Intuition: Knowing Beyond Logic

Intuition: Knowing Beyond Logic

by Osho
Intuition: Knowing Beyond Logic

Intuition: Knowing Beyond Logic

by Osho

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Overview

Discover your own deep well of wisdom in Intuition: Knowing Beyond Logic—from one of the greatest spiritual teachers of the twentieth century.

Intuition deals with the difference between the intellectual, logical mind and the more encompassing realm of spirit. Logic is how the mind knows reality, intuition is how the spirit experiences reality. Osho’s discussion of these matters is wonderfully lucid, occasionally funny, and thoroughly engrossing.

All people have a natural capacity for intuition, but often social conditioning and formal education work against it. People are taught to ignore their instincts rather than to understand and use them as a foundation for individual growth and development—and in the process they undermine the very roots of the innate wisdom that is meant to flower into intuition.

In this volume, Osho pinpoints exactly what intuition is and gives guidelines for how to identify its functioning in others and ourselves. You will learn to distinguish between genuine intuitive insight and the “wishful thinking” that can often lead to mistaken choices and unwanted consequences. Includes many specific exercises and meditations designed to nourish and support each individual’s natural intuitive gifts.

Osho challenges readers to examine and break free of the conditioned belief systems and prejudices that limit their capacity to enjoy life in all its richness. He has been described by the Sunday Times of London as one of the “1000 Makers of the 20th Century” and by Sunday Mid-Day (India) as one of the ten people—along with Gandhi, Nehru, and Buddha—who have changed the destiny of India. Since his death in 1990, the influence of his teachings continues to expand, reaching seekers of all ages in virtually every country of the world.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780312275679
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date: 12/14/2001
Series: Osho Insights for a New Way of Living
Edition description: First Edition
Pages: 208
Sales rank: 176,394
Product dimensions: 6.40(w) x 9.35(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Osho is one of the most provocative and inspiring spiritual teachers of the twentieth century. Known for his revolutionary contribution to the science of inner transformation, the influence of his teachings continues to grow, reaching seekers of all ages in virtually every country of the world. He is the author of many books, including Love, Freedom, Aloneness; The Book of Secrets, and Innocence, Knowledge, and Wonder.

Read an Excerpt

Intuition

Knowing Beyond Logic
By Osho

St. Martin's Griffin

Copyright © 2001 Osho
All right reserved.

