Osho on Shakuntala Devi, Osho insight on Secret of Shakuntala Devi Genius

Osho on Shakuntala Devi

Shakuntala Devi

Osho on Shakuntala Devi and Working of Intuition

Osho - What is intuition? you have asked. Intuition is in some ways like instinct, in some ways absolutely unlike instinct; in some ways like intellect, in other ways absolutely against intellect. So you will have to understand, because it is the subtlest thing in you.

Intuition is like instinct because you cannot do anything about it. It is part of your consciousness, just as instinct is part of your body. You cannot do anything about your instinct and you cannot do anything about your intuition. But just as you can allow your instincts to be fulfilled, you can allow and give total freedom to your intuition to be fulfilled. And you will be surprised at what kinds of powers you have been carrying within you.

Intuition can give you answers for ultimate questions -- not verbally but existentially. You need not ask, What is truth? Instinct won't hear, it is deaf. Intellect will hear but it can only philosophize; it is blind, it can't see. Intuition is a seer, it has eyes. It sees the truth -- there is no question of thinking about it.

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. In some way intuition is like intellect because it is intelligence. Intellect and intelligence are similar at least in appearance, but only in appearance. The intellectual person is not necessarily intelligent and the intelligent person is not necessarily intellectual. You can find a farmer so intelligent that even a very great professor, a very great intellectual, will look a pygmy in front of him.

It happened in Soviet Russia after the revolution, that they changed Petrograd, the city of Petrograd, to make it a new city named after Lenin, Leningrad. In front of Petrograd's huge, beautiful, and ancient castle there was a big rock which the czars had never thought to remove -- there was no need. Now cars had come into existence and that rock was blocking the whole road, it had to be removed.

But the rock was so beautiful that they wanted to remove it and keep it as a memorial, so they did not want to destroy it or dynamite it. But all the great engineers -- all they could think about was to dynamite it or to start cutting it up piece by piece and then later on to put the pieces together. But Lenin said, "That won't do -- that will not be the same thing. The rock is so beautiful, that's why the czars have kept it just in front of their palace."
At that point a man came, a poor man on his donkey. He stood there listening to all this argument; then he laughed and started
moving on. Lenin said, "Wait, why did you laugh?"

He said, "It is such a simple matter. Nothing much has to be done: all that you have to do is to dig around the rock. Don't touch the rock at all; just dig around the rock and the rock will settle deeper into the hole. You will not be disturbing the rock -- the rock will remain there -- but it will not be blocking anybody. There is no need to dynamite it or to destroy it."
Lenin said to his engineers, "You are great engineers and architects, but what this poor fellow is saying is more intelligent." And that's what was done. The rock was saved and the road was saved, but the idea came from a poor man who was nobody.

I have watched it, meeting thousands of people, that mostly, intellectual people are not intelligent because they don't have to be intelligent; their intellect, their knowledge is enough. But a man who has no knowledge, no intellect and no education has to find some intelligence within himself; he cannot look outside. And because he has to depend on intelligence, intelligence starts growing. So intuition has something similar to intellect but it is not intellectual. It is intelligence. The functioning of intellect and intelligence is totally different. Intellect functions through steps, step by step. It has a procedure, a methodology. If you are doing a question in mathematics then there are steps to be followed.

In India there is a woman, Shakuntala, who is still alive and who has been around the world, in almost all the universities, exhibiting her intuition. She is not a mathematician, she is not even much educated -- just a matriculate. Even when Albert Einstein was alive she was giving her demonstration in front of him. And her demonstration was strange. She would sit with a chalk in her hand before the board: you would ask any kind of question about mathematics or arithmetic, and you would not have even finished the question and she would have started writing the answer.

Albert Einstein gave her a certificate -- she showed the certificate to me when I was in Madras where she lives. She showed me all her certificates, and the one from Albert Einstein says, "I asked this woman a question which I take three hours to solve because I have to follow a whole method; I cannot just jump from the question to the answer. I know that nobody can do it in less time than I can, and that is three hours. Others may take even six hours hours or more, but I can do it in three hours because I have done it before. But the whole procedure has to be followed. If you miss even a single step...." The figures were so big that it took the whole board for her to write the answer. And before he had even finished the question, she started writing the answer.

He was puzzled, absolutely puzzled because it was impossible. He asked, "How do you do it?"
She said, "I don't know how I do it -- it simply happens. You ask me and figures start appearing before my eyes, somewhere inside. I can see 1, 2, 3, and I just go on writing."

That woman was born with her intuition functioning, but I felt really sad for her because she became just an exhibition. Nobody cared that a woman who is born with intuition functioning can become enlightened very easily. She is just standing on the border; one step and she becomes the ultimate in consciousness. But she is not aware because this is just some freak of nature.

There was another boy, Shankaran, who used to pull a rickshaw in the city. There was a professor of mathematics, an Englishman, who used to go in his rickshaw to the university. Once or twice it happened that he was thinking about some problem, and the boy simply looked at him and said, "This is the answer." The professor had not spoken -- he was simply thinking -- and the boy was pulling the rickshaw, but he said, "This is the answer."

The professor went to the university, worked out the whole process and was surprised that that was the answer. When it happened two or three times, he asked the boy, "How do you do it?"
He said, "I don't do anything. I just feel you behind me, worried, and some figures start appearing. I am not much educated but figures I can understand. And I see so many figures in your mind, just behind me -- a line, a queue -- and then suddenly a few figures appear in my mind, so I tell you that this is the answer. I don't know how it happens."

Shankaran was sent by the professor to Oxford, because he was even more advanced than this woman, Shakuntala. You have to ask her the question, then she can write; with Shankaran you just had to visualize the question in your mind and he would write the answer His intuition was functioning more fully, he was seeing both the answer and he was seeing the question -- he could read your mind. And he was even more illiterate, so poor a man that he was pulling a rickshaw.

He became a phenomenon in himself in the history of mathematics because many questions which had remained unsolved for centuries, he solved -- although he could not say how. He gave the answer, but how to judge whether the answer was right or wrong? It took many years. When a higher mathematics was developed, then they could work it out. Shankaran was dead but his answers were right.

Intuition functions in a quantum leap.
It has no methodological procedure, it simply sees things.
It has eyes to see.

It sees things which you have never even thought of as things -- for example, love. You have never thought of it as a thing. But a man of intuition can see whether there is love in you or not, whether there is trust in you or not, whether there is doubt in you or not. He can see them as if these are things. In my religion intuition holds the highest place. That's where I am trying to push you.

Source - Osho Book "From Misery to Enlightenment"

Osho on famous people: Annie Besant, Alan Watts, Albert Einstein, Adolf Hitler, Confucius, Friedrich Nietzsche, George Santayana, Karl Marx, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Machiavelli, Madame Blavatsky, Mahatma Gandhi, Marilyn Monroe, Martin Buber, Mother Teresa, Nijinsky, Somerset Maugham, Soren Kierkegaard, Subhash Chandra Bose, Vincent van Gogh, Vinoba Bhave

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