Mind is not your intelligence.

 

It may sound strange but this is a truth, that mind is not your intelligence. Mind can be intellectual, which is a very poor substitute for intelligence. Intellectuality is mechanical. You can become a great scholar, a great professor, a great philosopher -- just playing with words which are all borrowed, arranging and rearranging thoughts, none of which are your own.

 

The intellect is absolutely bankrupt.

 

It has nothing of its own, all is borrowed.

 

And that's the difference between intelligence and intellect.

 

Intelligence has an eyesight of its own, a capacity to see into things, into problems.

 

Intelligence is your born quality.

 

It cannot be learned, it cannot be nurtured. Everybody is born with intelligence, but the society is in favor of intellect, because the intellectual person is not a real individual, he is phony. He has nothing of his own; he is a beggar, and beggars are not supposed to be emperors, are not supposed to be masters. They are destined to remain slaves.

 

So your so-called greatest scholars are continuously proving their slavery to the establishment. None of them is a rebel. They are hankering for the prizes and awards the establishment can bestow upon them: respectability, honor. They are all desiring to be Nobel laureates, but to get the Nobel prize you have to sell your soul. You have to accept a thousand and one things that no intelligent person can accept.

 

You have to support the status quo, the people who are in power, who have the money. You are just a puppet to them. Yes, it is a very mutual conspiracy: they give you the Nobel prize, they give you honorary doctorates, they make you world famous; in return you support their exploitation, their oppression, and whatever nonsense they are doing. You have to become a protecting wall.

 

And of course the world is going to listen to you because you are a Nobel prize winner, honored by Oxford, by Cambridge, by Harvard. The ordinary people, the common masses are bound to listen to you.

 

If you are supporting the society then naturally there is nothing wrong with the society; there is no need to change it. The problems are not created by the society but by the "anti-social" elements. And who are the anti-social elements? All the rebels are anti-social elements. It is these people who provoke the masses, steal their souls, make them aware that they also are human beings, not cattle. These are anti-social elements; they have to be destroyed.

 

Either they have to be purchased in some way ... give them a Nobel prize, and purchase them; give them honorary doctorates and purchase them. If they refuse to be purchased then society has all the ways to condemn them.

 

Their books will not be published by the great publishers, because those great publications are owned by the vested interests. Their names will disappear from the newspapers, from the magazines, from the media. They will live almost as if they are not, as if they don't exist.

 

This is a far superior way to destroy somebody than crucifying. At least when you crucify a person you give him immense publicity. Two thousand years have passed: Jesus is still hanging on the cross. He has become almost an eternal advertisement. Wherever you go you will see the cross -- on the graveyard, on the churches, on the vehicles of the Red Cross Society.

 

Now this is free publicity for two thousand years! Isabel, you should learn something! Not a single cent has been wasted. Jesus was certainly a Jew, not only by birth but by his very spirit. He managed his own crucifixion, and created publicity which goes on increasing.

 

It is a very essential thing to understand, that the establishment first tries to persuade you, to bribe you. When it fails in purchasing and bribing you, then it comes into its true color: then it starts destroying you. And it has learned through the centuries that poisoning a Socrates is not good. You killed the man, but you made him immortal; you imprinted his message on the very soul of humanity. You proved foolish -- it was not the right way.

 

Crucifying Jesus was not the way to destroy him. You have saved him.

 

Now the modern status quo, establishment, vested interests, are far more clever. If Jesus comes back he should not be afraid that he is going to be crucified again. No, this time it is going to be worse: he will be ignored. To be crucified does not take your dignity, but to be ignored .... Nobody bothers about you, nobody pays any attention, nobody is for or against you. This is real humiliation that is being done.

 

But intellectuals are not capable of resisting; they don't have the guts, they can't have, because all that they have is borrowed. They are easily purchasable, cheap. But they become a very significant protective wall around the establishment. People look towards them with respect. People think that if a Nobel prize winner is saying something it must be right -- as if by winning the Nobel prize one attains to enlightenment, nirvana!