ISBN: 9780312275679

Intuition
MAPSWhen the body functions spontaneously, that is called instinct. When the soul functions spontaneously, that is called intuition. They are alike and yet far away from each other. Instinct is of the body--the gross; and intuition is of the soul--the subtle. And between the two is the mind, the expert, which never functions spontaneously. Mind means knowledge. Knowledge can never be spontaneous. Instinct is deeper than intellect and intuition is higher than intellect. Both are beyond the intellect, and both are good.HEAD, HEART, AND BEINGYour individuality can be divided--just for the purpose of understanding it; otherwise there is no division. It is one single unity, whole: the head, the heart, and the being.Intellect is the functioning of the head, instinct is the functioning of your body, and intuition is the functioning of your heart. And behind these three is your being, whose only quality is witnessing.The head only thinks; hence it never comes to any conclusion. It is verbal, linguistic, logical, but because it has no roots in reality, thousands of years of philosophical thinking have not given us a single conclusion. Philosophy has been the greatest exercise in futility Intellect is very clever in creating questions and then creating answers, and then out of those answers, more questions and more answers. It can make palaces of words, systems of theories, but they are all just hot air.The body cannot rely on your intellect, because the body has to live. That's why all essential functions of the body are in the hands of instinct--for example, breathing, heartbeat, digestion of your food, circulation of the blood. A thousand and one processes are going on inside your body in which you have no part at all. And it is good that nature has given body its own wisdom. Otherwise, if your intellect were to take care of the body, life would have been impossible! Because sometimes you may forget to breathe--at least in the night, how will you breathe while you are asleep? You are already so confused just with thoughts; in this confusion, who will take care about the blood circulation, whether the right amount of oxygen is reaching your cells or not? Whether the food that you are eating is being analyzed into its basic constituents, and those basic constituents are sent where they are needed? And this whole, tremendous amount of work is done by instinct. You are not needed. You can remain in a coma; still the body will continue to work.Nature has given all essential functions of your body to instinct, and it has left all that makes your life meaningful ... because just to exist, just to survive, has no meaning. To give meaning to your life, existence has given intuition to your heart. Out of your intuition arises the possibility of art, of aesthetics, of love, of friendship--all kinds of creativity are intuitive.Intellect has its use, but by some misfortune it has become the master of your whole being. That has created immense troubles in the world.But the marketplace does not need your intuition. It does not deal in love, in your sensibilities; it deals with solid and mundane things. For that, your intellect--which is the most superficial part--functions. Intellect is for the mundane life with others in the marketplace, in the world, to make you capable of functioning. It is mathematics, it is geography, it is history, it is chemistry--all science and all technology are created by your intellect. Your logic and your geometry are useful--but the intellect is blind. It simply goes on creating things, but it does not know whether they are being used for destruction or for creation. A nuclear war will be a war created by intellect.Intellect has its use, but by some misfortune it has become the master of your whole being. That has created immense troubles in the world.The master is hidden behind these three: the body, the mind, the heart. The master is hidden behind all these three--that is your being. But you never go inward; all your roads go outward,all your senses go outward. All your achievements are out there in the world.Intellect is useful in the world, and all your educational systems are techniques to avoid the heart and take your energy directly to your head. The heart can create troubles for the head--the heart knows nothing of logic. The heart has a totally different center of functioning, and that is intuition. It knows love, but love is not a commodity of any use in the world. It knows beauty, but what are you going to do with beauty in the marketplace?Nobody wants his or her children to become musicians or painters or dancers. Everybody wants them to be doctors, engineers, scientists, because those professions pay.The people of the heart--the painters, the poets, the musicians, the dancers, the actors--are all irrational. They create great beauty, they are great lovers, but they are absolutely unfit in a society that is arranged by the head. Your artists are thought by your society to be almost outcast, a little bit crazy, an insane type of people. Nobody wants his or her children to become musicians or painters or dancers. Everybody wants them to be doctors, engineers, scientists, because those professions pay. Painting, poetry, dance, are dangerous, risky--you may end up just a beggar on the street, playing on your flute.The heart has been denied--and by the way, it will be useful to remember that the denial of the heart has been the denial of the woman. And unless the heart is accepted, the woman cannotbe accepted. Unless the heart has the same opportunity to grow as the head, the woman cannot have liberation. The woman is heart and the man is head. The distinction is clear.Instinct, nature has taken in its own hands. And whenever you interfere with instinct, you create perversions. All the religions have been doing that; every religion has been interfering with the body--and the body is absolutely innocent, it has never done anything wrong. If you accept the body in its absolute naturalness, it will help you tremendously. It will help your heart, nourish your heart. It will help your intelligence to become sharper, because the nourishment for the intellect comes from the body, nourishment to the heart comes from the body. And if your head, your heart, and your body are all in a symphony, then to find your being is the easiest thing in the world. But because they are in conflict, your whole life goes on being wasted in that conflict, conflict between instinct and intellect and intuition.I am not against anything. I am only against disharmony, and because your head is creating the most inharmonious situation, I want your head to be put in its right place. It is a servant, not a master.A wise person creates a harmony between the head, the heart, and the body. In this harmony comes the revelation of the source of one's life, the very center, the soul. And that is the greatest ecstasy possible--not only to human beings but in this whole universe, nothing more is possible.I am not against anything. I am only against disharmony, and because your head is creating the most inharmonious situation, I want your head to be put in its right place. It is a servant, not a master. As a servant it is great, helpful.A Dublin milkman has just finished his delivery, so he parks his horse and cart outside the pub and goes in for a drink. Refreshed after an hour, he comes out to find his horse painted bright green. Angry, he strides back into the pub and demands, "Which of you just painted my horse green?"A seven-foot Irish giant stands up and, towering over him, says, "I did. Want to do something about it?"The milkman gives a sickly grin and says, "I just came in to tell you, the first coat is dry!"Intellect is helpful! In some situations you will be in need of intellect--but only as a servant, not as a master.PAST PRESENT, AND FUTUREYou have a past and you have a present and you have a future. Instinct is what belongs to your animal past. It is very old, solid; it is the inheritance of millions of years. And when I say it is animal-like, I am not condemning it. With the word animal the priests of all religions have associated some condemnation--but I am simply stating a fact, with no condemnation at all. Our past was an animal past. We have passed through all kinds of animals; our evolutionhas been from fish up to man, passing through all the species of animals. It has been a long, long journey to arrive at mankind.Intellect is human. It is our present. That's how we function, through intellect. All our sciences, all our businesses, all our professions, whatever is going on in the world--our politics, our religion, our philosophy--they are all based on intellect. Intellect is human.Instinct is almost infallible because it is so old, so ripe, so mature. Your eyes are blinking--are you doing it? They go on doing it by themselves--this is instinct. Your heart is beating, your breathing