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Osho - You are neither the
heart nor the mind. You are a pure consciousness
Question:
Beloved master, Is it always good to follow the heart or once in
a while should a clear mind decide what is to be done? And what
to do when they want to go in opposite directions?
Osho: Swami Anutosh Pradip, your question is hilarious –
to say the least! Let them go on their way. Why should you be
worried? The mind is going in one direction; the heart is going
in another direction. It is none of your business to interfere.
Simply remain a witness and see where these fellows are going.
Not understanding the secret of
awareness is the cause of your
problem.
You are neither the heart nor the mind. You are a pure
consciousness behind them. And unless you get identified they
cannot go anywhere; they don’t have their own energy. You ask
me, ”Is it always good to follow the heart?” and I have been
teaching you that your heart,
your body, your mind, should follow you. This is how we go on
misunderstanding.
You are not to be a follower of any; you are simply to be a
witness.
Witnessing the mind moving in one direction and the heart in
another is a great experience.
Experience that you are neither of them. You can remain above
and they cannot move very far. They need each other’s support
and finally they need energy from you, because you are life,
they are only instruments. Your question is just like this: my
left hand wants to follow this side, my right hand wants to
follow this side – what am I supposed to do? Of course, to
follow the right is always good. Right is right and left is
wrong!
Not to follow is the secret of freedom, and once your heart and
your mind know that you are not a man who is going to follow,
they will stop quarreling, they will stop moving, because they
don’t have any energy. The energy comes from you and it comes
because you get identified with them, but every identification
is wrong. You remind me of Ruthie Finkelstein who has been
having therapy for some time without finding much improvement in
her generally depressed and confused state.
Finally she tells her therapist that she is going away for a few
weeks for a holiday in Greece. Some time later the shrink
receives a postcard from Ruthie which says, ”Having a lovely
time, but WHY?” You cannot even have a lovely time without
inquiring why – and that destroys your whole joy. The questions
are a disturbance. No question is of any importance.
Just to be silent and watch what goes on around in you – in the
mind, in the heart – and remain aloof, will not only solve this
question, it will solve all your questions. But mind loves to
ask! You are saying you feel very happy following the heart and
you know it is always good... Who told you? The heart has also
committed as many crimes as the mind.
When a Mohammedan destroys the statue of a Gautam Buddha, do you
think he is doing it from the mind? It is his heart. When he
forces somebody on the point of the sword to change his religion
and become a Mohammedan, do you think he is following his mind?
He is following his heart.
The heart has its own conditionings which go deeper than the
conditionings of the mind.
The heart has always been praised for the simple reason that it
gets no chance – the mind goes on playing the whole game and
society prepares you not to listen to the heart.
But the Christians who were killing Mohammedans, and the
Mohammedans who were killing
Christians – and they are still doing that – not for a moment
does a doubt arise that what they are doing is absolutely
inhuman and cannot be religious. If it was done by the mind the
question would have arisen, but because it is done by the heart,
the heart does not know questioning.
They feel with absolute certainty that if a man is killed in a
crusade which they call jihad, then that man has already reached
to paradise. And according to the number of people you kill, the
more certain becomes your paradise. These are not mind things.
They have entered the heart, slowly, slowly sinking down through
the centuries.
Just one difference is that the mind always questions if what
you are doing is right or
wrong. The heart never questions. That’s why all the religions
want you to surrender, to be faithful, to believe. These are the
qualities which enter into the heart.I don’t teach the mind. For
that there are thousands of universities.
I don’t teach the heart because I know the heart can do things
more cruelly than the mind. The mind at least hesitates; the
heart believes totally. I teach you awareness of your being
beyond both the heart and the mind. I say unto you, disidentify
yourself and they will forget going this way or that way.
And for the first time you will be the master and they will
simply be servants. You can order them and they will have to
follow, because without your order they cannot get any
nourishment. Anutosh Pradip, as far as your problem is
concerned, let both of them go wherever they want. Simply remain
centered – above, alert, not being dragged by them and not being
influenced by them.
Then your purity of awareness will lead you to the cosmic purity
of existence. That is the only way of merging with the whole.
All else is just an utterly futile exercise. Your silence will
take you to the right path. Neither does your mind know silence
nor your heart.
Your consciousness will take you in the right direction.
Neither does your mind know how to be conscious nor your heart.
They are both fast asleep and whatever they do is going to prove
stupid and dangerous to yourself and others.
If all the crimes that have been committed in the world are
counted, then you will be surprised that all the religions are
the fundamental causes of those crimes. They teach love and they
practice hate.
They teach oneness and they practice discrimination. The
religious history of man is so mean, so ugly, that to be part of
any religion is to prove that you are retarded, that you don’t
know what these religions have done.
Old Sam Finkelstein arrives from Russia to visit his relatives
in America. On his way to Texas he sits down in a train between
two rednecks. He nods in a friendly way but the rednecks sit in
stony silence. Old Sam notices an American newspaper lying on
the seat and picks it up.
Having taken classes in English for the past few months, he is
able to read most of the page, but all of a sudden he turns to
the redneck on his right and says in a thick Russian accent,
”You look like an intelligent man. Would you be kind enough to
tell me what this word is?”
The redneck winks at his friend and without looking at the paper
says, ”That word is ‘syphilis’.”
Old Sam thanks him and reads on. A few minutes later he turns to
the other redneck and says, ”You are obviously a man of
education. Would you kindly tell me what this word is?”
The redneck smirks, winks at his friend and ignoring the
newspaper says, ”That word is ‘gonorrhea’.”
