According to Osho, we should avoid intellectualism because it is secondhand, borrowed thinking that substitutes beliefs for living experience. It chases dead, beaten tracks and prevents the awakening of your own intelligence. Truth emerges only through direct seeing, tasting, and walking your path; when intelligence rises from experience it flowers into Buddhahood, not concepts.
Thinking about things you haven’t lived is like reading cookbooks while staying hungry—open your eyes and taste life yourself.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, why has human faith in religion waned?
Then there is a further fall. This is when, around Buddha, people hear, oppose, accept. Then two-and-a-half thousand years pass. One generation hands it to the next. Those who had heard from Buddha, or at least seen him—some hint of truth must have reached their ears; some touch of Buddha’s presence must have touched them; some color of Buddha must have fallen upon their souls—however slight, it fell. Then their sons and their sons’ sons believe because the fathers believed, the forefathers believed, people have always believed—and then belief becomes blind belief. What you call religions are superstitions. They should have been bid farewell long ago. New editions of truth descend from the sky every day. A new Koran descends every day. God has not grown tired, has not exhausted Himself with Mohammed. Jesus is not God’s only son—as Christians say, the only begotten. Nor did God come to an…
Mind, intellect, and the formed contents of that mind are it, so too are the world and all that seems from it to differ,
ALL THINGS THAT CAN BE SENSED, AND THE PERCEIVER, ALSO DULLNESS, AVERSION, DESIRE, AND ENLIGHTENMENT. LIKE A LAMP THAT SHINES IN THE DARKNESS OF SPIRITUAL UNKNOWING, IT REMOVES OBSCURATIONS OF A MIND AS FAR AS THE FRAGMENTATIONS OF INTELLECT OBTAIN. WHO CAN IMAGINE THE SELF-BEING OF DESIRELESSNESS? THERE'S NOTHING TO BE NEGATED, NOTHING TO BE AFFIRMED OR GRASPED; FOR IT CAN NEVER BE CONCEIVED. BY THE FRAGMENTATIONS OF THE INTELLECT ARE THE DELUDED FETTERED; UNDIVIDED AND PURE REMAINS SPONTANEITY. IF YOU QUESTION ULTIMACY WITH THE POSTULATES OF THE MANY AND THE ONE, ONENESS IS NOT GIVEN, FOR BY (TRANSCENDING) KNOWLEDGE ARE SENTIENT BEINGS FREED. THE RADIANT IS POTENCY LATENT IN THE INTELLECT, AND THIS IS SHOWN TO BE MEDITATION; UNSWERVING MIND IS OUR TRUE ESSENCE. I told her that it seemed she had not heard that Zen people in Japan will first purchase a cup from the supermarket, bring it…
Osho! I feel that in your ideas, in your vision, there is the power to liberate this country from its ancient stagnation and orthodoxy and set it upon the path of progress. But the difficulty is that the intellectuals and journalists here treat you as untouchable and dismiss your ideas as useless raving. It is deeply disheartening. Kindly guide me.
Shvetaketu came back stiff with pride. He was young and returned with a mountain of scriptures on his head. He had earned gold medals in every subject, came home laden with honors. His father, Uddalaka, saw him from afar at the gate—saw his swagger and pride. The father felt great pain, because this was not why he had sent him to the gurukul. He had sent him to become wise. Instead he was returning utterly ignorant—stuffed with information. He was bringing back mountains of information. But no one becomes wise through information! Information is counterfeit coin—borrowed, stale, not one’s own, someone else’s. The father grew anxious; tears rolled from his eyes. Shvetaketu bowed at his feet, but only his body bowed; the father could see that his life had not bowed, because in his mind he knew he was now more knowledgeable than his father. Uddalaka asked, “Son, why this…
Beloved Osho, can the intellect be a door to enlightenment, or is enlightenment only achieved through surrender?
And then there are great insights. A man who wants to be really awake, wants to be really a Buddha, has to live each moment in such intensity -- as you live only rarely, rarely, in some danger. The first meaning is opposite to sleep. And naturally, you can see reality only when you are not asleep. You can face it, you can look into the eyes of truth -- or call it God -- only when you are awake. Do you understand the point of intensity, the point of being on fire? Utterly awake, there is insight. That insight brings freedom, that insight brings truth. The second meaning of budh is to recognize -- as to become aware of, acquainted with, to notice, give heed to. And so a Buddha is one who has recognized the false as the false, and has his eyes opened to the true as…
Beloved Osho, you have said that when the self surrenders, the whole existence then protects. Then why was the fakir who could see the formless everywhere, or who could feel the presence of godliness everywhere, murdered by the english soldiers?
It appears like murder to you, but not to him. You see it as murder because you are under illusion. He saw only the divine in that spear; he saw that the death was a meeting with the divine. Existence protected him in the sense that even death did not seem like death to him. Death became the door of the ultimate bliss. To you it seems that he died, he was finished. When the Ganges flows into the sea, to you it seems that it is finished. But ask the Ganges: it will say, "I have disappeared and thus become the sea." The Ganges will say, "The fear of annihilation was there before but now it has disappeared. Before this I was very narrow, bounded by the two banks. I could have been finished. I was limited so I could have died. But now I have become unlimited, now…