"If I am to continue, then death is irrelevant. And only these two possibilities exist. I cannot say anything right now about what will happen. I don't know. I don't know yet.'

"Socrates was a wise man, not a man of knowledge. A man of knowledge would have given a certain answer. Men of knowledge have certain answers, absolute certainty – that is part of their stupidity. In fact, only stupid minds can be certain. Life is such a vast mystery, unfathomable, unknowable; if you are wise you cannot be certain.

"Wisdom is cautious. Wisdom hesitates. Wisdom is never certain. That's why wisdom can never be confined to a theory. All theories are less than life, all theories are narrow, and life cannot enter into them – life is so vast, so tremendously vast and infinite. A wise man only knows one thing: that he does not know. A man of knowledge knows a thousand and one things and knows that he knows – and therein lies the foolishness of the man of knowledge. He goes on accumulating facts unlived by himself: theories, words, philosophies – untouched by his own being. He goes on accumulating them in his memory. He becomes a vast reservoir of knowledge, he becomes an Encycloapedia Britannica – but a dead thing.

"The more his memory becomes filled with knowledge the less and less he lives in his being. The more and more he moves into the head, becomes a part, a fragment, the less and less he is joined to the vast being and the universe and existence. He becomes in a way non-existential. He is no more a part of this existence, alive, radiant, vibrating. He is a frozen phenomenon; he no more flows with life. He is like an iceberg, frozen and stuck somewhere – stuck in the head.

"Consciousness, when it becomes knowledge, becomes frozen; when consciousness becomes wisdom it becomes a flow. A wise man lives, lives totally, but knows only one thing – that he doesn't know. To learn from a wise man is very difficult. To learn from a man of knowledge is very easy. He can give you all that he knows, he can transfer it very easily, language is enough of a vehicle."