”Syphilis and gonorrhea?” cries old Sam. ”Ah, my God – that poor
Ronald Reagan!”
Don’t take any problem, any question seriously. Your taking them
seriously makes them important and forces you to find the
solution. Whenever a question arises in you, just be silent and
watch the arising of the question. Watch how it becomes more
condensed, watch how it becomes more clear – but go on watching.
And you will be surprised that just as you are simply watching
and not getting involved, it starts evaporating. Soon there is tremendous silence left behind it, and this silence is the
answer!
But what do people do? A question arises in their minds – and
there are thousands of questions; you will need millions of
lives to find the answers for all of them. Still you will remain
ignorant, knowledgeably ignorant. And because of the question
you start asking others... perhaps somebody else knows the
answer – that makes you a beggar. The knowledge that you get
from others is borrowed; it is not going to help you at all.
One thing and only one thing helps. Watch the question and don’t
be dragged by it in any direction. Be silent and see the whole
question and what happens to it. It comes and it goes; no
question remains there. It is just like a signature on water:
you have not even made your full signature, and it has started
to disappear.
The art of meditation is how to make your questions disappear,
not to give you an answer. The answer will bring new questions
and there is no end to it. Meditation will leave you in a space
where there is no question, no answer, but only a purity, a
simplicity – the same that you had known when you were born. You
were alive but there was no question. You were so full of
wonder.
Your eyes sparkled seeing a small thing. In a right society –
for which I go on hopelessly hoping – a child’s innocence should
not be destroyed. And when we have an almost oceanic innocence
all around, the beauty and the experience of it are so
tremendous and so strong that who cares about stupid questions?
In fact they never arise.
I am reminded of D.H. Lawrence, a man of this century whom I
have loved much. He was
condemned from all corners – not as much as I am condemned, but
he prepared the way. He
was walking in a garden early in the morning with a small child,
and the small child asked, ”Uncle, why are the trees green?”
As far as language is concerned, the question is absolutely
correct, but you know that it is stupid and you cannot say that
it is stupid. If it had been somebody other than D.H. Lawrence,
who was a man of great sincerity and authenticity... Any other
knowledgeable person would have told the child that trees are
green because of a certain chemical, chlorophyll.
Perhaps for the moment the child would have been silent:
chlorophyll.... But sooner or later the questions were bound to
arise, ”Why do all the trees have chlorophyll? Who goes on
giving them chlorophyll? What is the purpose of making all the
trees full of chlorophyll? What is chlorophyll...?”
But D.H. Lawrence looked at the innocent eyes of the child and
said, ”My boy, trees are just green,” and the boy was immensely
happy. The trees are green because they are green – it is not a
problem, and the small boy understood it. What can you do? If
the trees are green, they are green. It is their problem, it is
not our problem – why should we be bothered?
But as man grows and is filled and fed by all kinds of knowledge
and information in the name of educating him, in the name of
making him civilized and cultured, we spoil a tremendously
beautiful innocence. And there is no need to know why the trees
are green.... It is perfectly good that they are green. If they
decide to change, that is their problem, they can change.
But look at people’s questions and you will find that all
questions without exception are stupid.
Although I might say that this question is very significant, you
know I am a contradictory man. It does not bother me, why should
it bother you? I am controversial. It has never bothered me, it
has bothered the whole world. Strange! These are my problems and
I don’t consider them as problems.
They are my unique individuality. Why should you bother? And
people get sad....
Just a few days ago Hasya brought news of a sannyasin that had
dropped sannyas because ”Shree Rajneesh says many things which
are not in The Bible.” I am not speaking on The
Bible. I don’t care a bit about The Bible. But deep down
he must have been waiting to be confirmed in his beliefs, to be
blessed: ”You are right and your Bible is right.” And strangely
enough, before that he had not read The Bible!
He took sannyas first thinking that I am talking about The
Bible. And being impressed he went into an utterly boring book,
The Bible. No intelligent man can read it from the first page to
the last page – nobody does it. And what is the problem? Why
should I talk about things which are in The Bible? Rather
than dropping The Bible, he dropped sannyas. Such is the
way of conditioning.
Three missionaries, all nuns, are walking along the street and
one is describing with her hands the tremendous grape fruits she
has seen in Africa. Then the second one, also with her hands,
describes the huge bananas she has seen in India. The third nun,
a little deaf, asked, ”Father who?”
Strange questions – nothing to do with your own being and its
growth. But people go on for their whole lives and finally, they
become just walking encyclopedias. They know everything, and
deep inside at the center is still the same innocence with which
they were born.
It is not knowledgeable, it is not ignorant; it is simply
innocent. And to be utterly innocent is the whole purpose of all
meditations, particularly here. I allow you to ask questions so
that I can destroy them as much as possible.
Source: " Om Shantih Shantih Shantih " - Osho
Related Osho Discourses:
By becoming more aware,
one becomes more aware
Awareness is a
process of being more and more awake
What is the
relationship between Let-Go and Witnessing?
What is the
Difference between Awareness and Witnessing?
Are Witnessing and
Sensitivity two sides of the same coin?
Awareness is not part of the mind.
It flows through the Mind
What is Awareness? Why is
it Lost, and how can it be regained?
Osho -
Just by witnessing, identification disappears, not the mind
Awareness can
be attained only by doing, not by thinking about it
All that you
need is just to be Watchful and nothing will affect
you
Awareness is
a Transforming Force, it does not repress but it Transforms
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