The first question:

Osho,
You say that mind's substance is memory and information.
Does reading therefore inflate and invigorate the mind?

It depends. It depends on you. You can use reading as a food for the ego. It is very subtle. You can become knowledgeable; then it is dangerous and harmful. Then you are poisoning yourself, because knowledge is not knowing, knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom has nothing to do with knowledge. Wisdom can exist in total ignorance also. If you use reading just as a food for the mind, to increase your memory, then you are in a wrong direction. But reading can be used in a different way; then reading is as beautiful as anything else in life.

If you read the Gita not to collect information but to listen to the song of the divine – which is not in the words but between the words, which is not in the lines but between the lines – if you read the Bhagavadgitas a song of the divine, if you listen to the music of it, then it has a tremendous beauty and it can be helpful. In certain moments of deep absorption you will become one with the divine.

This can happen listening to the song of a bird also, so the question is not of the Gita, Bible or Koran – the basic question is of the listener. How do you listen? Are you just greedy to know more? Then the Gita, Koran, Bible will all poison you. If there is no greed, you will just read it as a beautiful poem; it has tremendous beauty in it. You are not trying to fill your memory with it, but you are just being aware; reading, watching, observing, moving into it as much as possible but remaining at the same time aloof – a watcher on the hills. You should not be impressed, because all impressions are like dust gathering on the mirror. If you are not impressed – I am not saying not inspired, that is totally different. To be inspired is totally different than to be impressed. Anybody can be impressed, but to be inspired you need great intelligence, understanding.

Inspiration is getting in tune with a certain scripture, to be meditative with it – not through the mind but through your totality. If you read the Gita that way, you are reading the Gita with your blood, with your guts, with your heart, with your mind, with your body. Everything that you have, your totality, is there. When you are simply collecting information, only your head is there and nothing else. Then you gather impressions and you have missed.