No need to figure it out, whether you are clever or stupid; whatsoever you are, it is perfectly okay. Trying to figure it out is an unnecessary effort. If one is stupid, one is stupid — so what?! How does it matter? If one is clever, one is clever — so what! How does it matter?
But we have always been thinking in terms of comparison. Man is very much conditioned to create hierarchies: who is clever, who is stupid, who is beautiful, who is ugly…We can't accept people as they are.
And if you start figuring it out you WILL be in trouble — because nothing can be figured out. Life is mysterious. If you are clever you are stupid; if you know you are stupid you are clever…. Now you will be moving in a circle; there will be no end to it.
It will be like a dog chasing its own tail: the more the dog chases the tail, the more the tail will jump — with the dog, of course, because it is the dog's tail. And the dog can go crazy! Sometimes you can watch dogs going crazy, just chasing their tails. Philosophers are like dogs chasing their tails.
Don't be a philosopher. Such problems have arisen in philosophy many times.
They say that before Socrates there was a great school of sophists in Greece; they used to train people in sophistry. Before philosophy, sophistry was the dominant thing in people's minds; the sophist was thought to be the real intellectual. And the fundamental of sophistry was that nothing is true and nothing is false.
You can try anything, and you can prove anything right and you can prove anything wrong. Something can be proved right and the same thing can be proved wrong, it all depends on what you want to prove.
Logic is a whore! — logic can go with anybody.
So whenever someone wins in an argument it does not prove that he has the truth. It only proves that he is more clever in logical gymnastics, that's all; he may not have the truth at all. When someone is defeated in logic, argumentation, it does not prove that he does not have the truth; it may be simply that he is not logically skillful. So there is no truth, no untruth; it is only a game.
Sophistry was a game, and the sophists used to teach people, whosoever wanted to learn the game — the aristocracy, the rich people, particularly, loved it very much. It was like a chess game.
It happened to a great sophist:
A young man came and he said, "I have heard much about you — you are the greatest sophist master in the country. If you trust so much in your own intelligence, this is my proposal: that I will pay half of your fees right now and the other half I will pay only when I win in an argument."
The master was so trustful of his own skill, he said, "Perfectly okay. You can give half my fees now and half I will take when you win your first argument. It is bound to happen — you are going to win. Never have my students been defeated anywhere."
But the young man was also really clever. He learnt the whole art, but he never argued with anybody. The master was puzzled about what to do: "Unless he argues and wins, half of the fee is gone, and if he never argues…" and he used to avoid. The master told many other disciples, "Create some argument with him." But he would always say, "Yes, you are right." Whatsoever you said he would say, "Yes, you are right." He would never argue. The master was at a loss: "It seems as if the disciple is winning and I am being defeated."
So the master put a case in the court: "This disciple has not paid half my fee which is due to me, and the court should force this young man to give me my fee which he has promised." Now the master thought, "If I win In the court, the court will order the young man to give my fee and I will get the fee. If I am defeated in the court, then too nothing is lost — outside the court I will say to the young man, "You have won your first argument, now give me the other half of my fee.
But the disciple belonged to this same master. He said, "Okay. If I win in the court I will say this will be an insult to the court if I pay you now. If I am defeated in the court, how can I pay you? — because my first argument, and I am defeated!"
And this is how it happened. The court decided that the young man is right, because unless he wins how can he pay?
The master said, "Okay. So he has won his first case — I want my fee."
The young man said, "How can I give it? I have won the case and it will be an insult to the court now. I cannot go against the court, against the law of the country."
How to decide it? It is impossible, it can't be decided.
Another story is told:
A young man from Sicily came to Athens and told Socrates, "All men in Sicily lie."
Socrates looked at the young man and said, "You come from Sicily?"
He said, "Yes."
"Are you lying?"
Now the problem arises: if he is lying then what he is saying is not true; if he is NOT lying, then too what he is saying is not true — because one man from Sicily is not lying, is saying a truth. In either case it will be impossible to figure it out, where we stand.
You are in a beautiful mess — remain in it. There is no need to decide because we are not labeling people here, who is clever and who is stupid.
The whole effort here is: who lives in the mind and who lives out of the mind…. The stupid and the clever both live in the mind, because cleverness or stupidity, both are qualities of the mind. It does not matter whether you are clever or you are stupid. You are in the mind, that is the real thing. Slip out of the mind. Slip out of cleverness and stupidity both! And the best way to slip out is not to be bothered by these things because if you are bothered by these things you will remain entangled.
Slip out of the mind! Be a no-mind, neither clever nor stupid. Then you will know what truth is, then you will know what bliss is.
OSHO
