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Chapter 2 - Just see it
I HAVE HEARD YOU SAY THAT KNOWLEDGE IS USELESS.
No, I have not said that. Knowledge is very useful -- wisdom is useless! Knowledge is needed in the marketplace, in business, in politics. Everywhere knowledge is needed -- in technology, in science -- everywhere knowledge is needed. Knowledge is very useful, utilitarian; wisdom is absolutely useless, but that's its beauty. It is not a commodity, you cannot use it in any way; you cannot sell it, you cannot purchase it. It does not belong to the utilitarian world; it is a flowering.
What use is a rose flower? What use is the song of a bird? What use is it? If you look around in existence -- the stars, the clouds, the mountains, the rivers -- what is the use of it all? It is all useless. Why are butterflies so beautiful? Why does God take so much care in painting their wings? What is the point of it all?
Remember, the outside world is the world of utility; the inside world is the world of significance, not of utility. The outside world has a totally different dimension
-- there it is needed. You need bread, you need butter, you need a house, you need medicine, you need clothes, shelter; you need thousands of things. But the inner world is simply of luxury; it is not a need, it is a joy. It is a sheer rejoicing.
If somebody asks you, "What is the use of love?" the question is unanswerable, by the very fact of its use of the word "use." Love is not a commodity; the world can go on without love --
it is already going on without it. Everything is going perfectly well; in fact, it is only when love happens that some disturbance happens. Hence all the societies are against love.
The world is going perfectly well without musicians. Who needs musicians? They will not be able to drive a train, to pilot an airplane; they are not reliable people.
I used to travel in India. One of my friends who died just a few months ago was a lover of travelling. I used to go on the fastest trains possible, because I had to cover the whole country, and he loved to travel by passenger trains which
stopped at every station, every small station.
The journey that could have been completed within ten hours would take four days, five days, sometimes seven days. And whenever he was with me he would insist...
One time I agreed and really it was a joy, because he knew every place where the tea was the best, where the milk was the purest, where you could get a good sweet, where you could get good apples, mangoes. In those five days of travelling with him I forgot all about where we were going -- there was no need to go anywhere! And everybody knew him -- the porters, the station-masters, the drivers -- because he was always travelling on these small trains. And at each station the train would stop for one hour, half an hour, two hours.
One small station was really a beautiful place. The whole station was surrounded by a big mango grove, hundreds of mango trees. He took me out of the station and he started climbing a tree. I said, "What are you doing?" He said, "The mangoes are ripe!" And I said, "If the train leaves we will be in difficulty!" He said, "Don't be worried. Come along with me." So I went along with him. I was constantly telling him, "It is time now, the train will leave." And he said, "Don't be worried. Do you see the man above us?" One man was there. He said, "He is the driver. Unless he gets down, the train cannot move!"
I enjoyed that moment! Osho - The Goose is Out 27
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