Osho on Intelligence

Intellect dissects, analyzes. It is the instrument of science. Intelligence is the instrument of religion; it joins together. Hence, the greatest science of spirituality we have called Yoga. Yoga means the methodology to join. Yoga means to put things together. God is the greatest totality, all things together. God is not a person, God is a presence, the presence when the total is functioning in a great harmony — the trees and the birds and the earth and the stars and the moon and the sun and the rivers and the ocean — all together. That togetherness is God. If you dissect, you will never find God. Dissect a man; you cannot find the presence that was making him alive. Dissect the world; you cannot find the presence that is God.

Intelligence is the method to join things together. An intelligent person is very synthetical. He always looks for a higher whole, because the meaning is always in the higher whole. He always looks for something higher in which the lower is dissolved and functions as a part, functions as a note in the harmony of the whole, gives its own contribution to the orchestra of the whole but is not separate from it. Intelligence moves upwards, intellect moves downwards. Intellect goes to the cause.

Please follow it; the point is delicate. Intellect goes to the cause; intelligence goes to the goal. Intelligence moves into the future, intellect moves in the past. Intellect reduces everything to the lowest denominator. If you ask what love is, intellect will say it is nothing but sex — the lowest denominator. If you ask what prayer is, the intellect will say it is nothing but repressed sex. Ask intelligence what sex is, and intelligence will say it is nothing but the seed of prayer. It is the potential love. Intellect reduces to the lowest; it reduces everything to the lowest.

Ask intellect what a lotus is, and it will say it is nothing, just an illusion; the reality is the mud — because the lotus comes out of the mud and again falls back into the mud. The mud is the real, the lotus is just an illusion. Mud remains, the lotus comes and goes. Ask intelligence what mud is, and intelligence will say, “It is the potentiality of being a lotus.” Then mud disappears and millions of lotuses flower. Intelligence goes to the higher and higher and the higher, and the whole effort is to reach to the ultimate, to the pinnacle of existence. Because things can be explained only through the higher, not through the lower. You don’t explain through the lower, you explain away. And when the lower becomes too important, all beauty is lost, all truth, all good. Everything that has any significance is lost. Then you start crying, “Where is meaning in life?”

In the West, science destroyed every value and reduced everything to matter. Now everybody is worried about what is the meaning of life, because meaning exists in the higher whole. See, you are alone; you feel, “What is the meaning of life?” Then you fall in love with a woman; a certain meaning arises. Now two have become one — a little higher. A single man is a little. Lower than a couple. A couple is a little higher. Two things have joined together. Two opposite forces have mingled, the feminine and the male energies. Now it is more of a circle. That’s why in India we have the concept of ARDHANARISHWAR. Shiva is painted as half woman and half man. The concept of ARDHANARISHWAR says that man is half, and woman is half. When a man and woman meet in deep love, a higher reality arises: certainly greater, more complex, because two energies are meeting.

Then a child is born; now there is a family — more meaning. Now the father feels a meaning in his life: the child has to be brought up. He loves the child, he works hard, but work is now no longer work. He is working for his child, for his beloved, for his home. He works, but the hardness of the work has disappeared. He is not dragging it. Tired of the whole day, he comes home dancing. Seeing the smile on his child’s face, he is tremendously happy. A family is a higher unit than the couple, and so on and so forth. And God is nothing but the communion of all, the greatest family of all. That’s why I go on calling these orange people my family. I would like you to disappear in the whole. I would like you to be so absorbed in the whole that you remain individual, but you become part of a greater unity, bigger than you. Meaning arises IMMEDIATELY whenever you become part of a greater unity.

When a poet writes a poem, meaning arises — because the poet is not alone; he has created something. When a dancer dances, meaning arises. When a mother gives birth to a child, meaning arises. Left alone, cut from everything else, isolated like an island, you are meaningless. Joined together you are meaningful. The bigger the whole, the bigger is the meaning. That’s why I say God is the biggest conceivable whole, and without God you cannot attain to the highest meaning. God is not a person; God is not sitting somewhere. Those ideas are just stupid. God is the total presence of existence, the being, the very ground of being.

Source:

Listen to complete discourse at mentioned below link.

Discourse Series: The Beloved, Vol 2 Chapter #5

Chapter title: Die Living

5 July 1976 am in Buddha Hall

References:

Osho has spoken on ‘Intelligence and Intellect’ in many of His discourses. More on the subject can be referred to in the following books/discourse titles:

1. The Book of Wisdom
2. Come Follow To You
3. Dang Dang Doko Dang
4. From Misery to Enlightenment
5. The Secret of Secrets
6. Sufis: The People of the Path