is going in and out; it is not up to your intellect to look after all these essential things of life. They are in the hands of instinct because instinct is absolutely infallible. It never forgets to breathe, it never forgets anything.Your heart is beating, your breathing is going in and out--all these essential things of life are in the hands of instinct because instinct is absolutely infallible. It never forgets anything.The intellect is fallible because it is new, a recent arrival. It is just groping in the dark, still trying to find out what it is and where it belongs. And because it does not have roots in experience, it substitutes experience with beliefs, philosophies, ideologies. They become the focus of intellect. But they are all fallible because they are all man-made, manufactured by some clever guy. And they are not applicable in every situation. They may be right in one situation, and in another situation they may not be right. But intellect is blind, it knows not how to deal with the new. It always brings the old answer to the new question.Intellect is blind, it knows not how to deal with the new. It always brings the old answer to the new question.Paddy and Sean are sitting opposite the local whorehouse in Dublin, discussing the virtues of the Catholic faith. Suddenly, Gideon Greenberg, the local rabbi, approaches the whorehouse door, looks left and right, then hurries up the stairs."Did you see that?" roars Paddy. "I'm glad I am a Catholic."Ten minutes later, the Anglican priest approaches the door, looks around quickly, then dashes up the stairs."Another hypocrite," says Paddy, laughing. "Thank God I am a Catholic."A few minutes later Sean nudges Paddy and says, "Hey, man, look! There is Father O'Murphy coming this way."The two men watch in stunned silence as the Catholic priest disappears up the stairs into the whorehouse. Suddenly Paddy jumps to his feet, crosses himself, and shouts at Sean, "Where is your respect? Stand up and take off your hat! There must be a death in the house!"Intellect lives through prejudices; it is never fair. By its very nature it cannot be, because it has no experience. Instinct is alwaysfair and shows you exactly the natural way, the relaxed way, and the way that the universe follows. But strangely, instinct has been condemned by all religions, and intellect has been praised.Of course, if everybody follows instinct, there is no need of any religion, no need of any God, no need of any priest. Animals don't need God and they are perfectly happy--I don't see that they are missing God. Not a single animal, not a single bird, not a single tree, is missing God. They are all enjoying life in its utter beauty and simplicity with no fear of hell and no greed for heaven, no philosophical differences. There are no Catholic lions, there are no Protestant or Hindu lions.The whole existence must be laughing at man, at what has happened to human beings. If birds can live without religions and churches and mosques and temples, why can't man? The birds never fight religious wars; neither do the animals nor the trees. But you are a Mohammedan and I am a Hindu and we cannot coexist--either you have to become converted to my religion or be ready; I will send you to heaven immediately!If instinct is praised, these religions lose any rationale, any reason to exist, so they praise intellect.And the third thing, which is your future, is intuition. So these three words have to be understood.Instinct is physical--your past, based on the experience of millions of years, infallible, never commits any mistake and does miracles in you of which you are not even aware. How does your food become blood? How does your breathing go on functioning even when you are asleep? How does your body separate the oxygen from nitrogen? How does your instinctive world of nature go on giving to every part of your body what it needs? Howmuch oxygen is needed in your head for the mind to function? The exact amount is sent through blood running all around the body, distributing fresh oxygen, taking out the old, used, dead cells, replacing them with new ones and taking them back to places from where they can be disposed of.The scientists say that what instinct does for man, we are not yet capable of doing. And in a small body the instinct does so many miracles. If someday science wanted to do the work of a single human body, it would need at least one square mile of factory for a single human being. Tremendous machinery! And still it will not be infallible; machinery can break, can stop, the electricity can go off. But for seventy years continuously, or even one hundred years for a few people, the instinct goes on functioning perfectly well. The electricity never goes off. Not a single mistake is committed; everything goes according to plan, and the plan is in every cell of your body. The day we can read the code of the human cells, we will be able to predict everything about a child even before he is born, even before he is in the mother's womb. The cells of the parents have a program, and in that program your age, your health, what kind of diseases you will have, your genius, your intelligence, your talents, your whole destiny is contained.Like instinct, at the other polarity of your being--beyond the mind, which is the world of intellect--is the world of intuition.Intuition opens its doors through meditation. Meditation is simply a knocking on the doors of intuition. Intuition is also completely ready. It does not grow; you have inherited that too from existence. Intuition is your consciousness, your being.Intellect is your mind. Instinct is your body. And just as instinctfunctions perfectly on behalf of the body, intuition functions perfectly as far as your consciousness is concerned. Intellect is just between these two--a passage to be passed, a bridge to be crossed. But there are many people, many millions of people, who never cross the bridge. They simply sit on the bridge thinking they have arrived home.The home is on the farther shore, beyond the bridge. The bridge joins instinct and intuition. But it all depends on you. You may start making a house on the bridge--then you have gone astray.Intellect is not going to be your home. It is a small instrument, to be used only for passing from instinct to intuition. So only the person who uses his intellect to go beyond it can be called intelligent.Intuition is existential. Instinct is natural. Intellect is just groping in the dark. The faster you move beyond intellect, the better; intellect can be a barrier to those who think nothing is beyond it. Intellect can be a beautiful passage for those who understand that there is certainly something beyond it.Science has stopped at intellect--that's why it cannot figure out anything about consciousness. The intellect without your intuition awake is one of the most dangerous things in the world.Science has stopped at intellect--that's why it cannot figure out anything about consciousness. The intellect without your intuition awake is one of the most dangerous things in the world. And we are living under the dangers of intellect because intellecthas given science immense power. But the power is in the hands of children, not in the hands of wise people.Intuition makes a man wise--call it enlightenment, call it awakening; those are simply different names for wisdom. Only in the hands of wisdom can intellect be used as a beautiful servant.And instinct and intuition function together perfectly well--one on the physical level, another on the spiritual level. The whole problem of humanity is getting stuck in the middle, in the mind, in the intellect. Then you will have misery and you will have anxiety and you will have agony and you will have meaninglessness and you will have all kinds of tensions without any solution anywhere to be seen.Intellect makes everything a problem and knows no solution at all. Instinct never creates any problem and does not need any solution; it simply functions naturally. Intuition is pure solution, it has no problems. Intellect is only problems, it has no solution.If you rightly see the division, it is simple to understand: unless instinct is available, you will be dead. And unless intuition is available, your life has no meaning--you just drag on. It is a kind of vegetation.Intuition brings meaning, splendor, joy, blessings. Intuition gives you the secrets of existence, brings a tremendous silence, serenity, which cannot be disturbed and which cannot be taken away from you.With instinct and intuition functioning together, you can also use your intellect for right purposes. Otherwise you have only means but no ends. Intellect has no idea of any ends. This has created today's situation in the world--science goes on producing things but it does not know why. Politicians go on using thosethings not knowing that they are destructive, that they are preparing for a global suicide. The world needs a