Osho,
I left my mother twenty years, and my wife over four years ago. Why can’t I let them go?

One of the mysteries of life is the law of reverse returns. There are things which you cannot do. Although people have done them, although it is possible they may happen to you too, they are always happenings, they are never doings.

In fact the doer, the ego, is the barrier to the happening. Happening needs the innocent mind of a child who can still dream of fairies, who can still find treasures in colored stones, whose eyes are still not covered with the dust that we call knowledge. His ignorance is far more beautiful than the knowledge of a great scholar. Because ignorance is at least natural. At least it is yours; it does not make you a hypocrite, it is never insincere.

I have been wondering and looking in thousands of scriptures and commentaries on scriptures but I have not found a single statement in five thousand years’ literature which shows some understanding about ignorance. In fact, they are all interested in knowledgeability; ignorance they want to destroy. They want to gain knowledge because knowledge will give them power – knowledge is power. Knowledge will give you prestige, money, respectability. Knowledge will fulfill many of your ambitions and desires.

Ignorance cannot do anything for you, but it can allow something which is far more precious than knowledge can ever give to you. But its whole secret is in allowing, in patiently waiting – with a question mark in the heart, with a quest all over your being, a quest which is not partial, a total inquiry.

Ignorance is the beginning of wisdom. Rightly understood, it is not something negative. It is simply a tabula rasa – a clean slate. Nothing is written on it. You have to write your own holy Bible, holy Koran, holy Gita; you have to give birth.

Ignorance is a womb.

It contains the quest for truth – and if you don’t fall victim to knowledgeability, ignorance is the right beginning.

To know absolutely that “I do not know,” is the first step of wisdom. You have known something of tremendous value: you have known your innocence, and in this innocence, the ego dies. The ego can live only with the false – it is the accumulation of the false. The ego is interested in knowledge – borrowed, third-hand, rotten…but knowledge is cheap.

To know by experience is a risk. You may burn your fingers in the experiment.

In the experiment, you are dropping out of the crowd and moving alone in this vast universe and you don’t have any guide, any maps, any instructions. All that you have is a thirst.