 

It is a political game. It is all politics.

 

Once in a while they go on giving a Nobel prize to a Russian scientist, to some scientist whom they would like to get out of Russia; his being in Russia is dangerous for them. He is close to finding something -- or he has found it already -- in which they are far behind.

 

Now you see the ways of the politicians? Give the man a Nobel prize -- now you create trouble. The scientist is not capable of resisting the temptation of accepting the Nobel prize, because that is the world's greatest honor. It does not happen to everybody; it happens once in a while to one individual in millions.

 

Now, a poor scientist, howsoever great a scientist he may be -- as a man he is a poor man with all the desires to be famous, to be well known. Now, the politicians have put him into a dilemma: if he accepts the Nobel prize he goes against the Russian establishment because the Russian establishment knows perfectly well -- politicians know each other well; nobody knows them as well as they know each other. They speak the same language, they work the same strategies.

 

The Russian politicians know why the Nobel prize has been given to this man. By giving the Nobel prize a rift has been created between the man and the Soviet government. The Soviet pressure will be: "Reject the Nobel prize. It comes from the capitalist world; it is not an honor, in fact it is an insult. Reject it, and if you don't reject it then you will be in trouble."

 

And it has happened with many people: either they have been imprisoned ... that's what the politicians of the other side wanted, that they should be imprisoned so their work is spoiled. They may have been coming close to something which may have made Russia the most powerful nation in the world. They have disrupted it; they have sabotaged it in a very clever way -- without interfering, without saying a single world.

 

Or if the man has a world-wide reputation already -- which scientists generally don't have ... perhaps a literary person, a poet, a novelist may have. If the person has a world-wide reputation, then from all capitalist countries all the intellectuals, their institutions, academies and societies will start a great campaign and movement against the Russian government.

 

Now, the Russian government has only two choices: either to release that man and stop this campaign .... But they cannot keep this man any longer in the country; he has become an enemy. And now he is in the hands of the enemies, he can become an informer. He is dangerous -- he has to be expelled. That too is good for the capitalist world. Once the man is expelled he is received with great honor all over the capitalist world; he is made a hero.

 

If you look into the ways the politicians go on doing things you will be surprised. But they succeed only with intellectuals, because intellectuals are really not intelligent people. If they were intelligent then nobody could manipulate them, neither the communist nor the capitalist; nobody would be capable of manipulating them. It would be impossible; they would see things clearly.

 

Intelligence is of the soul.

 

Intellect is of the mind.

 

Mind is just garbage. Mind is that which has been given to you by others. The whole collection, the whole junkyard all kinds of people have been throwing in you -- that is your mind. That mind continuously suffers from an inferiority complex, is bound to suffer: it has nothing of its own, it has no ground underneath its feet.

 

The mind wants power, prestige.

 

It can have power through politics, which is the criminal's way. If your mind has a criminal tendency then you will follow the path of politics. Politicians and criminals are not basically different people.

 

Politicians are successful criminals.

 

Criminals are unsuccessful politicians.

 

Criminals are poor, pitiable. They had tried but they failed. Politicians are of the same tribe, with only one difference: they have succeeded.

 

And in this world success makes everything right. What you have done, how you have arrived, what method and means you have used -- who bothers about it? When you are successful it is enough proof that you are a man of tremendous capacity. Your success is the proof.

 

And when you have failed, your failure is also a proof that you were hankering for the moon; you were just foolish. Try to walk on the earth, don't try to fly towards the moon; otherwise you will fall and get multiple fractures. That's what poor criminals have got -- multiple fractures.

 

But the mind of the politician and the criminal is the same. Those who are not courageous enough will go in a way which can lead either to the world of criminals or to the world of politicians. Of course, of the hundred people who will walk on the path, ninety-nine will go to the world of criminals; ninety-nine will be in the jails. One percent will also be in jail, but of a different kind: it is called the White House.

 

All kinds of black deeds -- naturally you have to call the house the "White House" to hide them.

 

-Osho, “From Darkness to Light, #5”