tremendous rebellion that can take it beyond intellect into the silences of intuition.The very word intuition has to be understood. You know the word tuition--tuition comes from outside, somebody teaches you, the tutor. Intuition means something that arises within your being; it is your potential, that's why it is called intuition. Wisdom is never borrowed, and that which is borrowed is never wisdom. Unless you have your own wisdom, your own vision, your own clarity, your own eyes to see, you will not be able to understand the mystery of existence.With instinct and intuition functioning. together; you can use your intellect for right purposes. Otherwise you have only means but no ends.As far as I am concerned, I am in absolute favor of instinct. Don't disturb it.Every religion has been teaching you to disturb it--what is fasting but disturbing your instinct? Your body is hungry and asking for food, and you are starving it for spiritual reasons. A strange kind of spirituality has been possessing your being. It should be called simply stupidity, not spirituality. Your instinct is asking for water, it is thirsty; your body needs it. But your religions ... Jainism does not allow anybody even to drink water in the night. Now as far as the body is concerned, it may feel thirsty, particularly in summer in a hot country like India--and Jainas exist only in India. In my childhood, I used to feel guilty because I had to stealwater in the night. I could not sleep without drinking at least once a night in hot summers, but I used to feel that I was doing something that should not be done, that I was committing a sin. Strange and stupid ideas are being forced on people.I am in favor of the instinct. And this is one of the secrets I want to reveal to you: if you are in total favor of instinct, it will be easy to find the way toward intuition. Because they are both the same, even though functioning on different levels--one functions on the material level, another functions on the spiritual level. To accept your instinctive life with absolute joy, without any guilt, will help you to open the doors of intuition--because they are not different, just their planes are different. And just as instinct functions beautifully, silently, without any noise, so does intuition function--and even more silently, far more beautifully.Intellect is a disturbance. But it depends on us whether we make it a disturbance or use it as a stepping-stone. When you come across a stone in the street, you can either think of it as a hindrance or use it as a stepping-stone to a higher plane. Those who really understand use intellect as a stepping-stone. But the masses are under the control of religions that teach them, "Use your intellect as a repressive force for instinct." People get involved in fighting with instinct and forget all about intuition. Their whole energy becomes involved in fighting with their own life force. And when you are continuously fighting with your instinct ...To accept your instinctive life wit absolute joy, without any guilt, will help you to open the doors of intuition--because they are not different, just their planes are different.A Jaina monk is supposed to remain naked all the year round, even in the winter months, even in the cold night. He cannot use a mattress, he cannot use a blanket, he cannot use anything to cover his body, day or night. He has to fast. The longer he fasts, the greater a saint he becomes in the eyes of the same kind of conditioned people--thirty days, forty days ... . This is fighting against the body. This is conquering the body and the material, this is spirit conquering the body. It is the same situation in all the religions, with different superstitions. They turn the energy of your intellect against your instinct, and that spoils all possibilities of opening the flower of your intuition.Intuition is the mystic rose that will lead you to the ultimate ecstasy and to immortal life. But people seem to be absolutely in the hands of the dead past. Whatever the old scriptures have told them, they go on doing it, without ever considering the whole science of man.These three are the layers of the whole science of man. Instinct should be allowed a relaxed flow. Never disturb it with the intellect for any reason. And intellect should be used as an opening for intuition. It has just to give way for intuition to take over your life. Then your life is a life of immense light, of luminosity. It becomes a constant festival.THREE RUNGS OF A LADDERIntuition is the highest rung of the ladder, the ladder of consciousness. It can be divided into three divisions: the lowest and the first is instinct; the second, the middle one, is intellect; and the third, the highest one, is intuition.The word in is used in all three words. It is significant. It means these are qualities inborn. You cannot learn them, there is no way to grow them with any outside help.Instinct is the world of the animals--everything is instinct. Even if sometimes you see indications of other things, it is your projection. For example, you can see love in animals--the mother looking after her kids lovingly, caringly--and you can think that it is not just instinct, it is something higher, not just biological. But it is not higher, it is simply biological. The mother is doing it like a robot in the hands of nature. She is helpless--she has to do it.In many animals the father has no instinctive fatherliness; on the contrary, many will kill their own kids and eat them. For example, in crocodiles, the life of the kids is in immense danger. The mother is protective and fights for the kids' lives, but the father just wants to have a good breakfast! The father has no instinct to be fatherly; in fact the father is a human institution. The mother crocodile has to keep the kids in her mouth to protect them from the father. She has a big mouth--all women have big mouths--she can manage to keep almost a dozen kids in her mouth. In the mother's mouth, just beside her dangerous teeth, the kids are perfectly safe. The more difficult thing is for the kids to figure out who is the mother and who is the father, becausethey both look alike. And sometimes the kids go close to the father, go into his mouth, and are gone forever; then they will never see the light again.But the mother tries to fight, to protect. Perhaps that's why nature gives crocodile children in such abundance: the mother has one dozen each time, each year. If she can manage to save even two, that keeps the population exactly the same, but she manages to protect almost half of the kids.Anybody watching will feel that the father is really cruel, has no compassion, no love, and that the mother is really motherly. But you are just projecting your ideas. The mother is protecting not for any conscious reason; it is in her hormones to protect them, and the father has nothing to do with those hormones. If he is injected with the same hormones, then he will stop killing his own kids. So it is a question of chemistry, not of psychology or of anything higher than biochemistry.Ninety percent of man's life is still part of the animal world. We live by instinct.You fall in love with a woman, or a woman falls in love with you, and you think it is something great. It is nothing great, it is simple instinctive infatuation: it is hormones being attracted by the opposite hormones. You are just a plaything in the hands of nature. No animal bothers about the delicacies and subtleties of love, but man feels that to be just instinctive is insulting, humiliating. Your love is just biochemistry? Your love is poetry, your love is art, your love is philosophy--but biochemistry? It seems as if you are ashamed of your biology, of your chemistry, of your nature.But this is not the way of understanding. You have to understand exactly what is what. Distinctions have to be clear, otherwiseyou will remain always confused. Your ego will go on making you project as high as possible things that have nothing to do with anything higher than the lowest stratum.If the romantic idea of love were taker I away, then I don't think any man or woman would be able to stand sex and its absurdity. It would look so stupid.Your love is just an illusion created by your chemistry. Just think: if the romantic idea of love were taken away, then I don't think any man or woman would be able to stand sex and its absurdity. It would look so stupid. Just take away the romantic idea and think in straight terms of biology and chemistry; then your sex will make you feel ashamed. There is nothing in it to brag about. Just imagine yourself making love to a man or a woman with no romance, with no poetry, no Omar Khayyam, no Shelley, no Byron--just as a reproduction process because nature wants to procreate through you, because nature knows you are going to die. You are not permanent; before you die, nature wants life to continue. But man cannot go into sex unless he