Intelligence

Foreword

To be intellectual is to be phony; it is pretending intelligence. It is not real because it is not yours, it is borrowed.

Chapter 1 - Intelligence a Gift of Nature

Intelligence is part of nature. Everything is intelligent. Only some humans are stupid. They are made so by the system so that the system can rule over them. Intelligent people solve their own problems, they don't need leaders.

Hell is fear, heaven is greed.

To ask security for tomorrow means to remain in constant fear.

Meditation is the cure to intelligence that went missing through education. Cramming facts for no good reason is killing intelligence.

We are playing Imitation games, forgetting our own authentic selves. In the process we become unintelligent.

Life happens only to those who are adventurous, who are courageous, almost daredevils—only to them does life happen.

Intelligence is trust in your own being.

To Osho, intelligence is almost synonymous with awareness. Bring it into your whole life, when eating, when walking, when having sex. Just be there meditatively, attentively, intelligently. Paying attention and thinking and feeling what is happening now in every moment.

If you are wasting your life it is no one else's responsibility.

Living each moment attentively is the art of intelligence.

The Poetry of the Heart

The intelligence of the head is not intelligence at all; it is knowledgeability.

The intelligence of the heart creates poetry in your life, gives a dance to your steps, makes your life a joy, a celebration, a festivity, a laughter. It gives you a sensor of humor. It makes you capable of love, of sharing. That is true life. The life that is lived from the head is a mechanical life. You become a robot—maybe very efficient. Robots are very efficient, machines are more efficient than man. You can earn mich through the head, but you will not live much. You may have a better standard of living but you won't have any life.

The head, rationality, is a tool, it should not be the sole arbiter of life.

An Openness of Being

But nobody is ready to listen to what the other is saying. Have you ever listened to what the other is saying? Before a word is uttered, you have already concluded. Your conclusions have become fixed; you are no longer liquid.

Aliveness = Inconsistency = Change

Death = Consistency = No Change

Chapter 2 - What Makes People Stupid

Man is a ladder - downward or upward, the ladder stays unchanged it's about the direction. Heaven or Hell. Good or bad.

Stupidity is not absence of intelligence it is not using it.

You cannot force a Buddha to follow stupid people, and the stupid people are many—the majority, 99.9 percent. They have great power with them, the power of violence—and they show it whenever it is needed.

Survival of the Fittest

Awareness of intelligence creates ego. That is a problem.

Intelligence is delicate and light, survival in the world needs something hard, reliable, and dark. The ego is all that. People nurture egos of children so they can survive better.

But intelligence is also rebellious. When intelligent one doesn't sell one's soul in service of society. Ego makes one do this trade.

Society does not want people it wants mechanisms.

Education is about ambition. It teaches you how to exploit others to become famous.

No society can tolerate people who say the truth, they sabotage the very structure of society.

To Osho intelligence seems about good quips and jokes more so than insight into how the world works sometimes.

Striving for Efficiency

Universities are designed to create efficiency, they are designed to create mechanisms out of people. Which makes sense historically as well, schools were built to make people good soldiers.

Intelligence is not memory, Einstein and Edison were intelligent but stupid in memory.

Repression and Manipulation

Claims that India was conquered only because of its intelligence which lead to people not wanting to fight and letting themselves be ruled. Also claims that 70% of the world's money is tied up with weapons and weapon production.

He also claims that when counting nuns and monks that will equal to the number of prostitutes in a society.

Repression creates cunningness. You lose authenticity, you lose naturalness, spontaneity. You lose truth. You start lying to others, you start lying to yourself. You start finding ways to lie and to go on lying. And a single lie will need a thousand other lies to protect it, to support it.

The Sin of Disobedience

Be disobedient to society, but just if you feel like it.

Universities are designed to create soldiers.

Life is a beautiful journey if it is a process of constant learning, exploration. Then it is excitement every moment, because every moment you are opening a new door, every moment you are coming in contact with a new mystery.

The devil has a good argument why to eat from the trees. Becoming like God should be a good thing, God should want his children to be like him.

Just Following Orders

The questioning attitude is the very base of intelligence. The moment you stop asking why, you have stopped growing as far as intellect is concerned.

Following orders and doing something because you understand it are fundamentally different. If you understand it you are not following the order, you are following your own judgement.

Individuality is the very flowering of existence—nothing is higher.

Orders and guidelines are given by other people in order to control your life. To enforce their ideas on you.

Chapter 3 - Mind—A Pandora's Box

The idiot is in you, and so is the genius.

Thinking physically changes your brain to think even more even better in the future.

Humans are afraid of darkness because darkness used to be the most dangerous thing. Animals killed you when you were alone at night in the dark.

Because humans are weak they build weapons. And those weapons create distance because in close combat humans, even with weapons, would still die to a lion. People had to think to overcome their weaknesses.

Gaining followers is done by stating everything with utmost conviction. People are not searching for truth, they are searching for a strong opinion to lean on, something that is easy to comprehend, that they can follow. This is the same argument as Emanuel Kants Unmündigkeit.

Uncertainty is like a wound, most people want to reduce it, and they follow ideas and people who help them reduce it. Somebody asking more questions than he answers is not somebody with a lot of followers. Scientists are different, they thrive in the questions. Questions mean mysteries to be discovered. More questions is a good thing.

Leaders also have the same problem, but by convincing others they rid themselves of uncertainty. If so many others believe what I am saying, it has to be true.

People from other beliefs bring doubt and uncertainty with them. That's what people fear. And they mask the fear with anger. A Hindu is dangerous to a Christian because it opens the possibility of asking: am I right in believing in Christ?

Fanaticism is screaming so loudly your own opinion that you can't hear that of others, ever.

Fanaticism is simply a strategy to protect you from doubts.

Stepping Out of the Pyramid

The dumbest and most intelligent people are alike. They have the same minds. They are part of the same pyramid. With lots of unintelligent people At the bottom and only some smart people at the top. But smart people can become dumb and dumb people can become intelligent. Meditators are different. They exist outside of the pyramid.