Lao Tzu says:

Who knows that he does not know is the highest;
who pretends to know what he does not know is sickminded.
And who recognizes sickmindedness as sickmindedness,
is not sickminded.
The sage is not sickminded.
Because he recognizes sickmindedness as sickmindedness,
therefore he is not sickminded.

Man is like an onion, exactly like an onion; layers and layers of personality; and behind all those layers is hidden the essence.

That essence is like emptiness, shunya, void. It is more like non-being than like being, because being has a limitation, a boundary to it. But that innermost core has no boundary to it, it has no limitation, it is just a freedom, a free flow of energy, infinite in its dimensions.

Unless one goes on peeling his layers of personality to the very end, and rediscovers the essence, one remains sickminded. Sickmindedness is being stuck somewhere, frozen somewhere. Sickmindedness is being blocked. It is an impasse – it is exactly how the word sounds: you cannot pass through it. You are blocked. You do not have a freedom to flow and to be, and not to be. You are forced to be something. You are more like a solid rock than like a river.

Freedom is health. Being blocked, stuck, is sickmindedness. And everybody, almost everybody, is sick. Rarely it happens that one gathers courage to penetrate to the very innermost core of non-being. Then one becomes a buddha: whole, healthy, holy.

We have to understand these layers because the very understanding is a healing force. If you understand exactly where you are blocked? the blocks start melting – this is the miracle, the miracle of understanding a thing. The very understanding helps it to melt. No other thing is needed to be done. If you really exactly know, if you can pinpoint where you are blocked, where you are frozen, where the impasse exists, then just being aware of it, knowing it in its totality, starts it melting.

Knowing is a healing force. And once it starts melting you again regain the flow. You become flowing!