has something romantic about it, so he has created great smoke around sex, which he calls love. He pretends, even believes that it is love--but watch more carefully.You are interested in a man or a woman. The natural instinct in a woman is to play hide-and-seek. It is strange that in all the cultures, all over the world, the small kids play two games without fail. Their religions are different, their cultures are different, their races are different, their societies, their languages--everything isdifferent--but as far as these two games are concerned, whether they are born in Africa or China or America or India, it makes no difference. One is the game of hide-and-seek. It is strange why, all over the world, not a single culture has existed where children have not played the game of hide-and-seek. It seems to be something to do with instinct, as if they are preparing for some bigger game of hide-and-seek. This is just a rehearsal, and then for the whole of life the game is continued.The woman is always the one who tries to hide, and the man is always the macho who seeks. It is a challenge for him to seek--the more the woman hides, the more he is challenged and excited.But all children, all over the world, play the game of hide-and-seek. Nobody teaches them, so how did it become universal? It must be coming out from their inner nature--some urge to seek, to find, some challenge.These things happen naturally--nobody decides these things, they are part of your biological nature. But nature has been wise enough to give you the delusion of love; otherwise, just for reproduction purposes, for life to continue, you are not going to do all those exercises and eighty-four sex postures that Vatsyayana prescribes--strange, ugly, stupid. If you take love away, then bare sex looks really animal-like. That is one of the problems that humanity has been troubled by all along, and is still troubled by. One can only hope that in the future we can make it more understandable.The man goes on seeking, persuading, writing love letters, sending presents and doing everything in his power; but once his sex is satisfied, he starts becoming uninterested. Now, it is not something that he is doing knowingly. He does not want to hurt; particularly the person whom he has loved he does not want tohurt. But this is the way of biology. All that romance and all the love was just smoke in which nature was trying to hide the sexual part, which in itself looks ugly, so it was giving it a beautiful cover.But once nature's work is done through you, all that smoke disappears. Instinct knows only sex. Love is only a sugarcoating on a bitter pill just to help you swallow it. Don't go on keeping it in your mouth, otherwise you will not be able to swallow it; soon the thin coating of sugar will be gone and you are going to spit out the bitter pill.Hence lovers are in a great hurry to make love. What is the hurry? Why can't they wait? The sugar is thin and they are afraid that, if it is too late, the sugar may be gone and then it is all bitter, really bitter.There is no way to increase your intellectual capacity; all that can be done is to make your whole potential actual. And the reality is that even the most intelligent person uses only 15 percent of his potential.Instinct does not make you human, it simply keeps you an animal--two-legged, but still you are an animal.The second rung, intellect, gives you something that is higher than biology, chemistry, the animal nature. Intellect is also inborn, just as intuition is, just as instinct is. There is no way to increase your intellectual capacity; all that can be done is to make your whole potential actual, which will look as if your intellect has grown. The reality is that themost intelligent person uses only 15 percent of his potential; the normal, ordinary, common person uses only 6 to 7 percent. Eighty-five percent of intelligence remains unused even in Albert Einstein or Bertrand Russell. That 85 percent can be made available, and it will be a tremendous growth. You will think that certainly you have grown in intelligence. But you have simply recovered, reclaimed, what was already yours.We have found ways to teach intellect and to increase your power of memory. All the schools, colleges, and universities--the whole system of education around the world is only doing one thing: sharpening your intellect. But there has arisen a problem, which was not foreseen by the educationists. When your intellect becomes a little powerful, it starts interfering with your instinct. A competition, a struggle for power starts.The intellect tries to dominate, and because it has logic on its side--reason, argument, a thousand and one proofs--it can manage, as far as your conscious mind is concerned, to convince you that the instinct is something evil. That's why all the religions have been condemning instinct.They are just intellectual games--instinct is part of your unconscious mind and intellect is part of your conscious mind, but the problem is that the conscious mind is only one-tenth of the unconscious mind. It is just like an iceberg: only one-tenth shows above water, nine times more is hidden underneath. Your conscious mind is only a tenth part, but it shows; you know about it. You don't know anything about your unconscious mind.The conscious mind is being taught in the schools, in the colleges, in the universities, in the churches, in the synagogues--everywhere. And they fill your conscious mind against instinct. This is an ugly phenomenon; they are making you antinature, antiyourself.Whatever you decide with your conscious mind can simply be thrown away by the unconscious at any moment, because it is nine times more powerful. It does not bother about your logic.But the unconscious mind is always silent; it is deep in darkness. It is not worried about your conscious mind at all. Whatever you decide with your conscious mind can simply be thrown away by the unconscious at any moment, because it is nine times more powerful. It does not bother about your logic, your reason, or anything.It is not without reason that even a man like Gautam Buddha was against giving women initiation into his commune. He wanted it to be purely a male commune with no female in it. I am against his attitude, but I understand what the reason was. His reason has to be thought about. He was aware that once women are there, then what are you going to do with the unconscious minds of the men? It was a question of psychology, not of religion.Sigmund Freud or Jung or Adler are just pygmies before Gautam Buddha. It looks inhuman to prevent women, but if you look into his insight, you will be surprised; the man had some solid ground. The ground was not the woman; he was not really saying to keep the woman out. He was saying, "I know you cannot be victorious over your unconscious." In reality it was not a condemnation of women, it was a condemnation of the disciples. He wassaying that in bringing the woman in, a situation is created where your unconscious will start overpowering you.He tried every possible way to prevent that from happening. He told his monks that they had to walk looking only four feet ahead so they could not see the face of a woman on the road or anywhere; at the most they might see her legs. He told his monks, "Don't touch a woman, don't talk to a woman." One of his disciples was persistent. He said, "In some situation--for example, a woman has fallen on the road and is sick or dying--do you want us not to talk to her, to ask her where she wants to go? Do you want us not to touch her and take her to her home?"Buddha said, "In rare situations like this, yes, you can touch her and you can talk to her--but be very aware that she is a woman."Now his insistence "be very aware" is not against the woman, it is against your unconscious. If you are very aware, then your unconscious may not be able to penetrate and overpower the conscious mind.All the religions have been against the woman--not that they were woman haters, no; they were simply trying to protect the monk, the priest, and the popes. Of course, I don't agree with their methodology because this is not a way to protect; in fact this makes you more inflammable. A monk who has not touched a woman, who has not talked to a woman, and who has no idea about women, is bound to be more in the grip of his instinct than a man who has lived with women, talked with them, and has been as much at ease with them as with any man.The monks and nuns have been more in the power of the instinct. If you split your instinct completely from satisfaction, itcan become so powerful--almost like a drug--that it can intoxicate you, it can make you hallucinate. And in the Middle Ages there were monks who confessed before the special court that the pope had convened. It was a grand jury court where all honest nuns and monks were called and asked to confess: "Are you having intercourse with devils, with witches?" And thousands of them confessed, "Yes, the witches come in the night, the devils come in the night."The monastery walls and locks could not prevent them coming in, of course; they were devils and witches! The monks and nuns described exactly how a witch looks, how a devil looks, and how they were tempted into sexuality and were unable to resist. These nuns and monks were burned alive so that it became a lesson for others.But nobody has bothered to look: no witch comes to you, even if you keep your door open. No devil comes to you. Why were these devils and witches coming only to Catholics?