Conclusions
The prejudiced eye is blind, the heart full of conclusions is dead. Too many a priori assumptions and your intelligence starts losing its sharpness, its beauty, its intensity. It becomes dull. Dull intelligence is what is called intellect. Your so- called intelligentsia is not really intelligent, it is just intellectual. Intellect is a corpse. You can decorate it, you can decorate it with great pearls, diamonds, emeralds, but still a corpse is a corpse.
To be alive is a totally different matter. Intelligence is aliveness; it is spontaneity, it is openness, it is vulnerability, it is impartiality, it is the courage to function without conclusions. And why do I say it is a courage? It is a courage because when you function out of a conclusion the conclusion protects you, the conclusion gives you security, safety. You know it well, you know how to come to it, you are very efficient with it. To function without a conclusion is to function in innocence. There is no security, you may go wrong, you may go astray.
One who is ready to go on the exploration called truth has to be ready also to commit many errors, mistakes, has to be able to risk. One may go astray, but that is how one arrives. Going many many times astray, one learns how not to go astray. Committing many mistakes one learns what is a mistake, and how not to commit it. Knowing what is error, one comes closer and closer to what is truth. It is an individual exploration; you cannot depend on others’ conclusions.
-Osho, ”The Book of Wisdom, #21“