Intelligence is a mirror-like quality in your consciousness; it reflects that which is. It has no past, it has no future, it has only present. Intelligence lives in the present; knowledge lives in the past and hopes for the future - and goes on missing the present. No mirror can reflect the past - or do you think it can reflect the past? The mirror cannot reflect the woman who was looking in the mirror yesterday. It is gone and it is gone. The mirror cannot reflect what is going to happen tomorrow; that which is not yet, is not yet. The mirror only reflects this moment, whatsoever is.

Intelligence reflects whatsoever is, knowledge goes on repeating the past and fantasizing about the future. It is because of knowledge that you are missing your life.

Sufis call these people donkeys. Why do they call them donkeys? - because a donkey can carry all the scriptures and yet will remain unaware of what he is carrying. He will not know the meaning. A donkey can carry the Koran, the Veda, the Geeta, the Bible. You can load all great scriptures of the world on the donkey and the donkey will carry them, and may even feel very egoistic: "Look! I am no ordinary donkey, I am carrying all the great scriptures of the world" - but the donkey is a donkey.

He does not know any meaning.

That is the situation of a pundit, of your so-called learned people. Sufis call them donkeys. In a subtle way they are carrying the Vedas, the Korans, the Bibles, but they don't know the meaning, because the meaning cannot be known through study, the meaning cannot be known through words.

The meaning can only be known by experience.

-Rajneesh

You have been told. You are quoting others when you say, "I am a Hindu." Your Hinduism is within quotation marks. When you say, "I am a communist," you are again quoting others. You can believe in the Bible, or in DAS KAPITAL, it doesn't matter; you are a believer. Then you are not a true person. You have not yet known who you are. You are clinging to some information fed from the outside by others.

To discover oneself means to drop all quotation marks, to be utterly naked in the sun. Then only one becomes religious, then only one knows one's true center and being. But people are wasting their energies in unnecessary questions. You ask one question, you will get a thousand and one answers for it, and you will become more and more confused. If you believe in any answer that answer is not going to satisfy either; it will create new questions.

For example, if you believe that God created the world, then the question arises: why? Nothing is solved. You were thinking, "My question, 'Who created the world?' will be solved if I can trust and believe that God created the world," but now the question arises: why? Why did he not create it before! What was he doing before he created the world? For eternity, just think... what was he doing! And why did he suddenly create the world four thousand and four years before Jesus? Why so suddenly? What happened, what motivation? Maybe some answer can be given to it; that is not going to help. New questions will arise. That is one of the indications of a false answer: it does not solve the basic question; on the contrary, it creates more questions.

-Rajneesh

The only right and religious question is one: that is, who am I? Because nobody can answer it, that's why it is the only valid question - only you can answer it. Nobody can say who you are, only you; and you too only when you go deep into yourself, beyond all the labels that are sticking on your surface: that "I am a doctor", that "I am an engineer", that "I am a businessman", that "I am a professor"; that "I am a Christian", that "I am a Hindu", that "I am a Catholic" or a communist, socialist; that "I am Indian", or German or Japanese.

When you start penetrating all these labels that have been stuck on you - they are many, layers upon layers; if, you throw away one layer of labels you will find another layer of labels there - you will have to peel all these labels off. Man has become almost like an onion: you have to peel all the layers off, and then one day you reach to the center.

-Rajneesh

The ego is a make-believe illusion, but very utilitarian. It gives you some idea of your being centered, although that idea is very chaotic. The ego cannot really give you the idea of being centered. In the first place it is only a combination of many opinions that have been expressed about you by others.

Somebody has said you are very great and somebody has condemned you. Now both the ideas are there. Somebody has said you are beautiful and somebody has said that you are ugly; now both the ideas are there.

Your ego is a patchwork: all the opinions that have been expressed about you, good and bad, favorable, unfavorable, are collected there. Out of these ideas you have created a kind of person in your mind, an image: "Who am I?" This image is very hotch-potch; that's why your life remains a chaos, a mess. And because this image has come from the outside, from people who don't know your center - can't know our center, because even you don't know your center, how can they? It is always something which is opposite to your real center - you become two persons instead of one.

You become a duality. You are something and you believe yourself to be something else. You do one thing; you think you are doing it because of this motivation, but there is some other motivation of which you are completely unaware. You can never become integrated. You will go on becoming more and more schizophrenic.

-Rajneesh

Out of fear thinking arises - it keeps you occupied; out of the fear of being alone - it keeps you engaged. And certainly you can always rationalize that your engagement in thoughts is of great significance. If you are thinking about God, naturally you can believe that you are thinking about something great. But whether you are thinking about God or about cabbages, it makes no difference at all - thinking is thinking. The object does not make any difference.

The only transformation happens when you drop thinking, when suddenly you are in a state of no- thought, no-mind. There are people who think about money, and people who think about power, and people who think about success; and there are people who think about God, prayer, meditation - but there is no difference at all. The object of thinking does not change the process of thinking - let it sink deep into you - otherwise people simply go on changing their objects. If somebody is thinking of money we say he is a worldly man, and if somebody is thinking about God we say, "Look, what a religious man!" Both are worldly. The man who is thinking about God is also as afraid of no-thought, of aloneness, as the man who is thinking of money; no difference at all.

Your gods and your ghosts, all are created out of fear. The people you find in the temples and churches and mosques praying, bowing down to the statues they themselves have made, are not in prayer, they are simply trembling with fear. It is out of fear that they have created the temples, it is out of fear that they have created a God. God is their ultimate companion. They want never to be alone, so they say, "When I die, the wife will leave me, the husband will leave me, the children will be no more with me, the whole world will leave me - but God will be with me." At least they can hope that, that "God will be with me. But I will not be alone." And religion starts happening only when you gather courage to be alone.

There is something like God, but that happens only to people who are ready to be alone. Aloneness brings you to your own divinity. Beware of the gods that you have created out of fear !

-Rajneesh