Five blind men came to see an elephant. They had never seen it; it was absolutely new in the town. Elephants didn’t exist in their part of the country. They all touched, they all felt the elephant, and they all interpreted whatsoever they felt. They interpreted through their experience. One man said, “An elephant is like a pillar,” because he was touching the legs of the elephant – and he was right. He touched, himself, by his own hands, and then he remembered the pillars – and exactly like the pillars. And so on, so forth, they all interpreted.

It happened in a primary school in America: a teacher told this story to the boys and girls without telling them that the five persons who came to the elephant were blind. And the story is so well-known, and she expected that the children would understand. Then she asked, “Now tell me, who were those five persons who came to see the elephant?”

One small boy raised his hand and said, “Experts.”

Experts are always blind. That boy was really a discoverer. This is the essence of the whole story. In fact, they were experts because an expert knows too much about too little. He becomes more and more narrow, narrow, narrow – almost blind to the whole world. Only in a particular direction is he with eyes; otherwise, he is blind. His vision becomes narrower and narrower and narrower. The greater an expert, the narrower the vision. An absolute expert must be completely blind. They say that an expert is a man who knows more and more about less and less.

A few centuries before there were physicians, doctors, who knew everything about the body. There were no experts. Now if you have something wrong with your heart then you go to an expert, something wrong with your teeth, you go to another expert. I have heard a story that a man came to a doctor and he said, “I am in much difficulty. I cannot see properly. Everything seems to be misty.”

The doctor said, “First things first. First you tell me which eye is in difficulty, because I am the expert only of the right eye. If your left eye is in trouble, you go to another expert just in front of me.” Soon the left-eye experts and the right-eye experts will be separate. It has to be so because expertise becomes narrower and narrower and narrower. All experts are blind, and experience makes you an expert.