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Osho reserves some of his sharpest language for the confusion between these two. Intellect — intellectuality — is accumulation: opinions, information, conclusions taken from others and rehearsed as one's own. It is why the learned can be so strangely blind: everything must pass through the archive before it is seen. Intelligence is the opposite movement — an openness of being that meets each moment without a priori, responds instead of reacting, and owes nothing to memory.
The distinction matters practically: intellect can be manufactured by education, and often is at intelligence's expense. Intelligence, Osho insists, is everyone's birthright — it needs not more information but more meditation. The sections below give the distinction in his own words, each linked to the full discourse.
The difference, in Osho's words
The short notes are Osho Live's; the quoted passages are his own words, checked against the talk.
Intellectuality Is Pretending Intelligence
Asked point-blank what intelligence is, Osho opens by unmasking its impostor.
To be intellectual is to be phony; it is a pretending intelligence. It is not real because it is not yours; it is borrowed. Intelligence is the growth of inner consciousness. It has nothing to do with knowledge, it has something to do with meditativeness.
Intellect and Intelligence across his talks
Each year, the share of Osho's talks in which the word is used — counted from 6,627 dated talks on Osho Live.
Lighter bars: years with few dated talks. Counts are of the words themselves, so they show how Osho's vocabulary moved — not every talk on the subject.
| Year | Intellect | Intelligence | Dated talks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1964 | 3 | 3 | 13 |
| 1965 | 1 | 5 | 19 |
| 1966 | 0 | 3 | 7 |
| 1967 | 9 | 17 | 33 |
| 1968 | 8 | 14 | 30 |
| 1969 | 12 | 57 | 110 |
| 1970 | 29 | 66 | 131 |
| 1971 | 24 | 53 | 111 |
| 1972 | 66 | 91 | 223 |
| 1973 | 47 | 73 | 205 |
| 1974 | 84 | 111 | 271 |
| 1975 | 77 | 138 | 303 |
| 1976 | 142 | 252 | 700 |
| 1977 | 132 | 248 | 679 |
| 1978 | 114 | 275 | 702 |
| 1979 | 133 | 349 | 683 |
| 1980 | 86 | 394 | 674 |
| 1981 | 13 | 71 | 122 |
| 1984 | 10 | 48 | 63 |
| 1985 | 30 | 299 | 356 |
| 1986 | 33 | 284 | 369 |
| 1987 | 44 | 340 | 486 |
| 1988 | 19 | 158 | 276 |
| 1989 | 13 | 53 | 61 |
More in his words
An Openness of Being
Osho's positive definition: intelligence is not a faculty that stores but a transparency that sees — and the stored-up expert is precisely the one who cannot.
Intelligence is an openness of being. That's why it is so utterly different from intellectuality. Intellectuality is just the opposite of intelligence. The intellectual person is constantly carrying prejudices, information, a prioris, beliefs, knowledge. He cannot listen; before you have said anything, he has already concluded.
Memory Is Not Understanding
A Hindi questioner asks whether memory and intelligence are two different things. Osho's answer: the intelligent keep the perfume, the unintelligent carry the bundle.
Memory means the capacity to retain things. The capacity to understand is a very different matter. Of course, the one who understands also remembers—but he remembers the essence.
Nobody Is Born Unintelligent
If intelligence is innate, where does stupidity come from? Osho's answer indicts the very system that manufactures intellect.
The greatest misery in life is to feel oneself stupid, unworthy, unintelligent. And nobody is born unintelligent; nobody can be born unintelligent because we come from God. God is pure intelligence. We bring some flavor, some fragrance from God when we come into the world.
From the discourses
Where Osho draws this distinction himself — each passage links to the exact place in the talk.
Osho, are memory and intelligence two different things?
They are very different. Very different. Memory means the capacity to retain things. The capacity to understand is a very different matter. Of course, the one who understands also remembers—but he remembers the essence. Only the essential remains, because there is no need to burden intelligence. If someone reads the entire Ramayana, he doesn’t sit down to memorize all the couplets like junk. Whoever does that is utterly unintelligent. The essence of the Ramayana is like this: from millions of flowers we extract a little perfume, and then one can put a drop behind the ear. One doesn’t carry a thousand-kilo bundle on the head. The intelligent person keeps the fragrance—the distillate of what he has known. Whatever is essential is what emerges. The unintelligent person has piles of rubbish; he collects everything. He finds it difficult to let go; he is afraid. The intelligent person is not afraid of…
प्रश्न: ओशो, स्मृति और बुद्धि दो अलग चीजें हैं?
