Osho,
Would you say something to us about wisdom?

Wisdom is one of the most misunderstood words in any of the languages of the world. Mostly, the misunderstanding has arisen because of the word knowledge. People think both are identical, synonymous. In reality, they are just the opposite of each other.

The knowledgeable man is not the wise man; the knowledgeable man is simply covering up his ignorance by collecting all kinds of information from the outside. His scholarship is great, his information is vast, his memory may be very rich, but he is still not wise – because wisdom has nothing to do with scholarship, nothing to do with scriptures, nothing to do with memory either. Wisdom is the name of pure intelligence. It is the spontaneous flowering of your being.

Knowledge comes from outside.

Wisdom comes from your innermost core.

Knowledge is always borrowed; wisdom is never borrowed. Neither can you take it from anybody, nor can you give it to anybody.

The English word education will help you to understand the distinction. It comes from a root which means drawing out, just the way you draw water out of a well. Education is only an opportunity, a supportive background, where whatever is your potential can be drawn out; whatever is in the form of a seed in you starts growing and comes to blossom.

Wisdom is the spring of your innermost being; it is transformation, not information. But in the name of education, whatever has been happening in the world for centuries is just the opposite. Your intelligence is not drawn out the way water is drawn out from a well, but information is poured in from the outside, just the way it is poured into a computer. The whole education makes you knowledgeable. And the more knowledge gathers, layer upon layer, the less is the possibility for your own being to find a way to grow. The whole space is taken by borrowed junk; wisdom gets suffocated and dies a very early death.

It is strange that even in the twentieth century when we think we have become very cultured, cultivated, educated, evolved, education is still the same as it was in the most primitive times; it is still doing the same act of turning everybody into a robot, into a mechanical memory system. It does not sharpen your intelligence, it makes you only clever enough to remember things.

But remembering is not knowing. Knowing is possible only through meditation.