Wisdom is not caused by anything, wisdom is already the case. You were born wise, wisdom is your nature. All that is needed is to drop the pretensions that you have cultivated. All that is needed is to rediscover. It is already there, somewhere deep down, hidden behind all kinds of rubbish that has continuously been poured into you by the parents, by the teachers, by the professors, by everybody around you.

Every child is being poured with all kinds of nonsense; this becomes piled up. You call it your ideology, your philosophy, your religion - your communism, your Christianity, your Hinduism. It is just junk! And deep down, hidden behind it, is the real treasure. It has only to be rediscovered.

-Rajneesh

Now, no one can become wise. It is not an effort. One can become knowledgeable; it is an endeavor, an enterprise. You can cultivate knowledge, you cannot become wise. Wisdom is not becoming, it is being. That has to be understood.

Becoming is a time process: today you have this much knowledge, tomorrow you can have more, and the day after tomorrow more and more and more. Wisdom is not a quantity, knowledge is a quantity; so quantity can be more or less. The student has less, the professor has more. But wisdom is never less or more; it is a quality. Buddha is wise, so is Mahavira, and so is Bahaudin, and so is Zarathustra. Now you cannot say who is wiser; that is not possible. It is not a quantity, you cannot compare. They are all wise. Wisdom knows nothing of more or less.

-Rajneesh

Wisdom knows how to laugh, knowledge cannot laugh. Knowledge is always serious, wisdom is playful. Wisdom knows how to live, how to love, how to laugh. Wisdom is light, knowledge is heavy.

You cannot attain to wisdom through knowledge.

That's what the person is asking, and that's what everybody is thinking - "If I gather a little more knowledge I will be wiser." You will not be; you will be less wise. The more you know the less you will know.

Socrates was right when, at the end of his long life, he said, "I know only one thing - that I know nothing." This is wisdom.

-Rajneesh

Sufis use the word "philosopher" in a totally different sense than it has in the West. They use it literally. The literal meaning of philosophy is the love of wisdom. The word "sophy" and the word "sufi" come from the same root, sophia, wisdom.

In the West, the philosopher has become a totally different phenomenon. Due to Greek influence, the philosopher lost his roots in existence and became more and more rational, became more and more speculative. And the Western philosophy has grown out of the Greek experiment, hence Western philosophy has gone almost in the opposite direction from Sufism. It has become a logic-chopping, great arguments about nothing, just hair-splitting.

And slowly, slowly the Western philosophy has come to a dead end. Now it is nothing but linguistic analysis. It no longer thinks of great things, it is no more concerned with God or truth or freedom or love, no, not at all. Its whole concern has become the meaning of words. When the Western philosopher thinks about God he means that he will think what the word God means. He is not concerned with the reality of God, he is concerned only with the word"God" - as if by analyzing the word "fire" you will come to know fire, or by analyzing the word "bread" your hunger will be satisfied. The Western philosophy goes on thinking about the word, "bread", " God", "love", and has completely forgotten that "love" is only a word, it is not reality. It is only a symbol; it is a finger pointing to the moon.

The Western philosophy goes on thinking about the finger - how long it is, how beautiful or not beautiful it is, black or white, and has completely forgotten that it simply points to the moon. You need not be concerned with the finger; you can forget about it. Look at the moon and forget the finger - but the Western philosophy has become greatly skilled in thinking about the finger.

-Rajneesh

We have moved horizontally for too long, now We have to move vertically. We have moved in time for too long, now we have to move in eternity. We have desired and been ambitious for too long, now we have to drop all desiring and ambition and we have to put our whole energy into the present moment, to make it a celebration.

-Rajneesh