THE SIN OF DISOBEDIENCE

It is said that when Henry Thoreau came out of the university, Emerson gave a great party to celebrate the occasion. And he told the participants, "I am giving this party not because Thoreau has attained great knowledge in the university but because he has been able to come back from the university and he is still intelligent. The university has not been able to change his intelligence. The university has failed, that's why I am giving this party! I respect this young man for the simple reason that he has escaped from the whole cunning strategy that our education is."

Intelligence simply means ability to respond, because life is a flux. You have to be aware and to see what is demanded of you, what is the challenge of the situation. The intelligent person behaves according to the situation and the stupid behaves according to the ready-made answers. Whether they come from Buddha, Christ or Krishna, it does not matter. He always carries scriptures around himself; he is afraid to depend on himself. The intelligent person depends on his own insight; he trusts his own being. He loves and respects himself. The unintelligent person respects others.
And you can see the point. Why are the vested interests interested in creating stupidity? -- because that is the way they will be getting respect. No parents really want their children to be intelligent, because if the children are intelligent they are rebellious too, they are disobedient too. Obedience has been imposed on you as a great value; it is not a great value. It is one of the basic causes of the destruction of your intelligence.
I am not saying be disobedient. I am simply saying when you feel like being obedient, be obedient; when you feel like being disobedient, be true to yourself. Your only responsibility is towards yourself and nobody else.
An intelligent person risks. He will be ready to die rather than to compromise. Of course, he will not fight, as the Desiderata says, with unnecessary things, with non-essentials, but as far as essentials are concerned he is not going to be obedient.
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Intelligence needs tremendous courage, intelligence needs an adventurous life. Intelligence needs that you are always going into the unknown, into the uncharted sea. Then intelligence grows, it becomes sharpened. It grows only when it encounters the unknown every moment.

People are afraid of the unknown, people feel insecure with the unknown. They don’t want to go beyond the familiar; hence they have created a false, plastic substitute for intelligence – they call it intellect.

Intellect is only a mental game. It cannot be creative.

Intelligence creates a Picasso, a Van Gogh, a Mozart, a Beethoven. Intelligence is a totally different dimension. It has nothing to do with the head; it has something to do with the heart.

The expert, the knowledgeable, the intellectual, has no insight of his own. He depends on borrowed knowledge, on tradition, on convention. He carries libraries in his head, a great burden, but has no vision.

Intellect is in the head; intelligence is a state of heart wakefulness. When your heart is awake, when your heart is in tune with existence, in harmony with existence, out of that harmony is creativity.