Osho - Courage - the Joy of Living Dangerously

Intelligence is aliveness, it is spontaneity. It is openness, it is vulnerability. It is impartiality, it is the courage to function without conclusions.

It is courage because when you function out of a conclusion the conclusion protcts you;the conclusion gives you security, safety.

To function without a conclusion is to function in innocence. There is no security; you may go wrong, yo may go astray.

One who is ready to go on the exploration called truth has to be ready to commit many errors, mistakes - has to be ready to risk. One may go astray but that is how one arrives.

Going many many times astray, one learns how not to go astray. ..one comes closer to what is truth.
You were born as a no-mind. Let that sink into your heart as deeply as possible because through that, a door opens. If you were born as a no-mind then the mind is just a social product. It is nothing natural, it is cultivated. It has been put together on top of you. Deep down you are still free, you can get out of it. One can never get out of nature, but one can get out of the artificial any moment one decides to.

Existence precedes thinking. So existence is not a state of mind, it is a state beyond. To be, not to think, is the way to know the fundamental.

And there is a different kind of knowing. It can not be called 'knowledge'. It is more like love, less like knowledge. It is so intimate that the word knowledge is not sufficient to express it. The word love is more adequate, more expressive.

In the history of human consciousness, the first thing that evolved was magic.

Magic had something of the mind and something of the no-mind.Then out of magic grew philosophy. Then out of philosophy grew science. Magic was both no-mind and mind. Philosophy was only mind. And then mind plus experimentation became science.

Thinking can think only about the known - it can chew the already chewed. Thinking can never be original. How can you think about the unknown? Whatsoever you can manage to think will belong to the known. You can think only because you know. At the most, thinking can create new combinations. You can think about a horse who flies in the sky, who is made of gold, but nothing is new. You know birds who fly in the sky, you know gold, you know horses, you combine the three together. At the most thinking can create new combinations, but it can not know the unknown.The unknown remains beyond it. So thinking goes in a circle, goes on knowing the known again and again and again. It goes on chewing the chewed. Thinking is never original.

To come upon reality originally, radically, to come upon reality without any mediator - to come upon reality as if you were the first person to exist - that is liberating. That very newness of it liberates.

Truth is an experience. Not a belief. Truth never comes by studying about it; truth has to be encountered, truth has to be faced.

The prejudiced eye is blind, the heart full of conclusions is dead. Too many a priori assumptions and your intelligence starts losing its sharpness, its beauty, its intensity. It becomes dull.
Dull intelligence is what is called intellect. Your so-called intelligentsia are not really intelligent, they are just intellectual. Intellect is a corpse. You can decorate it- you can decorate it with great pearls, diamonds, emeralds, but still a corpse is a corpse.

To be alive is a totally different matter.

Science means being definite, being absolutely definite, about facts. And if you are very definite about facts, then you can not feel the mysterious - the more definite you are, the more mystery evaporates. Mystery needs a certain vagueness, mystery needs something undefined, undemarcated. Science is factual; mystery is not factual, it is existential.

excerpts from Osho's Courage - The Joy of Living Dangerously