A balance of emotion and intellect must be maintained in the proper ratio, otherwise the whole personality gets diseased, says Osho
In our civilisation, professional people have a particular problem: they make too much use of their intelligence, so much so that they tend to view life only through their intellect, thus negating all other means of doing so. This tends to make life boring and dull, and robs it of its luster.
Not only do you not use it too much, but you never even use it totally. Ordinarily, you do not use more than ten to 15 per cent of your total intellectual potential.
And another thing: when you do intellectual work it does not necessarily mean that you are using your intelligence. Intellectual work, too, is mechanical. Once you acquire the know-how, no intelligence is required at all and the mind works just like a computer.
The real problem is that emotion is completely disregarded in our civilisation, so the balance is lost and a lopsided personality develops. A balance of emotion and intellect must be maintained in the proper ratio; otherwise the whole personality gets diseased. It is just like using only one leg. You may keep on using it, but you get nowhere and simply tire yourself. The other leg must be used. Emotion and intellect are like two wings: when we use only one wing the outcome will be frustration.
Intellectual work does not mean that your intelligence is being used. Intellectual work is merely superficial. That gives rise to boredom. Enjoyment always comes when your individuality is challenged and you have to prove yourself and respond to the challenge. When challenged, intelligence or emotion both create their own bliss.
A person is schizophrenic if only one part of his personality is working and the other is dead. Then even the part that is working will not work really well because it will be worked up. Personality is a totality, it has no division at all. Actually, the whole personality is a flowing energy. When energy is used in a logical way it becomes intelligence, and when it is not used logically but emotionally it becomes the heart. These are two separate things; it is the same energy flowing through two different channels.
When there is no heart but only intellect, you can never relax. Relaxation never means no-work, it means work in another dimension. A person who follows an intellectual pursuit continuously, never relaxes. He does not divert his energy to another dimension, so his mind goes on working in only one direction unnecessarily. This creates boredom. Thoughts and more thoughts come and go and energy is diffused, it is wasted. So the only way out is to achieve a balance between intellect and emotions.