Question – Are you still learning too?
Osho – Yes, because if learning stops, you are dead. Learning is life. You can ask me, “Are you still alive? ” — that will be the same question. The ego is a perfectionist and the ego thinks that when you have attained, when you have become enlightened, then there is no learning; then you know all. But if you know all, that ‘all’ will be finite. Just by being known it has become finite.
You cannot know the infinite. The infinite simply means that you can go on learning and learning and learning and the end never comes, it is an eternal journey. It begins, but it never ends.
But then the ego thinks: then what is the difference when we are also learning? The difference is that you are learning while fast asleep, unconscious, and a man who is enlightened learns consciously. Your learning is not knowing; your learning is knowledge, dead information. A man who is awakened — his learning is not like knowledge; his learning is simply knowing.
He is like a mirror. The mirror goes on mirroring. A bird flies before a mirror and the mirror mirrors it. Is there a point where you can say, “Now the mirror is perfect. It mirrors nothing”? When the mirror is perfect it will mirror perfectly, that’s all.
When you are awakened, you learn perfectly. Not that you stop learning, not that you have become perfect and now there is nothing more to know — just the contrary. The more you know, the more there is to know; the more you open your eyes, the more the infinite surrounds you. It is an infinite journey.
I am still learning. And I am happy, I would not like it to be otherwise. I would not like to come to a point where I could say, “I have known all,” because that would be death. Then what? — then the river is frozen, then it no longer flows. No, a perfect river goes on flowing; it is never frozen. I will go on learning, Buddha and Jesus are still learning. It has to be so.
Mahavir is still learning, notwithstanding what Jains say. They say that he has known all, he has become all-knowing, because their ego is involved. Their Master: how can he still be learning? That means he is still not perfect. So Jains say Mahavir has known all, he has become a SARVAGYA — all-knowing, omniscient. This is their ego, not Mahavir.
If you say to Christians that Jesus is still learning, they will be very angry. The son of God, the only begotten son of God — how can he be still learning? He knows all! But I tell you, he is still learning because he is still alive, alive with the infinity — learning infinitely, but of course learning perfectly.
This is very difficult to understand because your ego always seeks goals and if learning continues forever and ever, then there is no goal. But I tell you, that’s how life is. Life has no goal, it is an ever-flowing river: always reaching, but never reaching; always arriving — but every arrival becomes a new departure.
Go to the Himalayas. You trek, you move, you go high to the peak. All the time you were trekking up, there was no peak beyond it. Then you reach the peak and many more peaks are revealed. You go on and on and on; it is an ongoing Process.
God is the process. Even God is learning. It has to be so, otherwise He will be stupid. He is not stupid, He is learning. He is evolving — and that’s beautiful. Nothing is static, everything is dynamic. That’s what I mean when I say: don’t say ‘God is’, always say ‘God is happening’. Don’t use a static term; don’t use a noun for Him — use a verb. Say, “He is happening”; say, “He is learning”; say, “He is evolving”; say, “He is a process, He is a river,” and you will have struck truth.
Yes, I am continuously learning. Every moment life is so tremendously beautiful and so tremendously vast, so tremendously infinite and so tremendously mysterious. To say that one has known all will be sacrilegious.
Source – Osho Book “Come Follow To You, Vol 1″