Buddha tells a story which he liked very much. He reported this story thousands and thousands of times. He says knowledge is like a raft. You cross a river on a raft, and then you leave the raft and the river, and you move on.
Buddha says that there were five very learned men. They crossed the stream on a raft, and then they thought and pondered: "Because this raft has helped us to cross this stream, we must carry this raft on our heads. Now how can we be ungrateful? This is simply gratitude."
So those five learned men carried that raft on their heads into the market. Then the whole village gathered and asked, "What are you doing? This is something new."
They said, "Now we cannot leave this raft. This raft has helped us to cross the stream, and these are the days of rains and the river is flooded. It was impossible without this raft. This raft is a friend, and we are just being grateful."
The whole village laughed. They said. "Yes, this raft was a friend, but now this raft is an enemy. Now you will suffer because of this raft, now it will be a bondage. Now you cannot move anywhere, now you cannot do anything else."
Knowledge is a raft to go beyond ignorance, but then you must not begin to carry it on your head as these learned persons carried it. Really, it is not right to say "carry it", because the burden becomes so much that you cannot even move. Throw this raft! It is difficult to throw because it has saved you.
You have come across a stream and your logic may run in this way; "If we throw this raft, then we will be again in the same situation in which we were before, before the raft was used." This looks logical, but it is not — because when there was no raft you were on one bank of the stream; when you have used the raft you have come to another bank of the stream, and if you throw it you will not be in the same situation again.
Man is afraid of throwing knowledge because he fears that he will again become ignorant. You cannot become ignorant again. A person who has known cannot fall back into ignorance. But if he now clings to this knowledge, he cannot go beyond either. Throw it! You are not going to fall back into ignorance. You will rise into Enlightenment.
One rises into knowledge by throwing ignorance, and then one rises into Enlightenment by throwing knowledge. So it is good to teach knowledge to the ignorant, and it is good to teach again a different kind of ignorance to the knowledgeable ones. One has to become ignorant in a different dimension, with a different quality, just by throwing knowledge.
So it is inevitable that one must come to knowledge, but then it is not inevitable that one must remain there. You must pass through it. That is a must, it cannot be avoided; but you must not remain there. You must move — move from knowledge: this is what is meant. How to move from this knowledge? As I said, if you become aware of suffering, you transcend it. If you become aware of your knowledge, you transcend knowledge. Awareness is the only technique of transcendence, whatsoever may be the problem. Awareness is the only technique of transcendence!
You know many things; then you become identified with your knowledge. Then if someone denies your knowledge or contradicts it, you feel hurt, as if he has denied you or as if he has contradicted you. Your knowledge is something different from you. Feel the gap. You are not your knowledge. The moment you can feel this, that "I am not my knowledge," then try to be aware of it. Be aware that "This I know, this I do not know, and that which I know may be right or may not be right." Do not become mad with it, do not become involved.
OSHO