--strange! What have poor Catholics done wrong?The reason is simple. They repressed sex so much that it became a boiling-hot thing inside the unconscious. And when they went to sleep, their dreams were so vivid and colorful and realistic--it depended on how much they had been deprived. Just fast for two or three days and you will see: each night you will have a beautiful feast in your dream. And as the fast goes deeper and makes you more hungry, your feast will become more and more delicious, fragrant, colorful, realistic. After twenty-one days of fasting you might even dream of food with open eyes, fully awake. There is no need for sleep anymore; now the unconscious starts infiltrating into the conscious even while you are awake. Many ofthe nuns and the monks admitted that it was not only in the night; in the day also devils and witches came to visit them and made love to them. And they were unable to do anything, it was simply beyond their capacity.Other religions have done the same thing.My effort is just the opposite of all the religions, because I can see what they have done. The intention was good but their understanding was not deep enough. I want women and men to live together, to be acquainted with each other's bodies, differences, polarities, so that there is no need for your unconscious to carry something repressed in it.Once your unconscious is completely free of repression, your instinct has a different quality to it. It is joined with intelligence. When your unconscious is no longer repressed, when there is no Berlin Wall between your conscious and your unconscious--the wall can be withdrawn because there is no repression, so there is no need to keep the unconscious hidden--then you can move in and out of your unconscious as easily as you move from one room to another room in your house.This is your house--Gurdjieff used to use this metaphor of the house, that man is a three-story house. The first story is the unconscious, the second story is the conscious, the third story is the superconscious. Once your intelligence and instinct have no conflict, you become human for the first time; you are no longer part of the animal kingdom. And to me this is what is absolutely needed for anybody who wants to know truth, life, existence, for one who wants to know who he is.In repressing nine parts of your own mind, how are you going to know yourself? You have repressed so much of yourself in abasement, where you cannot bear to go. All religious people have lived in fear, trembling. What was their fear? The fear was of their own unconscious and their repressed instincts, which were knocking on the door of their conscious: "Open the door, we want to come in! We want realization, we want to be fulfilled." The more starved they are, the more dangerous they are. You are surrounded by hungry wolves--each instinct becomes a hungry wolf. And this is the torture in which so-called religious people have lived, surrounded by hungry wolves.I want you to be friendly with your unconscious. Let your biology be satisfied to its full. Just try to see the point: if your biology is completely satisfied, there is no fight between the conscious and the unconscious. You become one whole, as far as your mind is concerned; your mind will be one whole. It will release tremendous intelligence in you, because most of your intelligence is involved in repressing. You are sitting on a volcano, trying to keep the volcano from exploding. The volcano is going to explode--your power is so small it cannot hold it forever; on the contrary, when it explodes, you will be thrown into such small pieces that to put you together again will be impossible.Most of your intelligence is involved in repressing. You are sitting on a volcano, trying to keep the volcano from explodingThe many mad people around the world, in your mad asylums, hospitals--what are they? Who are they? What has gone wrong withthem? They have fallen in pieces and you can't put them together. There is no possibility of putting them together unless you arrange for all their repressed instincts to be fulfilled. But who is there even to say this? Because I have been saying it for all of thirty-five years, I have become the most notorious man in the world.Just the other day in the German Stern magazine, I saw a cover story of fifteen pages about my commune, and this is only the first part of a series. It is going to be in five parts, in five consecutive issues of the magazine. Their heading on the title page is "The Sex State." I really liked it! And the strangest thing is, if you go on looking beyond those fifteen pages, then you will be surprised. Who is living in a sex state? The Stern staff, their editors, and their board members, or us?In the magazine are nude women--and they are not just naked, because a totally naked woman is not so fascinating. You have to make her nakedness even more fascinating by giving her sexual clothes, which in a way show her body and in a way hide it too. So you can play the hide-and-seek game again. You can start dreaming about how the woman looks behind these clothes. She may not be so beautiful behind these clothes--in fact all female bodies are the same and all male bodies are the same, once you put the light off and all colorfulness and all differences disappear. Darkness is such an equalizer, so communistic, that in darkness you can even love your own wife.The whole magazine is full of sex, but we are "the sex state." Even Playboy writes against me--I wonder what a really strange world we are living in! But I know why Stern or Playboy or magazines like that, which are third-rate and exploiting people's sexuality ... they are sold in millions. Stern sells almost 2 million copies, and each copy is estimated to be read by at least eight people; that means 16 million readers.Why should they be against me? And they have been against me for years. The reason is that if I succeed, then these magazines will have to close their offices. They live upon repression. It is a simple logic, why they are against me. The priests, who are against sex, are against me, and the people who are using sex as an exploitation--Playboy, Stern, and there are thousands of magazines around the world--they are also against me. It seems strange, because they are not against the pope; there is not a single article against the pope. Playboy should be against the pope, who is continually condemning sex. But no ...The more the pope condemns sex, the more he represses sex, the more Playboy sells.There is an intrinsic logic: the more the pope condemns sex, the more he represses sex, the more Playboy sells. Only in my commune will nobody be interested in Playboy or Stern--who bothers? If I succeed, then all these pornographic magazines, literature, and movies are simply bound to disappear. And there is a great investment behind them, so they will all oppose me--and they will oppose me and condemn me in the name of sex, as if I am spreading sexuality.If anybody has spread sexuality, it must be your God. I have nothing to do with it. He goes on giving birth to children with sex hormones. He should stop it--he should listen to the pope! But these magazines are not against God either, because he is providingthe whole market. Popes and pornographers are all in a deep conspiracy--and they are together against me because I am simply trying to spoil the game.Both these types of people are exploiting repression; hence, it is logical in every way to be against me--they are both against me. At least Stern should not be against me if I have created a sex state; they should be happy and they should be favorable. But no, they are absolutely angry. They may not even be aware why they are angry with me; they may be doing it absolutely unconsciously, but the unconscious also has its own reasons.Repress anything and it becomes valuable. Repress more, and it becomes more valuable. Don't repress and it loses all value.Express it, it evaporates.I can say to the world that my commune is the only place where sex means nothing; it has no value. Nobody is bothered by it; nobody is dreaming about it and nobody is fantasizing about it. In fact, people continually write to me, "Osho, what to do? My sex life is completely disappearing."I say, "What to do? Let it disappear. You need not do anything. This is the whole