and then burns itself.

As soon as the fuel turns into ashes the fire is extinguished.

This aspect of fire is deeply representative of knowledge, which first burns the dross of ignorance and then burns itself.

It means to say that after one's ignorance is dispelled, the ego, the knower himself disappears.

The UPANISHAD says, "While the ignorant wander in darkness the knowledgeable wander in blinding darkness."

For sure, this has been said to ridicule the pundits and scholars who subsist on borrowed knowledge.

One who attains to true knowledge, what is called wisdom, disappears as an ego, and so there is no way for him to wander in darkness.

True knowledge first destroys ignorance and then it destroys the knower too, who ceases to be an ego, an entity. It is like fire, that after burning the fuel extinguishes itself.

So those who came to know the truth realized that knowledge is like fire.

It burns ignorance like fuel, and then burns the knower as an ego, who disappears into emptiness.

Therefore, he alone can embark on a journey to knowledge who is prepared to become an utter emptiness, nothingness.

There is yet another attribute of fire which is still more relevant to the knowledge of truth.

As the fire's flame rises upward it is visible only to an extent and then disappears into the vast space; it becomes invisible.

The same is the case with the knowledge of truth; it is related with its knower only to a small extent and then it disappears into that which is un knowable.

The visible part of reality is very tiny in comparison with its invisible part which is immense and infinite.

For all these reasons fire became a very useful and powerful symbol of knowledge. and Krishna ushered in jnan-yajna.

Worship of knowledge is like worship of fire.

If you rightly understand the significance of fire as a symbol, you will know that worship of knowledge is eternal.

While all other rituals that came into being with the discovery of fire have died because they were products of circumstances, the pursuit of knowledge remains with us forever.

Knowledge is not bound with circumstances; it is eternal.

So for the first time Krishna freed yajna from the fetters of time and events and yoked it to the eternal.

From now on in the future, yajna or rituals will be in vogue in the way Krishna refashioned it; its meaning and purpose will be derived from Krishna alone.

The pre-Krishna chapter of yajna is closed forever.

It is now outdated and dead.

If someone still talks of the yajna of the pre-Krishna days, he is only trying to perpetuate a dead and meaningless ritual.

Now it is not possible to dance around fire in the old way, because fire is no more an event, it is an everyday affair.

Pseudo knowledge is like ashes left after the fire has been extinguished.

You can collect ashes in tons, but they are not going to change you.

So if someone mistakes scholarship for knowledge he is already off the track.

~ Osho

Excerpt from : Krishna The Man and his Philosophy
Chapter : 19 - Rituals, Fire and Knowledge