बहुत अलग चीजें हैं। बहुत अलग चीजें हैं। स्मृति का मतलब है: किसी चीज को याददाश्त रखने की क्षमता। समझने की क्षमता बहुत अगल बात है। अच्छा, जो आदमी समझता है, वह भी याद रखता है। लेकिन एसेंस को याद रखता है। सिर्फ एसेंशियल याद रह जाता है। क्योंकि बुद्धि पर बोझ बढ़ाने की जरूरत नहीं। एक आदमी पूरी रामायण पढ़ लेता है तो कचरे को याद करने नहीं बैठ जाता कि सारी चौपाइयां याद कर ले। उसे तो, जो करता होगा, बिलकुल बुद्धिहीन है। रामायण का जो सार है, वह जैसे कि फूलों... करोड़ फूलों से निकाल कर हम थोड़ा सा इत्र निकाल लेते हैं। और एक आदमी एक फोए में लगा कर कान में लगा लेता है। हजार किलो का गट्ठर सिर पर लेकर नहीं चलता है। बुद्धिमान आदमी के पास सुगंध बच जाती है, जो उसने जाना—उसकी। जो भी सारभूत है उसमें निकल आता है।
Question: OSHO, WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE? Govindo, FIRST, KNOW WELL THAT INTELLECTUALITY is not intelligence. To be intellectual is to be phony; it is a pretending intelligence. It is not real because it is not yours; it is borrowed. Intelligence is the growth of inner consciousness. It has nothing to do with knowledge, it has something to do with meditativeness. An intelligent person does not function out of his past experience; he functions in the present. He does not react, he responds. Hence he is always unpredictable; one can never be certain what he is going to do. A Catholic, a Protestant and a Jew were talking to a friend who said he had just been given six months to live. "What would you do," he asked the Catholic, "if your doctor gave you six months to live?" "Ah!" said the Catholic.
Please explain what intelligence is.
Patrick Coughlan, intelligence is just an openness of being -- capacity to see without prejudice, capacity to listen without interference, capacity to be with things without any a priori ideas about them -- that's what intelligence is. Intelligence is an openness of being. That's why it is so utterly different from intellectuality. Intellectuality is just the opposite of intelligence. The intellectual person is constantly carrying prejudices, information, a prioris, beliefs, knowledge. He cannot listen; before you have said anything, he has already concluded. Whatsoever you say has to pass through so many thoughts in his mind that by the time it reaches him it is something totally different. Great distortion happens in him, and he is very closed, almost blind and deaf. All experts, knowledgeable people, are blind. Do you know the old story of the five blind people going to see an elephant? A teacher was telling her students,…
What exactly is intelligence, and what is the relation of the intelligence of the heart to the intelligence of the mind?
A totally new kind of education is needed in the world. The person who is born to be a poet is proving himself stupid in mathematics and the person who could have been a great mathematician is just cramming history and feeling lost. Everything is topsy-turvy because education is not according to your nature. It does not pay any respect to the individual, it forces everybody into a certain pattern. Maybe by accident the pattern fits a few people but the majority is lost and the majority lives in misery. The greatest misery in life is to feel oneself stupid, unworthy, unintelligent. And nobody is born unintelligent; nobody can be born unintelligent because we come from God. God is pure intelligence. We bring some flavor, some fragrance from God when we come into the world. But immediately the society jumps upon you, starts manipulating, teaching, changing, cutting, adding, and soon…
Question: OSHO, WHAT IS INTUITION, AND WHAT IS ITS PLACE IN YOUR RELIGION? ... 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, the consciousness that surrounds the whole universe, 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; hence its 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.
Frequently asked
What is the difference between intellect and intelligence in Osho's teaching?
Intellect is accumulated and borrowed — information, beliefs and conclusions taken from outside, operated by memory. Intelligence is innate and immediate — an openness of being that sees without prejudice and responds freshly to the present. Osho calls intellectuality 'pretending intelligence': it imitates understanding without ever having it.
Can a very learned person lack intelligence?
For Osho that is the usual case, not the exception. The expert is almost blind and deaf: everything he meets must first pass through his stock of conclusions, so nothing is ever met directly. He reacts from ready-made answers where the intelligent person responds to what is actually there — which is why intelligence is unpredictable and scholarship is not.
How does one grow in intelligence?
Not by adding information — by removing obstructions. Since nobody is born unintelligent, Osho treats stupidity as a social achievement: conditioning, fear and a pattern-stamping education bury the native light. His remedy is meditativeness — unlearning, openness, functioning from the present — which lets the inborn intelligence resurface.