Osho on Intuition
KINDLY EXPLAIN THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF INTELLECT, INTUITION, AND PRATIBHA IN THEIR PROPER PERSPECTIVE. PRAY, SPECIALLY EXPLAIN WHY AND HOW LIFE SHOULD BE PRATIBHA-ORIENTED AND HOW ONLY SUCH AN ORIENTATION IS ADEQUATE FOR LIFE AND LIFE’S EVOLUTION AT ITS HIGHEST AND BEST.
The intellect is the lowest functioning of your being, but because it is the lowest, it is the most efficient. Because it is the lowest, it is the most developed. Because it is the lowest, it can be educated, disciplined. Because it is the lowest, all the universities, colleges, schools, exist for it. And every man has it more or less. It is tremendously useful in the outer world. Without intellect it will be difficult for you to be of any utility. That’s why Lao Tzu says to his disciples, “Become useless.” Unless you are ready to become useless you will not be ready to leave intellect behind, because intellect gives you utility.
You become a doctor — you become useful to the society. You become an engineer, you become a professor — this and that. It is through intellect that you become somebody and the society can use you — and the society can use you as a means. The more utility you fulfill, the more the society values you; hence, the hierarchy — the brahmin, the kshatriya, the vaishya, the sudra.
Highest is the scholar, who is pure intellect — the brahmin. Lower than him is the warrior, the kshatriya, because he has to protect the country. Lower than him is the businessman, because he is the whole blood-circulating system of the society — he is the economics, the belly. And lowest is the sudra, the untouchable, the proletariat, because his work is manual, menial, and not much intellect is needed. The sudra needs the least development of intellect and the brahmin needs the highest development of intellect, but the whole division is because of intellect.
Intellect has its utility, but you are bigger than the intellect, vaster than the intellect. If you become identified with the intellect too much, you will become a doctor or an engineer or a professor, a businessman, a warrior, but you will lose your being. You will not be yourself. You can become identified with your function so much that you can forget your being.
You can forget that you are man. You can become so much of an engineer or a judge or a politician that you can forget that you are man. You are losing much; then you are just a mechanism. The society will use you — while you can be used — then you will be retired from the society. Then the society waits for you — when you are going to die.
Retired people die sooner than they would have died if they were not retired; they become old sooner. Their life becomes less by almost ten years. What happens? They become useless. They can feel that everywhere wherever they go they are, at the most, tolerated; they are not needed.
And there is a great need in man to be needed — the greatest need is to be needed.
Once you feel you are superfluous, once you feel you can be discarded in the dustbin, once you feel that you don’t function as a utility in the society; you start dying. The retirement becomes the date of dying also — you start dying fast. You yourself know that you will be a burden now. People will tolerate you, people may even sympathize with you, but nobody is going to take you seriously, nobody is going to love you and respect you. You are discarded. If you get identified with the intellect too much, you are becoming a thing — like a mechanism. A good car, but when its utility is finished it is thrown to the rubbish heap. Then you are going to be used and thrown, and your innermost core will remain unfulfilled because you were not meant just to be used. You were meant to flower as a being; that was your destiny.
Higher than intellect is intuition. Intuition gives a little romance to your life, a little poetry. It gives you a few glimpses of the nonutilitarian, of your being a person and not being a thing. When somebody loves you, that love hits your intuition, your moon center.
When somebody looks at you with charmed eyes, magnetized, that exhilarates the moon energy within you. When somebody says that you are beautiful, your being feels enhanced. When somebody says you are useful, you feel hurt. Useful? That doesn’t seem to be appreciation. Because if you are useful then you are replaceable. Then you can be thrown, somebody else can replace you. But if you are beautiful then you are irreplaceable, then you are unique. Then when you will be gone from the world, something will always remain empty, something will always lack. That’s why you hanker for love.
Love is food for intuition. If you are not loved your intuition will not develop. The only way to develop intuition is to shower love upon you. So if a mother loves the child, the child becomes intuitive. If the mother does not love the child, the child becomes intellectual. If the child lives in an atmosphere of love and care and compassion — if the child is accepted for his own self, not for any utility that he can fulfill — then he grows tremendously inside and his energy starts moving through the moon center.
