Osho: Yoga Alpha And Omega
Commentaries on Patanjali's Yoga Sutras

8.

8. Wrong knowledge is a false conception not corresponding to the thing as it is.

Now some definitions which will be helpful later on The definition of viparyaya -- wrong knowledge. Wrong knowledge is a false conception of something not corresponding to the thing as it is. We all have a big burden of wrong knowledge because before we encounter a fact we have already prejudiced.

If you are a Hindu and someone is introduced to you, and said that he is a Mohammedan, immediately you have taken a wrong attitude that this man must be wrong. If you are a Christian and someone is introduced as a Jew, you are not going to dig this man; you are not going to enter this particular man. Just by saying, "a Jew", your prejudice has come in; you have already known this man. Now there is no need, you know what type of man is this -- a Jew.

You have a preconception, a prejudiced mind, and this prejudiced mind gives you wrong knowledge. All Jews are not bad. Neither are all Christians good, nor all are Mohammedans bad. Neither are all Hindus good. Really, goodness and badness doesn't belong to any race, it belongs to persons, individuals. There may be bad Mohammedans, bad Hindus; good Mohammedans, good Hindus. Goodness and badness does not belong to any nation, to any race, to any culture, it belongs to individuals, personalities. But that's difficult, to face a person without any prejudice. And you will have a revelation.

Once it happened to me. I was traveling. I entered my compartment. And many people had come to see me off, so the person who was in the compartment, another passenger, he immediately touched my feet and he said, "You must be a great saint. So many persons have come to see you off!"

So I told that man that, "I am a Mohammedan. I may be a great saint, but I am a Mohammedan." He felt shocked! He has touched a Mohammedan's feet, and he was a Brahmin! He started perspiring; he was nervous. He looked again and he said, "No, you are joking." Just to console himself he said, "You are joking." "I am not joking. Why I should joke? You must have inquired before you touched my feet!"

Then we were both together in the compartment. Again and again he will look at me and will take a long, deep breath. He must have been thinking to go and take a bath. But he is not encountering me. I am there, and he is concerned with a concept of "Mohammedan" and he is a Brahmin, he has become impure by touching me.

Nobody encounters things, persons, as they are. You have a prejudice. These prejudices create viparyaya; these prejudices create wrong knowledge. Whatsoever you think, if you have not freshly come upon the fact it is going to be wrong. Don't bring your past, don't bring your prejudices. Put aside your mind and encounter the fact. Just see whatsoever there is to be seen. Don't project.

We go on projecting. Our mind is just completely filled and fixed from the very childhood. Everything has been given to us ready-made, and through that readymade knowledge our whole life becomes an illusion. You never meet a real person, you never see a real flower. Just by hearing "This is a rose" you say, "Beautiful!" mechanically. You have not felt the beauty; you have not sensed the beauty; you have not touched this flower. Just "Rose is beautiful" is in your mind; the moment you hear "rose", the mind projects and says, "It is beautiful!"

And you may believe that you have come to feel that the rose is beautiful; this is not so. This is false. Just look. That's why children come to things more deeply than grown-up people -- because they do not know names. They are not yet prejudiced. If a rose is beautiful, then only it will be beautiful; all roses are not beautiful. Children come nearer to things, their eyes are fresh. They see things as they are because they don't know how to project anything.

But we are always in a hurry to make them grown-ups, to make them adults. We are filling their mind with knowledge, information. This is one of the recent-most discoveries of psychologists, that when children enter into school they have more intelligence than when they leave the university. Latest findings prove this. In the first grade, when children enter, they have more intelligence. They will have less and less intelligence as they grow in knowledge.

And by the time they become bachelors and masters and doctors, they are finished. When they come back with a doctor's degree, a Ph.D., they have left their intelligence somewhere in the university. They are dead, filled with knowledge, crammed with knowledge, but this knowledge is just false -- a prejudice about everything. Now they cannot feel things directly, they cannot feel live persons directly, they cannot live directly, everything has become verbal, wordy. It is not real now; it has become mental.