I have left the house of scholars and slammed the door behind me.

It is not only that he has left the house, the emphasis, it should be remembered, is that he has slammed the door behind him. He is finished with scholarship. This is not the place where truth is found. This is the place where truth is discussed, this is the place where thousands of hypotheses about truth are produced, this is the place where no conclusion has ever been arrived at.

For thousands of years scholars have been discussing, in minute detail, but there has never been a conclusion. Scholars are empty shells – they make much noise but that noise is meaningless. They argue much but the hypothesis they are arguing about still remains a hypothesis; no argument can make a hypothesis a reality. And above all, how can you discuss something which you have never experienced?

The scholars are like the five blind people of Aesop’s fable who had gone to see an elephant. Obviously they had no eyes. They could not see the elephant, so they touched the elephant. Somebody touched his feet, somebody touched his big ears, somebody touched some other part, and everybody declared, “I know now what an elephant is.” The one who had touched his legs said, “An elephant is just like a pillar.” And the one who had touched his ears said, “You are an idiot, my experience shows that an elephant is just like a big fan.” And so on and so forth. They cannot come to any conclusion. And what they are saying looks absurd: the elephant is not like a pillar, but something in the elephant is like a pillar – his legs. But at least they have touched some part of the elephant.

Scholars are in an even worse condition. They have not touched anything about truth, about love, about silence, about meditation, about ecstasy – not even a partial experience – and they are so prolific in their arguments. They create much noise; they shout at each other. For centuries they have been doing that.

Zarathustra says:

I have left the house of scholars…

It is a mad place – people are talking about things they know nothing about. Blind people are discussing detailed information about light, about darkness, about colors. People who don’t have any ears are talking about music. People who have never known a single moment of silence are creating great philosophical systems based on silence. They are very articulate about words, language, grammar, but that is not the search of Zarathustra.

He slammed the door behind him, forever. Scholarship, knowledgeability is not his way, is no one’s way; it is only for fools to deceive themselves.