The moon center is almost nonfunctioning because you have not been loved.
Watch. If you tell a woman, “I love you because you have beautiful eyes,” she will not be happy, because tomorrow she can lose her eyes. Eyes are just accidental. Or some disease may happen and she may become blind, or the eyes may not remain beautiful. When you say, “I love you because you have a beautiful face,” the woman is not happy, because the face will not remain beautiful forever. The old age is coming every day, every moment. But if you say, “I love you,” then she feels happy because this “you” is something permanent, not accidental, nothing can happen to it. When you say to a woman, “I love because…” then she never feels happy, because the “because” brings intellect in. You simply say, you shrug your shoulders and you say, “I don’t know why, but I love you.” The moon center starts functioning — the woman flowers. Watch a woman when nobody loves her and watch her the next moment when somebody has said to her, “I love you.” A tremendous difference, of grace, dignity. A tremendous change — her whole face becomes enlightened with something new, a glow comes to her. What has happened? The moon center has released its energy.
You must have heard the name of one great Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. He was ugly, very ugly, and no woman could ever manage to say to him, “I love you.” Of course, he remained retarded — the moon center never functioned. He was repulsive. People will look at him and escape. He used to work in an art dealer’s shop, and the man, the owner, watched him day in, day out. He looked so dull, as if much dust has gathered on his being, and he will not take interest in anything. Customers will come, he will show the paintings, but he will not take any interest. Continuously burdened, not interested in anything, indifferent. He will walk like a zombie — has to walk, so he will walk, but no zest, no life, no intensity, no passion. One day suddenly the owner could not believe his eyes. He had come, and it seemed he had taken a bath after many months, or many years maybe. He has taken a bath, he has combed his hair, and his step has a dance in it and he is humming a tune. Impossible. And he has good clothes on him and he is wearing a perfume. Impossible.
The owner called him, “Van Gogh, what has happened?” Van Gogh said, “It has happened — a woman has said she loves me. Though the woman was only a prostitute, but still. She has said so only for money, but still, a woman has said she loves me.”
Van Gogh asked the woman, the prostitute, “Why do you love me?” Because that was always a haunting thing in him. Nobody loves him; he knew his ugliness. “Why do you love me?” It was impossible for him to accept that somebody can love him just for himself — “WHY?” And the prostitute was at a loss because there was nothing to say, because whatsoever she will say will look ridiculous. She cannot say, “Because of your eyes,” she cannot say, “Because of your face,” she cannot say, “Because of your body” — everything is somehow wrong. She said, “Because of your ears. They are so beautiful.” Ears? Have you ever heard? And he was so enchanted that he came back home, cut off one ear, wrapped it in a parcel, went back, and presented the ear to the woman. He said, “Nobody has ever liked anything in me. This is a poor man’s present, but keep it.” The woman was aghast. She could not believe, what type of madman is this?
But he felt very good — he felt tremendously good. He writes in one of his letters, “That was the peak of my life. Somebody had liked something in me, and I could share my being.”
Watch, observe. Whenever somebody loves you, and simply loves you, unconditionally loves you, simply says, “I love you because you are you; I love you because you are,” what happens within your energies? The sun has moved towards the moon. Now the sun is not so hot; the moon is cooling it.
And the grace of moonlight spreads all over your being. If the world exists more in tune with love, people will have more intuition and less intellect, and they will become more beautiful. They will not be like things; they will each be more of a person — alive with zest, with passion, intensity. They will have a flame and a celebration.
Intuition is totally different. It functions without any process — it simply jumps to the conclusion. In fact intuition is an opening towards the reality — a vision comes to it. Logic has to grope in darkness; intuition never gropes, just a vision. It simply sees it. People who are intuitive become religious naturally. People who are intellectual cannot become religious naturally. At the most, they can be intellectually involved in some sort of a religious philosophy, but not in religion as such. They can be involved in theology, but not in religion. They can talk about the proofs of God, but to talk about God is not to talk about God. To talk about is to miss the target — about and about, they move in a circle. They always go on beating around and around the bush; they never hit the target. Intellectuals have no natural tendency to become religious. That’s the reason you see temples, churches, so full of women. The moon feels naturally in tune with religion. Buddha had three times more women than men as his disciples. The same proportion was with Mahavir: he had ten thousand monks and thirty thousand nuns. You will find the same around Jesus — and when he was crucified, all men followers fled.
