Intellect 

 

 

Well-behaved people are impotent as far as intelligence is concerned, well-cultured people are phony, pseudo; they are not authentic.

 

And you say they are the most intelligent. You don't seem to understand the difference between the intellect and intelligence; you are mixing them both up. They may be the most intellectual, but to be intelligent is a totally different phenomenon than being intellectual. Intellect is of the mind; intelligence comes only through meditation, there is no other way. Intellect collects information: it is a memory system. Intelligence needs no information: it goes through a transformation. Intellect goes through ready-made answers, answers which are provided by others -- parents, teachers, schools, colleges, universities, priests, leaders. Ready-made answers are collected by the intellectual people. Intellectuals are parrots; they are mechanical, they are 'His Master's Voice' -- HMV records, gramophone records -- they don't have their own understanding.

 

The intelligent person lives moment-to-moment, not through borrowed answers; he has no ready-made answer. He sees the challenge of the situation and responds accordingly. He is not a photograph, he is a mirror. The intellectual is a photograph: he already has an imprint on him. The intelligent person is just a mirror: he reflects reality as it is. He simply reflects it and responds to it. The intelligent person is spontaneous and the intellectual person is never spontaneous.

 

But our schools, colleges and universities are not places where intelligence is helped; it is hindered. Our whole educational system is part of the establishment: it does not work for the well-being of the person being taught, it works for the vested interests of the politicians, of the priests, of the churches, of the state, of all kinds of other things. It has nothing to do with the person being taught, its whole work is to create efficient slaves.

 

And whatsoever you call I.Q., the intelligence quotient, has nothing to do with intelligence. It is memory quotient -- it is M.Q.! One who can memorize things well and can reproduce them exactly as he has been taught is thought to be intelligent. But he is not intelligent, he just has a good memory, and memory is nothing much to brag about -- a computer can have a memory and it has a better memory.

 

-Osho, "Zen: Zest, Zip, Zap and Zing, #2, Q2“

 

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Question 2

Osho,

Are you absolutely against intellect? should one never use one's head at all?

 

 

I am not absolutely against intellect. It has its uses but they are very limited, and you have to understand their limitations. If you are working as a scientist you will have to use your intellect. It is a beautiful mechanism, but it is beautiful only if it remains a slave and does not become the master. If it becomes the master and overpowers you then it is dangerous. Mind as a slave to consciousness is a beautiful servant. Mind as a master of consciousness is a very dangerous master.

 

The whole question is of emphasis.

 

I am not absolutely against intellect -- I use intellect myself, how I can be against it? Right now, talking to you, I am using it. But I am the master; it is not my master. If I want to use it I use it. If I don't want to use it, it has no power over me. But your intellect, your mind, your thinking process continues whether you want or not. It does not bother about you -- as if you are nobody at all -- it goes on and on; even when you are asleep it goes on working. It does not listen to you at all. It has remained in power for so long that it has forgotten completely that it is only a servant.

 

When you go for a walk you use your legs. But when you are sitting there is no need to go on moving your legs. People ask me, "Osho, for continuously two hours you go on sitting in the same posture. You don't even move your legs once." Why should I move? I am not walking! I know you, because even if you are sitting on your chair you are not really sitting. You are moving your legs, changing your positions, postures, doing thousand-and-one things, tossing and turning -- a great restlessness.

 

The same is true about your mind. If I am talking to you I am using the mind. The moment I stop talking my mind stops too, immediately! If I am not talking to you my mind has no need to go on working, it simply goes into silence. That's how it should be. It should be natural. While asleep I don't dream; there is no need. You dream only because so much work has been left undone in the day that the mind has to do it. It is overtime work -- you have not been able to finish in the day.

 

And how can you finish anything? You are doing thousand-and-one things simultaneously. Nothing is ever finished; everything remains incomplete -- and remains incomplete forever. You will die, but nothing will be complete. Not even in a single direction your work will be complete, because you are running in all the directions, you have become many fragments, you are not integrated. The mind is dragging you into one thing, the heart is dragging you into another, the body wants you to go somewhere else, and you are always at a loss whom to listen. And the mind is also not one, you have many minds -- you are multi-psychic. There is a crowd of minds in you. There is no unity, ho harmony. You are not an orchestra -- nothing is in tune; everything is going on its own; nobody listens to anybody else -- you simply create noise not music.

 

Intellect is good if it functions as a servant of the whole. Nothing is bad if it is in its right place and everything is wrong if it is in the wrong place. Your head is perfectly good if it is on your shoulders. If it is somewhere else then it is wrong.

 

Working as a scientist, intellect is needed. Working in the marketplace, the intellect is needed. Communicating with words, talking to people, the intellect is needed. But it is a very limited use. There are far greater things where intellect is not needed at all. And where it is not needed it goes on functioning there, too; that's the problem. You should be capable... a meditator becomes capable, he becomes very fluid, flexible, he does not become idiotic. He uses his intellect, but he uses his intuition too -- he knows that their functions are different. He uses his head he uses his heart too.

 

-Osho, "Tao: The Golden Gate, Vol 2, #6, Q2“