Question 4

Why dont I have any other question than this one? I am not enlightened so I feel my mind is becoming Dull

 

 

It is just the other way round. Your mind is dull that's why you are not getting enlightened! Now you are putting things in completely the wrong sequence. Don't wait for enlightenment to come and don't hope that when enlightenment comes then you will be intelligent.

 

It will never come. Intelligence is the first requirement for it to happen at all. Intelligence is the preparation for it. Be intelligent. Behave intelligently. Live intelligently. Otherwise enlightenment is not going to happen at all. If you are hoping that one day enlightenment will come and then you will be intelligent, a genius, you are wrong.

 

There are a few people who go on saying nonsense things like this. One of them is old Pundit Gopi Krishna. He thinks that when kundalini arises one becomes a genius, one becomes tremendously intelligent. This is not true. If you are tre-mendously intelligent only then does your kundalini arise. otherwise not. If Gopi Krishna is right, it means that a dull-head, a stupid person, can make his kundalini rise and can become intelligent. That is impossible.

 

To help your energy rise and soar high you will need tremendous intelligence, sharp intelligence. Otherwise you will not be able to bring your energy up so high. A stupid person cannot do that. Enlightenment, nirvana, moksha, liberation, the arousal of your kundalini whatsoever the name -- are just names, symbolic. But one thing is certain: intelligence has to precede them. You cannot afford to be stupid and hope that someday something will happen and you will become enlightened. Then you are hoping in vain. You will have to create intelligence.

 

How to create intelligence? First become more and more alert in small things. Walking along the road, become more alert, try to be more alert. For such a simple process walking along the road -- you need not have any alertness. You can remain stupid and walk well. That's what everyone is doing. The stupidity does not hinder you at all. Start from small things. Taking your bath, be alert; standing under the shower, become very alert. That cold water falling on you, the body enjoying it... become alert, become conscious of what is happening, be relaxed yet conscious.

 

And this moment of consciousness has to be brought in again and again, in a thousand and one ways: eating, talking, meeting a friend, listening to me, meditating, making love. In all situations try to become more and more alert. It is hard, it is certainly difficult, but it is not impossible. Slowly, slowly, the dust will disappear and your mirror-like consciousness will reveal itself; you will become more intelligent.

 

Then live intelligently. You live in such a confused way, in such a stupid way, that if you see somebody else living that way you will immediately say that he is stupid. But you are doing the same, although somehow one manages not to look at one's own life.

 

A man came to me and he said, 'What to do Osho? I have fallen in love with two women.' Now one is enough, one will do enough harm but he has fallen in love with two women. So both are struggling and he is crushed. And he says, 'I am in misery. ,Both are fighting over me.' And naturally from both the sides he is being hit. And if I say to him, 'Choose one,' he says that it is difficult. This means that one person is riding on two horses. He says it is difficult to choose one. Then let it be, have it your own way. You will destroy your life. Choosing two women or two men as your love-objects is bound to split you. You will become a schizophrenic and you will start falling apart.

 

This is stupid. It is so simple to look into the phenomenon. Maybe sometimes it is difficult it IS difficult -- but then too one has to choose. You cannot go in all the directions simultaneously. If you have come to listen to me you have chosen. You have missed a few things. You could have been in a restaurant sitting with friends, sipping coffee, but you have chosen not to do that. You could have gone to a movie. but you have chosen not to go there. Or you could have chosen just to lie down on your bed and relax and be a Taoist -- but that you have not chosen. You have come to Listen to me and to sit on this hard marble floor, cold and hurting -- but you have chosen.

 

What will you say about a man who just stands outside his house and says, 'I am in difficulty. I cannot go to the lectures and I cannot go to bed because I want to do both together. So I am standing here.? He will miss both.

 

If you look into your life you will find how unintelligently you have been behaving. You read a book and you accumu-late knowledge and you start thinking that you know. You have learned the word 'God' and you think you have known God. You are ready to argue -- not only argue, you are ready to kill and be killed. How many Mohammedans, how many Hindus, how many Christians have been killed for something they have read only in book! Tremendously stupid people. One is fighting for the Koran, another is fighting for the Gita, another is fighting for the Bible -- for books you are fighting and killing living people and sacrificing your tremendously valuable life! What are you doing?

 

But man has behaved in stupid ways. Just because everybody else is behaving in the same way does not make it intelligent. If all are fools it does not make you intelligent because you are following them. [....]

 

Become a man of knowing, not a man of knowledge. Then you live intelligently.

