Happiness

Misery needs no talents — anybody can afford it. Happiness needs talents, genius, creativity. Only creative people are happy.

Let this sink deep in your heart: only creative people are happy. Happiness is a by-product of creativity. Create something, and you will be happy. Create a garden, let the garden bloom, and something will bloom in you.

Create a painting, and something starts growing in you with the growing painting. As the painting comes to the finish, as you are giving the last touches to the painting, you will see you are no more the same person. You are giving the last touches to something that is very new in you.

Write a poem, sing a song, dance a dance, and see: you start becoming happy.

Existence has only given you an opportunity to be creative: life is an opportunity to be creative.

If you are creative you will be happy.

When you want to climb to the highest peak of the mountains, it is arduous. And when you have reached the peak and you lie down, whispering with the clouds, looking at the sky, the joy that fills your heart — that joy always comes whenever you reach any peak of creativity.

It needs intelligence to be happy, and people are taught to remain unintelligent. The society does not want intelligence to flower.

The society does not need intelligence; in fact it is very afraid of intelligence. The society needs stupid people. Why? — because stupid people are manageable. Intelligent people are not necessarily obedient; they may obey, they may not obey. But the stupid person cannot disobey; he is always ready to be commanded. The stupid person needs somebody to command him, because he has no intelligence to live on his own. He wants somebody to direct him; he seeks and searches his own tyrants.

Politicians don’t want intelligence to happen in the world, priests don’t want intelligence to happen in the world, generals don’t want intelligence to happen in the world. Nobody really wants it. People want everybody to remain stupid, then everybody is obedient, conformist, never goes outside the fold, remains always part of the mob, is controllable, manipulatable, manageable.


The intelligent person is rebellious. Intelligence is rebellion. The intelligent person decides on his own whether to say no or yes.

The intelligent person cannot be traditional, he cannot go on worshipping the past; there is nothing to worship in the past. The intelligent person wants to create a future, wants to live in the present. His living in the present is his way of creating the future.

The intelligent person does not cling to the dead past, does not carry corpses.

Howsoever beautiful they have been, howsoever precious, he does not carry the corpses. He is finished with the past; it is gone, and it is gone forever.But the foolish person is traditional. He is ready to follow the priest, ready to follow any stupid politician, ready to follow any order — anybody with authority and he is ready to fall at his feet. Without intelligence there can be no happiness. Man can only be happy if he is intelligent, utterly intelligent.

Meditation is a device to release your intelligence. The more meditative you become, the more intelligent you become.

But remember, by intelligence I don’t mean intellectuality. Intellectuality is part of stupidity.

Intelligence is a totally different phenomenon, it has nothing to do with the head. Intelligence is something that comes from your very center. It wells up in you, and with it many things start growing in you. You become happy, you become creative, you become rebellious, you become adventurous, you start loving insecurity, you start moving into the unknown. You start living dangerously, because that is the only way to live.

For stupid people there are superhighways where crowds move. And for centuries and centuries they have been moving — and going nowhere, going in circles. Then you have the comfort that you are with many people, you are not alone.

Intelligence gives you the courage to be alone, and intelligence gives you the vision to be creative. A great urge, a great hunger arises to be creative. And only then, as a consequence, can you be happy, you can be blissful.


- An Enlightened Master