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will find every rationalisation to cling to knowledge.
Once knowledge is dropped, once you become as ignorant as a child, then the second step is very simple. In fact you have not to do it, it happens of its own accord. The man who has the guts to renounce knowledge has earned, deserves, the help of the whole. He has proved himself worthy of the grace of the divine.
The moment you are ready to accept your ignorance, ignorance starts disappearing. Socrates says 'I know only one thing -- that I know nothing'; he has renounced knowledge. Now whatsoever man can do he has done. He has done the most impossible task.
Now the second thing happens as a gift because ignorance does not feed the ego, so there is no clinging to it, no attachment to it -- who wants to be ignorant? It starts slipping, like a dead leaf it starts falling from the tree, the tree need not renounce it. It is dead leaf; just a small breeze or a rain shower, anything can become the excuse for it to fall. And the moment ignorance also disappears then innocence is discovered -- that is the state of the sage.
Sannyas is the beginning, the beginning of the pilgrimage that ends in sagehood. I don't call the ultimate state the state of a saint -- that word has become ugly because of associations. The word 'sage' is still virgin, it has not been polluted by the so-called religions.
So these things have to be remembered: renounce knowledge -- that you have to do -- and then the second thing comes as a by-product, renunciation of ignorance. And the third thing is discovered when knowledge and ignorance both are gone. You are gone, the ego is gone. In that moment of egoless silence one discovers the primal innocence, the innocence of existence itself. That's the goal of sannyas!
Truth cannot be reflected upon. One cannot think it. One can think about it, about and about. The word 'about' means around. All thinking goes in circles, it never reaches to the centre. All thinking is superficial, it never touches the real, the essential. That's why philosophy is a failure, it has not contributed anything to humanity. It is the greatest exercise in utter futility. For thousands
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