 

To me intelligence is the basic morality, the basic virtue. If you are intelligent you will not harm anybody because that is foolish. If you are intelligent you will not harm your-self because that is foolish. Life is so precious, it is not to be wasted; it has to be lived in deep celebration, in deep gratitude. And one has to be very careful and watchful because a moment gone is gone forever. It will never return. So if you waste it in stupidity you are wasting a great opportunity. Live each moment so totally, so fully aware, that you never repent later on that you didn't live, that you could have lived more, that you could have enjoyed more. That's what intelligence is: to live life so totally that there is no repentance, never. One is always contented. One knows that one has lived to one's uttermost.

 

Then, in the uttermost state of awareness, enlightenment happens.

 

You say: I AM NOT ENLIGHTENED SO I FEEL MY MIND IS BECOMING DULL. No, sir, your mind is dull, that's why you have not become enlightened. So don't wait for enlightenment to come and do everything for you -- do something so that your dullness is dropped.

 

And it can be dropped, because nobody is born dull, every child is born intelligent. Can't you see it in children? -- how intelligent they are, how full of life, how full of love, how full of joy. Look into their eyes. How much shine there is in their eyes. They are the glories of God. Then the society jumps on them and the parents and the teachers and the education system and everybody starts making them dull because the society needs dull people. Only dull people can be dominated, oppressed Only dull people can be ordered to go here and there, to do this and that. Only dull people are needed by the society because dull people are very efficient, they don't have any mind, they are not dangerous. Dull people are very convenient. Dull people drag their whole life.

 

Just think of people who are intelligent. Do you think anybody would be ready to waste his whole life as a clerk? Just think of it. Would anybody be ready to waste his whole life as a politician? Would anybody be ready to waste his whole life as a soldier? For what? One would like to live an intelligent life of love, art, creativity. Many things would disappear from the world if people were intelligent; almost ninety-nine per cent of things would disappear.

 

War would not be possible. On the earth, war is almost the major work of humanity -- it has been for centuries. Seventy per cent of money is wasted on war -- seventy per cent! What are you doing? Simply preparing for war? You don't know anything else. You know only how to kill. People have become efficient only in killing. This can be done only by dull people. Intelligent people will throw away the arms. They will dump all the atom bombs in the Pacific and they will say goodbye to all war.

 

For what? Life is so short and there is so much to enjoy the stars and the moon and the flowers and the men and the women and the rivers and the mountains. And you are just fighting and living a very dull and stupid life.

 

Society needs dull people, remember it. So be aware that the society would not like you to become intelligent. It would like you to become a machine efficient, certainly, but not intelligent. Do the work that is given to you and die. Drag your life from the office to the house, from the house to the office your whole life is from the office to the house, from the house to the office. In the house you will have a wife to nag you and in the office you will have a boss to insult and humiliate you. And on the road there is the mad traffic. Go to the office, back home, to the office, again home -- and then one day you die. That is the only hope -- that one day you will die! [....]

 

Your only hope is that one day you will die. So just a little more, tolerate it a little more, a few more days of the office, a few more days of the house.... Tolerate. Death is coming to deliver you. That is your only hope.

 

What kind of life is this where man hopes that death will deliver him? What kind of life is this where people commit suicide? What kind of life is this where people go mad, insane, just because they cannot tolerate it any more. because it becomes too much, it breaks their nerves. No we are living very unintelligently. And in this unintelligence enlightenment is not possible.

 

But remember, basically you came with intelligence unintelligence is forced on you by society. So there is hope. It can be dropped too. It is just dust that has been gathered on the mirror. The mirror is still clean and clear, the dust just has to be removed. Once the dust is removed the mirror will be as clear as ever. Everybody is a genius. God never creates anything else, God only creates geniuses. Everybody is intelligent, nobody is mediocre, cannot be. How can some-body come out of God and be a mediocre? God does not deal in mediocres, he only makes masterpieces. But the society has forced you to become dull. So much dust has gathered on your mirror that you don't look like a mirror at all.

 

What is enlightenment? It is to attain to your mirror-like quality again. It is a recovery. It is not something that you invent, it is already the case -- deep down you are en-lightened. Dust has just gathered on the surface, you need a good cleansing.

 

That's what we are doing here. You need a good cleansing. You need a good bath. Meditation is an inner bath. Sannyas is a total cleansing. It is trying to live intelligently, whatsoever the cost. It is trying to live courageously. It is trying to live your life in your own way, trying to do your own thing in your own way and not bothering what others say. With that declaration you become intelligent. With that declaration of individuality you become intelligent. And only through intelligence does the bird of enlightenment one day come. Open the window of intelligence and wait.

-Osho, “Tao: The Pathless Path, Vol 2, #2, Q4”