12 Aug A fool is not one who has no intelligence. A fool is one who has intelligence but does not use it (OSHO)
Man has been called by the mystics a ladder. Now, the ladder can do two things: you can use it to go upwards, and the same ladder can be used to go downwards. You use the same ladder for both the purposes, just your direction changes. But the ladder is the same, the result will be totally different.
Man is a ladder between heaven and hell. That’s why, Hein, it is only human beings who repress, who manipulate, who kill, who try to conquer the natural flow in nature, who are stupid — because they can be Buddhas. Because man has intelligence, that’s why he can be stupid. Stupidity simply means you have not used your intelligence; it does not mean absence of intelligence.
If there is no presence of intelligence you cannot call man stupid. You cannot call a rock stupid; a rock is a rock — no question of stupidity. But you can call man stupid because with man there is hope, a ray of great light. With man, a door opens towards the beyond. He can transcend himself and he is not transcending — that’s his stupidity. He can grow and he is not growing, he is clinging to all kinds of immaturity — that is his stupidity. He goes on and on living in the past, which is no more — that is his stupidity. Or he starts projecting in the future, which is not yet — that is his stupidity.
He should live in the present with deep passion, with great love, with intensity, with awareness, and that will become his intelligence. It is the same energy: upside down it is stupidity; put it right, rearrange it, and it becomes intelligence.
Intelligence and stupidity are not separate energies. The same energy functioning in harmony is intelligence, functioning in contradictions is stupidity. Man can be stupid — don’t think that it is unfortunate. It looks on the surface that it is unfortunate, but hidden behind it is great glory, great splendor which can be discovered.
But the society, the so-called religions, the state, the crowd, they all want you to be stupid; nobody wants you to be intelligent. They all condition you to remain stupid your whole life for the simple reason that stupid people are obedient. Intelligent people start thinking on their own; they start becoming individuals. They start having their own life, their own lifestyle, their own way of seeing, of being, of growing. They are no more parts of the crowd — they cannot be.
They have to leave the crowd behind, only then they can grow. And the crowd feels offended; the crowd does not want anybody to be more than the average person — it is against the average person’s ego. The crowd, the collectivity, has a great involvement: the involvement is that anybody becoming more intelligent, more individual, more aware, will not be any longer part of the mob psychology.
You cannot force Buddha to follow the stupid people. And the stupid people are many, the majority, ninety-nine point nine percent. They have a great power with them — the power of violence — and they show it whenever it is needed.
Tao – The Golden Gate
OSHO