Intelligence

Question: OSHO, ARE CHILDREN REALLY SO INTELLIGENT AS YOU ALWAYS SAY THEY ARE? Intelligence is not something that is acquired, it is inbuilt, it is inborn, it is intrinsic to life itself. Not only children are intelligent, animals are intelligent in their own way, trees are intelligent in their own way. Of course they all have different kinds of intelligences because their needs differ, but now it is an established fact that all that lives is intelligent. Life cannot be without intelligence; to be alive and to be intelligent are synonymous. But man is in a dilemma for the simple reason that he is not only intelligent, he is also aware of his intelligence. That is something unique about man, his privilege, his prerogative, his glory, but it can turn very easily into his agony. Man is conscious that he is intelligent; that consciousness brings its own problems.

Question: BELOVED MASTER, ARE IDIOTS BORN OR TRAINED? Nirupa, it is a complicated question. Almost ninety percent of idiots are trained. Ten percent are born. And the ten percent are born because of those ninety percent who have been trained. Man from his very beginning has lived a very weird life -- weird in the sense that it needs idiots. If you don't have idiots you will not have wise men; if you don't have the idiots, you will not have the so-called giants of intellect. It is almost a necessity that the category of idiots should remain. Nobody has looked into the deeper layers of how the society has functioned up to now. But the way it has functioned can only be described as utterly criminal. The society needs categories, hierarchies.

Are some people more stupid than others?

But the king forgot. So before asking, "How old are you?" he asked, "How long have you been the spiritual guide of this town?" Now, Nasrudin had fixed answers. He said, "Seventy years." The king looked a little puzzled because the man looks not more than seventy, so has he been a religious teacher from his very birth? Then he said, "I am surprised. Then how old are you?" Nasrudin said, "Thirty years." Because this was the fixed thing: that first he has to say "seventy years," then he has to say "thirty years." The king said, "Are you mad?" Nasrudin said, "Sir, we both are mad -- in our own ways! You are asking wrong questions -- and I have to answer right answers! This is the problem. I cannot change, because those people are here, those who have trained me. They are looking at me. I cannot change,…

Are children really so intelligent, Osho, as you always say they are?

I said, "I don't know. I myself am puzzled because a single question and the teacher will say,'You go out! Unless you stop asking you cannot come in.' " And it was a good excuse for me to be outside in the air. And that was so beautiful to be outside with the birds and with the trees. So whenever I wanted to go out, just a question, any question would do -- any question that was unanswerable! I was turned out of one college, expelled from this university and that university. One university accepted me, but accepted with the condition that I would not ask any questions. I said, "I can accept that, but then you have to do one thing: that I will not have to go to the classes, because if I am in class and if the professor says something stupid, I will not be able…