The Osho Life Essentials series focuses on questions specific to our inner life and quality of existence, for example: Is it possible to have an authentic spirituality without a belief in God? What is meditation and how does it work? What can I do as an individual to make the world a better place?
Each volume contains timeless and always-contemporary investigations and discussions into questions vital to our personal search for meaning and purpose.

Innocence, Knowledge, and Wonder, looks to each person’s last state of innocence – childhood - to recover the ability to approach life with a sense of wonder and spontaneous joy, rather than with the cynicism and sense of hopelessness that afflict so many adults. Every religion contains the idea of returning to paradise, to simplicity we one knew. In Innocence, Knowledge, and Wonder, Osho describes how to find this “paradise lost,” to again achieve the wonder and innocence of childhood.
‘The knowledgeable person lives with a question mark and the man of awe and wonder lives with an exclamation mark. Everything is so tremendously deep and profound that it is impossible to know it. Knowledge is impossible. When this is experienced then your whole energy takes a jump, a quantum leap, from the mind to the heart, from knowing to feeling. When there is no possibility of knowing, your energy does not move in that direction anymore.’
CONTENTS
Preface

1. The Eyes of Wonder
2. Hearts and Minds
3 Knowledge is not the same as Knowing
4 Answers are Dangerous
5. Old Habits die heard
6. Like a Child
Excerpt from Innocence, Knowledge, and Wonder
Chapter 1
Wonder is the source of wisdom, wonder is the source of all that is beautiful, and wonder is the source for the search, the real search. Wonder takes you on the adventure to know the mysteries of life.
I don't have any sense of wonder in me that I had as a child. Why?

It happens to almost everybody. The more knowledgeable you become, the less wonder is felt. And parents, schools, universities, society, they all go on forcing you to become knowledgeable. Their whole effort is to give you knowledge. Your inner space becomes so full of knowledge that wonder disappears, wonder has no space left to abide in you.
A child has the yes of wonder. He feels awe, he is mystified by each and everything, small things surprise him. Hence his bubbling joy, because his life is a constant discovery.
You become knowledgeable, the society wants you to become knowledgeable. Knowledge is very very needed, knowledge has much utility. And wonder is dangerous, because a person who wonders is bound to become either a philosopher or a poet or a mystic, and all these three kinds are useless for the society.
Society needs machines, skillful machines. By giving you more and more knowledge, making you full of knowledge, society turns you into an automaton, into a robot. And the more you think you know, the more wonder becomes impossible -- because when you know, how can you wonder?
A small child can wonder why the trees are green. But how can you wonder? You know it is because of chlorophyll -- although you don't know much, because another question can be raised as to why chlorophyll makes trees green, and you will have to shrug your shoulders. You have simply pushed the question back a little.
The more you know, the less you wonder. But the moment wonder dies in you, religion dies in you, because religion consists of wonder and awe. Knowledge demystifies life and existence, and religion exists only when life is a mystery. Hence you will have to learn wonder again.
In fact a right kind of education will never do this. It will give you knowledge, but it will not destroy your wonder; that will be the right kind of education. It will give you knowledge, but it will keep you alert that no knowledge can destroy wonder. In fact, on the contrary, knowledge can make you more wondering.
The small child cannot wonder about chlorophyll. If you are rightly educated, you can wonder about the greenery of the trees, you can also wonder about chlorophyll.
Albert Einstein's last words were, "I have been thinking the whole of my life that I would demystify the universe. But what has happened is just the contrary. The deeper I went into existence, the more the mystery deepened. I am dying full of wonder, I am dying in wonder."
But this is rare; this is the quality of a genius. The genius is one who does not allow the society to reduce him to a robot: that's my definition of a genius. Everybody is born as a genius, but people start compromising very soon. And when they compromise, their talents disappear, their intelligence dies. They go on selling their souls for mundane things, for useless things -- useless in the ultimate sense; they may be useful here, but death comes and all those things are taken away with you.
If you can die like Albert Einstein -- mystified, with full wonder, with prayer in the heart, with poetry arising in you -- you have lived rightly and you are dying rightly. And a man who lives rightly and dies rightly is a spiritual person.
Albert Einstein is far more spiritual than your Vatican pope and your shankaracharyas -- far more spiritual. Before he died, somebody asked him, "If you are born again and God asks you, I am certain you would like to become a great physicist and mathematician again." He said, "No, never! If another opportunity is given to me, rather than being a physicist I would like to become a plumber. I would like to live a very very ordinary kind of life, anonymous, so that I could enjoy life more easily with nobody coming in my way. My fame, prestige, research -- nothing coming in my way, so that I could have a deeper communion with existence."

You say: I DON'T HAVE ANY SENSE OF WONDER IN ME. WHY?

You must be very knowledgeable.

An aspiring variety artist walked into an agent's office looking for work. The agent said, "What do you do?"
Without a word, the artist lifted up his arms, flew around the office, out of the window, across the street and back in through the window, making a perfect two-point landing in front of the agent's desk.
"Okay, okay," said the agent. "So you do bird impersonations. Anything else?"

This is what happens to the knowledgeable people. Nothing surprises them. Even if God stands before them, they will say, "Okay, okay, so you are God. Anything else?"
Drop your knowledgeability.

The theatrical impresario, Maxie Doldum, was once approached by a man in his theater.
"I've got an act to offer you that is really unique," said the man. "It will take London by storm. All you have to do is put then thousand pounds in the bank for my wife, and I'll commit suicide on the stage of your theater."
Somewhat astounded, Maxie pondered the offer. "Hmmmmmm," he finally said, "But what will you do for an encore?"

There are people who are so constantly utilitarian that their whole thinking consists of utilities. He asks, "But what will you do for an encore?" People have become so much concerned with the worldly things -- utilities, commodities, usefulness -- that nothing surprises them, nothing shocks them into awareness. They go on like sleepwalkers.
The rosebush brings flowers, they don't see; they are blind. The birds sing in the morning, they don't hear; they are deaf. They have lost all sensitivity. They have become so dead and dull that nothing thrills them to a dance, nothing brings a song to their lips, nothing gives a dance to their feet. And the culprit is knowledge.
In a more understanding world, knowledge will still be given to you, but you will also be taught how to go on protecting your capacity to wonder. Your poetry will not be killed, crushed, under the weight of knowledge. In a real university, only half the time will be devoted to utilitarian objectives, and the other half will be devoted to non-utilitarian objectives: poetry, music, painting, dance, meditation, prayer -- or just relaxing under a tree, just sitting silently under a tree, doing nothing. Half the time of schools, colleges and universities should be devoted to non-utilitarian activities, done for no purpose at all but just for the sheer joy of it. Then only will we have a whole man in the world. ...

Osho Life Essentials: Destiny, Freedom and the Soul - What is the meaning of life? book + DVD Fame, Fortune and Ambition - What is the real meaning of success?  book + DVD New: Power, Politics, and Change, What can I do to help make the world a better place? book + DVD

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