purpose here: it should disappear! Don't make any effort to make it disappear, but when it is disappearing, please, don't make any effort to prevent it. Say good-bye. It is just great that it is disappearing." But the trouble is that people think that when sex is disappearing, perhaps now nothing is left because sex was all their excitement, their ecstasy, and their joy.No, there is really so much waiting for you. Just let sex disappear so that your energy becomes available for a higher kind of excitement, a higher kind of ecstasy.When your unconscious and conscious meet because there isnothing repressed in the unconscious--and that is the moment of their meeting and their merger--at that very moment another great opportunity opens up for you. Because you are no longer involved with the lower, your whole energy is available for the higher.You are in the middle, the conscious mind. But because the unconscious is there, you remain involved in repressing it, you go on repressing it--it is not a question that once you have repressed it, you are finished with it. You have to repress it constantly, because it is coming up again and again.Energy has a fundamental principle about it: it cannot remain static, it has to move. Movement is its nature.It is just like bouncing a ball. You throw it and it comes back to you. The greater force you put into hitting it, the greater is the force with which it comes toward you. The same is the situation with instincts. You repress them, and the more energy you put in repressing, the more energy they will have coming back to you. From where can they get energy? It is your energy. But when you are completely free from the unconscious and its involvements, it is clean and silent; then your whole energy is available.Energy has a fundamental principle about it: it cannot remain static, it has to move. Movement is its nature. It is not a thing that you put somewhere and it remains there. No, it has to move--it is life. So when there is no reason to move downward, it has only one way to move--upward. There is nowhere else to go. It startshitting your superconscious, and just its hit to the superconscious is so pleasant and such a joy that all your sexual orgasms simply pale. You cannot imagine it, because it is not a quantitative difference such that I can tell you that "it is ten thousand times greater in quantity." The difference is of quality, so there is no way to imagine it. How to compare it to your sexual orgasm? But that is the only thing in your life through which something higher can be indicated.When your energy starts hitting your upper world, of which you were not even aware up to now, there is a constant showering of joy. The sexual orgasm is so momentary that by the time you know it is there, it is gone. You only remember it in memory; you don't really realize when it is there. Because of this momentariness you become more and more addicted to it, because you remember there was something, something great was happening, so, "Let us go into it again, let us go into it again." But there is no way ... .Before it comes--you know it is coming because the bell starts ringing in your head. It is really a bell that starts ringing in your head: "It is coming!" You know that it is coming ... you know that it is gone. The bell has stopped, it is not ringing anymore, and you look like a fool! Between the ringing of the bell and the stopping of the bell, you look like a fool. Perhaps the man feels more ashamed; that's why after making love he simply turns and goes to sleep. The woman is not that much ashamed for the simple reason that she is not such an active partner; the man looks foolish because he is the active partner.Just the energy touching your higher level of consciousness, the superconscious--just the touch, and there is a shower of joy,which continues. Slowly the energy goes on hitting and makes its way to the center of the superconsciousness. You have nothing to do: your work is finished when you have stopped repressing and you have cleaned your unconscious. Then you have nothing to do; then all that has to be done is done by your energy. And when you reach the center, a new faculty starts functioning in you, which is intuition. 
At the center of the unconscious is instinct.At the center of the conscious is intellect.At the center of the superconscious is intuition.Instinct makes you do things, forces you to do things even against your will. Intellect helps you to find ways if you want to do a certain thing, or to find ways if you don't want to do a certain thing. Intellect's function is to find a way.If you want to go with the instinct, intellect will find a way. If you are a so-called religious person, a pseudoreligious person, and you want to go against your instinct, intellect will find a way. They may be strange ways, but intellect is at your service: whatever you want, it will do. It is not in favor of or against anything, it is simply at your disposal.If a man is sane, he will use his intellect to help his unconscious be fulfilled. The sooner it is fulfilled the better, so that you are free from it. Fulfillment means freedom from it.If you are some kind of crackpot--Catholic, Protestant, any kind, there are all sorts of crackpots available in the world. You can choose what kind of crackpot you want to be, Hindu, Mohammedan, Jaina, Buddhist--all kinds of varieties are available. You cannot say, "The variety I want is not available"--you cannot say that; in thousands of years, man has created almost every singlevariety of crackpot. You can choose, you can have your choice; but whatever you choose, it is the same.Nobody has told you how to use intellect to fulfill your unconscious, your nature, your biology, your chemistry. They are yours--what does it matter whether it is chemistry or biology or physiology? They are part of you, and nature never gives anything without reason. Fulfill it, and its fulfillment is going to make a path for the higher potential.All religious people are hung up with the lowest part of their being--that's why they look so sad and so guilty. They cannot rejoice. Jesus goes on saying to these people, "Rejoice," and on the other hand he goes on saying to them, "Remember hell." He is creating a dilemma for people! Showing them the way to hell--the way to hell is to fulfill your nature and the way to heaven is to go against your nature.Nature never gives anything without reason, Fulfill it, and its fulfillment is going to make a path for the higher potential.But to go against your nature creates hell here on earth.I want to create paradise here, now. Why postpone such a good thing?Things that are not worth your attention you can postpone--but paradise? I am not ready to postpone it for tomorrow or for the next second. You can have it here, now; all that you need is a clean unconscious. Fulfilled, contented, biology settles, chemistry settles, and gives you all the energy that was involved in those planes. The energy shoots upward by itself, and it stops only atthe very center of your superconscious mind. And there intuition starts functioning.What is intuition? Intuition is in some ways like instinct, in some ways absolutely unlike instinct; in some ways like intellect, in other ways absolutely against intellect. So you will have to understand, because it is the subtlest thing in you.Intuition is like instinct because you cannot do anything about it. It is part of your consciousness, just as instinct is part of your body. You cannot do anything about your instinct and you cannot do anything about your intuition. But just as you can allow your instincts to be fulfilled, you can allow and give total freedom to your intuition to be fulfilled. And you will be surprised at what kinds of powers you have been carrying within you.Intuition can give you answers for ultimate questions--not verbally but existentially.You need not ask, "What is truth?"