When Jesus’ body was brought down from the cross, only three women were there. Because those men were watching from the crowd for some miracle. They were trying to convince their sun center that, “Yes, this is God’s only son,” but nothing happened. They were asking for a proof. They were praying to God and to Jesus, “Show a miracle so that we can be convinced.” Once they saw that Jesus died like an ordinary man, absolutely ordinary — there were two other men who were dying on crosses just by the side of Jesus, two thieves, and Jesus died just like them, with no difference at all — the men became skeptical. Then this man was bogus — he was not really a son of God. So he was not a god; they escaped. But this idea never arose to the women. They were not looking for a miracle; they were just looking at Jesus. They were not looking for a miracle, they were just looking at Jesus — and they saw the miracle. They saw the miracle: that Jesus died so ordinarily. That was the miracle. He didn’t try to prove anything, because people who try to prove are defensive. He was not defensive. He simply said to God, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” That was his miracle. And he said to God, “Forgive these poor people because they don’t know what they are doing.” That was the miracle — he could pray for those who were murdering him, pray for compassion. He told God, “Put your judgement aside, put your judging attitude aside. Listen to me. These people are innocent; they don’t know what they are doing. They are ignorant. Please don’t be angry with them, don’t be annoyed. Forgive them.” That was the miracle. The women could see it because they were not looking for the miracle. The intellect is always looking for something; the intuition is simply open. Not looking for something in particular, just looking — it is a vision. That is the meaning of the word “intuition.”
When Jesus appeared after three days, first he approached the men disciples. He walked with them, he talked with them, but they couldn’t recognize him. They had accepted the idea that he is dead — finished. In fact they must be feeling sorry — “We wasted so many of our years with this man.” Now they must be looking for some other miracle monger, some juggler; they must be looking for somebody else. And Jesus walked with them, talked to them, and they did not recognize him. Then he had to approach the women. And when he came close and Mary Magdalen saw him, she ran — she wanted to embrace him. She immediately recognized him. And she did not even ask, “How has it happened?. — three days before, you were crucified.” The intuition never asks how and why. It simply accepts. It is a deep acceptability, total acceptability.
If you live in a loving atmosphere…. And you have to create the atmosphere around you — nobody is going to create it for you.
Love people, so that they will love you. Love people, so love is reflected back, resounded back. Love people, so you are showered by love. Your intuition will start functioning. You will start seeing things which you had never seen before. And the world remains the same, but some new meaning appears in it. The flowers remain the same, but some new mystery is revealed to you. The birds go on singing the same way, but now you can understand their language. Suddenly there is communication, suddenly there is communion. Intuition is closer to truth than intellect is because it makes you a person — more of a person — than does intellect.
And then there is pratibha, that which is beyond both — the supra intuition. Nothing can be said about it because all that can be said can be said either in sun language or in moon language. Either it can be described in a scientific way or it can be sung in a poetic way, but there is no way to describe pratibha. It is beyond. One has to feel it, one has to live it to know it.
People will come to Gautam Buddha and they will say, “Tell us something about God.” And he will say, “Keep quiet, be silent. Remain with me — and it will happen to you.”
It is not a question that can be asked and answered, and it is not a problem that can be solved. It is a mystery to be lived. It’s an ecstasy. It’s a tremendous experience.
Source:
This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune.
Discourse Series: Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 8
Chapter #6
Chapter title: You can’t corner a madman
16 April 1976 am in Buddha Hall
References:
Osho has spoken on ‘Intuition, love, celebration, vision’ in many of His discourses. More on the subject can be referred to in the following books/discourses:
- Ancient Music in the Pines
- From Misery to Enlightenment
- Sat Chit Anand
- Sufis: The People of the Path
- Zen: The Path of Paradox
- The Razor’s Edge
- The Path of Love
- The Invitation
- The Book of Wisdom
- The Tantra Vision
- The Wisdom of the Sands
- Sufis: The People of the Path
- Beyond Enlightenment
