Osho on Disciplehood

Osho – One can be a disciple only if one drops all knowledge. Disciplehood means that you accept the fact that you know nothing. It begins in a state of not-knowing. If you know then you cannot be a disciple. Then your knowledge will be a constant disturbance and whatsoever you know is nothing but rubbish; it is all borrowed — from traditions, from conventions, from the society, from the scriptures — it is all conditioning and a disciple needs as a first step to be totally unconditioned. He has to drop his whole mind, he has to behead himself. Unless that much readiness is there one can only be a student, not a disciple, and that is the difference between these two words. The difference is immense.

A student is only intellectually interested, he wants to know more. The disciple is not intellectually interested, he’s existentially interested; he is not after accumulating more information and knowledge. He wants to be more; not to know more, but to be more.

Knowledge is something of the mind and being is a totally different phenomenon. One can know all the scriptures of the world and yet may remain ignorant — that’s how scholars are: they are just donkeys carrying a big burden of scriptures. That burden has not transformed them, that burden has really hindered, hampered their progress. It is like with rocks hanging around your neck. You are trying to swim: You are creating unnecessary hurdles for yourself.

Socrates is right when he says, ‘I know only one thing, that I know nothing.’ That is the state of a disciple and in that state great things happen: Ego disappears, it can’t exist — How it can exist? There is no claim left. One becomes utterly empty and in that emptiness god comes to you; you become a host, he becomes a guest.

Source – Osho Book “No Man Is an Island”

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