You always talk against the mind – that we should drop it, tell it to shut up, that it is not needed in the search for truth. You seem to regret that none of your sannyasins is a Nobel Prize winner and you give us unfertilized eggs to nourish our brains. Hence I almost feel guilty when I make an attempt to become informed about one thing or another, though it seems almost impossible to survive in the market place totally ignorant. What is the mind for? Is it really totally mischievous?
Prem Mandira, mind is one of the most significant things in life, but only as a servant, not as a master.
The moment the mind becomes your master, then the problems arise; then it displaces your heart, displaces your being, takes over the whole possession of you. Then rather than following your orders, it starts ordering you.
I am not saying to destroy the mind. It is the most evolved phenomenon in existence. I am saying beware that the servant does not become the master. Remember your being comes first, your heart comes second, your mind comes third – that is the balanced personality of an authentic human being.
Mind is logic… immensely useful, and in the marketplace you cannot exist without the mind. And I have never said that you should not use your mind in the marketplace – you should use it. But you should use it; you should not be used by it. And the difference is great….
It is mind which has given you all technology, all science, but because the mind has given so much, it has claimed to be the master of your being. That’s where the mischief begins; it has completely closed the doors of your heart.
Heart is not useful; it has no purpose to fulfill. It is just like a rose flower. The mind can give you bread, but the mind cannot give you joy. It cannot make you rejoice in life. It is very serious, it cannot even tolerate laughter. And a life without laughter has fallen below human standards. It has become subhuman because it is only man, in the whole existence, who is capable of laughing.
Laughter indicates consciousness and its highest growth. Animals cannot laugh, trees cannot laugh, and the people who remain encaged in the mind – the saints, the scientists, the so-called great leaders – they cannot laugh either. They are all too serious, and seriousness is a disease. It is the cancer of your soul; it is destructive.
And because we are in the hands of the mind, all its creativity has gone in the service of destruction; people are dying from starvation, and the mind is trying to pile up more nuclear weapons. People are hungry, and the mind is trying to reach to the moon.
Mind is absolutely without any compassion. For compassion, for love, for joy, for laughter… a heart, freed from the imprisonment of mind, is needed.
Heart has a higher value. It is not of any use in the marketplace, because the marketplace is not your temple; the marketplace is not your life’s meaning. The marketplace is the lowest of all the activities of human beings.
Jesus is right when he says, “Man cannot live by bread alone.” But mind can only provide bread. You can survive, but survival is not life. Life needs something more – a dance, a song, a joy.
Hence I want you to put everything in its right place: The heart should be listened to first if there is any kind of conflict between mind and heart. In any conflict between love and logic, then logic cannot be decisive, love has to be decisive. Logic cannot give you any juice – it is dry. It is good for calculations; it is good for mathematics and good for scientific technology. But it is not good for human relationships, not good for the growth of your inner potential.
Above your heart is your being. Just as mind is logic and the heart is love, being is meditation. Being is to know yourself. And by knowing yourself, to know the very meaning of existence.
Knowing the being, is bringing a light into the darkness of your inner world; and unless you are enlightened inside, all the light outside is of no use. Within you, there is just darkness, abysmal darkness, unconsciousness, and all your actions are going to arise out of that darkness, out of that blindness.
So when I say anything against mind, don’t misunderstand me. I am not against mind, and I don’t want you to destroy it. I want you to become an orchestra. The same musical instruments can create a hell of a noise if you don’t know how to create a symphony, how to create a synthesis, how to put things in their right place.
Being should be your ultimate… there is nothing beyond it – it is part of God within you. It will give you that which neither mind can give, nor the heart can give: It will give you silence. It will give you peace. It will give you serenity. It will give you blissfulness, and finally, a sense of being immortal. Knowing being, death becomes a fiction and life takes wings into eternity. A man who is unaware of his own being cannot be said to be really alive. He may be a useful mechanism, a robot….
Through meditation, search your being, your isness, your existence. Through love, through your heart, share your blissfulness – that’s what love is all about: Sharing your blissfulness, sharing your joy, sharing your dance, sharing your ecstasy.
Mind has its own function in the marketplace, but when you come home; your mind should not continue chattering. Just as you take off your business coat, your hat, your shoes, you should say to the mind, “Now be quiet, this is not your world.” This is not being against the mind. In fact, this is giving rest to the mind.
In the home, with your wife, with your husband, with your children, with your parents, with your friends, there is no need for the mind. The need is for an overflowing heart. Unless there is love overflowing in a house, it never becomes a home; it remains a house. And if in the home you can find a few moments for meditation, for experiencing your own being, it raises the home to the highest peak of being a temple.
The same house… for the mind is only a house; for the heart it becomes a home; for the being it becomes a temple. The house remains the same; you go through the changes – your vision changes, your dimension changes, your way of understanding and looking at things changes. And a house that is not all three, is incomplete, is poor.
A man that is not all three, in deep harmony – the mind serving the heart, the heart serving the being, and the being belonging to the intelligence spread all over existence…. People have called it God; I love to call it godliness. There is nothing above it.
I will read your question, Mandira. Do you remember the meaning of your name that I have given to you: Prem Mandira, “Love Temple”. In your question there are many misunderstandings.
You are saying, “Osho, You always talk against the mind.” I have to talk against the mind, because of you, because you are clinging so much to the mind. You drop clinging and I will never even mention the word.
