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on himself, and there is an explosion of light. For the first time he comes to know the beauty and the blessing of being alone, the tremendous freedom and the wisdom of being alone.
Zarathustra used to carry a serpent and an eagle while he was living in the mountains. The serpent, in the East, has always represented wisdom. The greatest wisdom is to go on slipping out of the past, without clinging to it, just like a serpent slips out of his old skin and never looks back. His movement is always from the old to the new.
Wisdom is not the collection of the past; wisdom is the experience of the constantly renewing life.
Wisdom does not gather the dust of memories; it remains like a clean mirror, reflecting that which is -- always fresh, always new, always in the present.
The eagle is a symbol of freedom. Alone it goes across the sun, far away in the boundless sky, with no fear. Wisdom and freedom are two aspects of the same coin.
Living for ten years in the mountains, Zarathustra attained the ecstasy of being alone, the purity of being alone, the independence of being alone -- and this is where he is unique amongst other awakened people: When they discovered, they remained in their heights. Zarathustra starts "down-going," going back to the crowd.
He has to deliver the message to humanity that you are suffering unnecessarily; you are being dependent unnecessarily; you are creating all kinds of imprisonments for yourself -- just to feel safe and secure. But the only security and the only safety is in knowing yourself, because then even death is impotent. It cannot destroy you.
Zarathustra is going downwards from the mountains to tell the people that wisdom is not synonymous with knowledge; in fact, knowledge is just the opposite of wisdom. Wisdom is basically innocence. Knowledge is ego, and wisdom is the disappearance of the ego. Knowledge makes you full of information. Wisdom makes you absolutely empty, but that emptiness is a new kind of fullness. It is a spaciousness.
He is going to the people to tell them that wisdom brings freedom. There is no other freedom -- political, economical, social, all those freedoms
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