--instinct won't hear, it is deaf. Intellect will hear, but it can only philosophize; it is blind, it can't see. Intuition is a seer, it has eyes. It sees the truth, there is no question of thinking about it.Instinct and intuition are both independent of you. Instinct is in the power of nature, of unconscious nature, and intuition is in the hands of the superconscious universe. That consciousness surrounds the whole universe, is the oceanic consciousness of which we are just small islands--or better, icebergs, because we can melt into it and become one with it.In some ways intuition is exactly opposite to instinct. Instinct always leads you to the other; its fulfillment is always dependent on something other than you. Intuition leads you only to yourself. It has no dependence, no need for the other; henceits beauty, its freedom and independence. Intuition is an exalted state needing nothing. It is so full of itself that there is no space for anything else.In some way intuition is like intellect because it is intelligence. Intellect and intelligence are similar at least in appearance, but only in appearance. The intellectual person is not necessarily intelligent, and the intelligent person is not necessarily intellectual. You can find a farmer so intelligent that even a great professor, a great intellectual, will look like a pygmy in front of him.It happened in Soviet Russia after the Revolution that they changed the city of Petrograd to make it a new city named after Lenin, Leningrad. In front of Petrograd's huge, beautiful, and ancient castle there was a big rock, which the czars had never thought to remove--there was no need. Now cars had come into existence, and that rock was blocking the road, it had to be removed.But the rock was so beautiful that they wanted to remove it and keep it as a memorial, so they did not want to destroy it or dynamite it. But all the great engineers--all they could think about was to dynamite it or to start cutting it up piece by piece and then later on to put the pieces together. But Lenin said, "That won't do--that will not be the same thing. The rock is so beautiful, that's why the czars have kept it just in front of their palace."At that point a man came, a poor man on his donkey. He stood there listening to all this argument; then he laughed and started moving on. Lenin said, "Wait, why did you laugh?"The man said, "It is such a simple matter. Nothing much has to be done: all that you have to do is to dig around the rock. Don't touch the rock at all; just dig around the rock and the rockwill settle deeper into the hole. You will not be disturbing the rock--the rock will remain there--but it will not be blocking anybody. There is no need to dynamite it or to destroy it."Lenin said to his engineers, "You are great engineers and architects, but what this poor fellow is saying is more intelligent." And that's what was done. The rock was saved and the road was saved, but the idea came from a poor man who was nobody.I have watched it, meeting thousands of people, that mostly intellectual people are not intelligent because they don't have to be intelligent. Their intellect, their knowledge, is enough. But a man who has no knowledge, no intellect and no education, has to find some intelligence within himself; he cannot look outside. And because he has to depend on intelligence, intelligence starts growing.So intuition has something similar to intellect, but it is not intellectual. It is intelligence.The functioning of intellect and intelligence are totally different. Intellect functions through steps, step-by-step. It has a procedure, a methodology. If you are doing a question in mathematics, then there are steps to be followed.In India there is a woman, Shakuntala, who has been around the world in almost all the universities, exhibiting her intuition. She is not a mathematician, she is not even much educated just a high school graduate. Even when Albert Einstein was alive, she was giving her demonstration in front of him. And her demonstration was strange. She would sit with a chalk in her hand in front of a blackboard; you would ask any kind of question about mathematics or arithmetic, and you would not even have finished the question and she would have started writing the answer.Albert Einstein gave her a certificate--she showed the certificate to me when I was in Madras where she lives. She showed me all her certificates, and the one from Albert Einstein says, "I asked this woman a question that I take three hours to solve because I have to follow a whole method; I cannot just jump from the question to the answer. I know that nobody can do it in less time than I can, and that is three hours. Others may take even six hours or more, but I can do it in three hours because I have done it before. But the whole procedure has to be followed. If you miss even a single step ..." The figures were so big that it took the whole board for her to write the answer. And before Einstein had even finished the question, she had started writing the answer.He was puzzled, absolutely puzzled, because it was impossible. He asked, "How do you do it?"She said, "I don't know how I do it--it simply happens. You ask me and figures start appearing before my eyes, somewhere inside. I can see 1, 2, 3, and I just go on writing."That woman was born with her intuition functioning. But I felt really sad for her because she became just an exhibition. Nobody cared that a woman who is born with intuition functioning can become enlightened easily. She is just standing on the border; one step and she becomes the ultimate in consciousness. But she is not aware, because this is just some freak of nature.There was another boy, Shankaran, who used to pull a ricksha in the city. A professor of mathematics, an Englishman, used to go in Shankaran's ricksha to the university. Once or twice it happened that the professor was thinking about some problem, and the boy simply looked at him and said, "This is the answer." The professor had not spoken--he was simply thinking--and the boy was pulling the ricksha, but he said, "This is the answer."Intuition functions in a quantum leap. It has no methodological procedure, it simply sees things. It has eyes to see.The professor went to the university, worked out the whole process, and was surprised that this was the answer. When it happened two or three times, he asked the boy, "How do you do it?"He said, "I don't do anything. I just feel you behind me, worried, and some figures start appearing. I am not much educated, but figures I can understand. And I see so many figures in your mind, just behind me--a line, a queue--and then suddenly a few figures appear in my mind, so I tell you that this is the answer. I don't know how it happens."The professor sent Shankaran to Oxford, because he was even more advanced than this woman Shakuntala. You had to ask her the question, then she could write; with Shankaran you just had to visualize the question in your mind and he would write the answer. His intuition was functioning more fully he was seeing both the answer and the question--he could read your mind. And he was even more illiterate, so poor a man that he was pulling a ricksha. He became a phenomenon in the history of mathematics because many questions that had remained unsolved for centuries, he solved--although he could not say how. He gave the answer--but how to judge whether the answer was right or wrong? It took many years. When a higher mathematics was developed, then they could work it out. Shankaran was dead, but his answers were right.Intuition functions in a quantum leap.It has no methodological procedure, it simply sees things.It has eyes to see.It sees things that you have never even thought of as things--for example, love. You have never thought of it as a thing. But a man of intuition can see whether there is love in you or not, whether there is trust in you or not, whether there is doubt in you or not. He can see them as if these are things.In my vision, intuition holds the highest place. That's where I am trying to push you.An unclean unconscious is hindering you. Clean it; and the way to clean it is to satisfy it, to satisfy it so much that it starts telling you, "Please stop! It is more than I needed." Only leave it then.An unclean unconscious is hindering you. Clean it; and the way to clean it is to satisfy it, to satisfy it so much that it starts telling you, "Please stop! It is more than I needed." Only leave it then. And with that, your intellect is filled with such a fresh flow of energy that it turns into intelligence. Then the energy goes on rising and opens the doors of intuition. Then you can see things that are not visible to your physical eyes, things that are not even things.Love is not a thing, truth is not a thing, trust is not a thing, but they are realities--much more real than your things. But they are realities only for intuition, they are existential. And once your intuition starts functioning, you are for the first time really human.With the unconscious you are animal. With the conscious you are no longer animal. With the superconscious you are human.I love to quote a Baul mystic, Chandidas, because that man, in a simple statement, has condensed my whole approach: Sabar upar manus satya; tahar upar nahin. "Above all is the truth of man, and above that there is nothing."This man, Chandidas, must have been an authentically religious man. He is denying God, he is denying anything above human flowering. Sabar upar--"above all, above everything." Manus satya--"the truth of man." Tahar upar nahin--"and beyond that I have traveled long--there is nothing."Once you have reached to your human potential in its total flowering, you have arrived home.INTUITION: KNOWING BEYOND LOGIC. Copyright © 2001 by Osho International Foundation. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, NewYork, N.Y 10010.

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