I am tired of talking against it. It has not done any harm to me, it is not my enemy; it has served me perfectly. It is because of you that I have to go on and on, until one day you decide, “Let us try to put the mind aside.” And you say to it, “Shut up for the moment.” Unless you all get out of the cage of the mind, I will have to talk against it; although I am not against it.
“You are saying that we should drop it, tell it to shut up.” I say drop it if you want to meditate. And the moment you are going to the marketplace, pick it up. Who is preventing you? Is there a need that you should continually cling to it for twenty-four hours? – Because tomorrow you are going to the marketplace, so in the night you also have to keep it with you, under your blanket? Are you afraid that it will escape?
I say drop it because I want you to feel that you are the master. If you want to drop it you can drop it, and if you want to pick it up, you can pick it up. It is just a mechanism.
“You are saying that it is not needed in the search for truth.” It is not needed. As far as the search for truth is concerned, it is not needed. On the contrary, it is a hindrance.
And truth is not available in the marketplace; it is not something you can purchase, not something that you can steal, not something that you can borrow – it is something within you. But it is beyond the reach of the mind. The reach of the mind is only to outside things. As far as your inner world is concerned, mind is absolutely impotent. It is not its fault; it is not made for that purpose.
As far as truth is concerned, you need a state of no-mind – I mean no thought, not even a ripple in your consciousness, no disturbance – just absolute silence.
One discovers one’s truth only in silence, in aloneness. Even your mind will not be a witness to it.
And Mandira, you are absolutely wrong in saying, “You seem to regret that none of your sannyasins is a Nobel Prize winner.” Where you got the idea from, I don’t know.
I have certainly said that the vegetarians have not been able to get a single Nobel Prize. And the reason is that intelligence needs certain chemicals, certain proteins, which are not available in their vegetarian food. But I am not regretting it; I am simply stating a fact.
A Nobel Prize does not necessarily prove that somebody has achieved the highest consciousness. J. Krishnamurti did not receive it; Raman Maharishi did not receive it. Meher Baba did not get it. And these were people who reached to the highest peak; they belong to the same category as Gautam Buddha.
Even if Gautam Buddha was alive, he would not receive the Nobel Prize because the Nobel prize is a political game. It is not decided by the height of your intelligence; you need some political reasons. Even politicians like Kissinger have received the Nobel Prize, yet J. Krishnamurti’s name was never even mentioned. […]
I do not regret that none of my sannyasins is a politician. I am immensely happy that my sannyasins are not politicians. And the Nobel prize has not been given, at least up to now, even to a single meditator. Meditation does not come into their consideration.
A novelist can get a Nobel Prize. A film director can get a Nobel Prize. A scientist can get a Nobel Prize. A politician can get a Nobel Prize. But there is no category in the Nobel Prize for a man like Jesus, or Gautam Buddha, or Zarathustra, or Lao Tzu.
And even if these people are given Nobel prizes, they will laugh. To them your Nobel prizes are just like toys; they are good for children to play with. In what way can they enhance Gautam Buddha?
This is how people go on hearing things which are not sane… I have never regretted….
And you are saying, “I feel almost guilty when I make an attempt to become informed about one thing or another….” You are misunderstanding me completely. Who has told you, “Don’t become informed”? I have been telling you that by informing yourself you cannot attain to self-realization. But if you want to be an electrician, I will not suggest: Meditate, and you will become an electrician; meditate, and you will become a mechanic in a factory – you will need information.
There is no need to feel guilty. This is how your mind goes on making distortions, interpretations, and you go on carrying in your mind things which I have never said.
You are saying, “… it seems almost impossible to survive in the marketplace totally ignorant.” But who has said to you that in the marketplace be totally ignorant? Be as knowledgeable as possible.
In the marketplace innocence is not needed, neither is silence needed, nor is self-realization needed. The more you are knowledgeable, the more you will be successful.
I have been talking, not about the marketplace; I have been talking about the realization of who you are. This is not possible through gathering information; this is not possible through becoming knowledgeable – this is possible only if you become innocent.
And remember, innocence is not ignorance. There is a very fine demarcation, but the difference is immense. Ignorance means absence of knowledge, and innocence means presence of silence, presence of clarity. Ignorance is a negative thing. Innocence is a positive phenomenon. They don’t mean the same thing.
You can be innocent as far as your inner growth is concerned, and you can be knowledgeable as far as your outside world is concerned. They are two different things; they don’t clash with each other.
I have heard… two cowboys come upon an Indian lying on his stomach with his ear to the ground. One of the cowboys stops and says to the other, ”You see that Indian?” ”Yah,” says the other cowboy.
“Look,” says the first one, “he is listening to the ground. He can hear things for miles in any direction.”
Just then the Indian looks up, “Covered wagon,” he says, “about two miles away. Has two horses – one brown, one white – a man, a woman, a child, and household effects in the wagon.”
“Incredible!” says the cowboy to his friend. ”This Indian knows how far away they are, how many horses, what color they are, who is in the wagon, and what is in the wagon. Amazing!”
The Indian looks up and says, “Ran over me about a half hour ago.” […]
Prem Mandira, when you are listening to me, be alert that your mind does not start interpreting it. Just listen exactly to what I am saying; otherwise you can go on listening to me for years and still remain in the same vicious circle, moving round and round but going nowhere.
I really mean business. I want you to be the new man. The whole of humanity needs the new man; it is not only your need. It used to be the need of the individual in the past, but now we have come to a point where the new man is needed for the survival of the whole of humanity, for the survival of life itself on the earth.
-Osho
From The Razor’s Edge, Discourse #25
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