How can I integrate new ideas into the French mindset?

You will enjoy new things so much, new ways so much. And in that very enjoyment you will see that people have started coming to you, you have started moving with people and there has arisen an affinity; you are more en rapport with people. Sometimes a very small thing -- just a good laugh, sometimes just holding the hand of somebody and crying -- can be a great help, can be a great opening. You have to come down from your head; you are stuck there. It is going to be difficult -- that's right -- but it is not impossible. And even if it is difficult it has to be done. It is worth it. That difficulty has to be taken on. .... Meanwhile try new ways, do something new. Even if you prove foolish -- nothing to be worried about: be amateurish!

But Osho, as I understand, communication means direct communication. As I see it, that is a very difficult problem, because human beings have been conditioned, as you said, for millions of years. That is, a person carries all those impressions, and whatever he communicates will also be the imprints of the past. How should we see through our conditioning so that we can have direct communication?

Understand it this way: what has been conditioned is the mind. What is conditioned is the mind; in fact, mind means the total conditioning. But behind the mind there is an awareness, a consciousness that cannot be conditioned—it is impossible to condition it. It is necessary to point toward that consciousness. That is why I put such emphasis on meditation. Because I hold that the moment one descends into meditation one goes behind the mind. Meditation means going behind the mind. And the very first time one steps behind the mind—leaving all thoughts, all emotions, all conditionings—at once it becomes clear: I am something entirely different from what I took myself to be—not a Hindu, not a Muslim, not the body. What I thought I was, I am not; I am something else. The deeper this realization goes, the more direct communication becomes possible with that person—because then we are…

There are many people who have been doing the same -- not only you. In fact everybody does that in the beginning. There are many people who go on playing games. They think they are doing something very clever and they are simply missing the opportunity. But it is natural too, because whatsoever they have done for their whole life only that can they do. And in the ordinary world cleverness pays. Here, madness pays. And you are not mad -- that's your trouble. With me mad people grow very fast. Clever people who can succeed.... You can succeed in the world very well, because this type of functioning is very in tune with the world, with the worldly -- and that's one of the problems. A certain mind has come into existence -- the american mind. This is something new in the history of humanity.

Osho, what is being open?

Science approaches the outer world of facts without any fanatical attitudes and religion approaches the inner world of facts without any fanatical attitudes. The fanatic believes more in his fiction than in the facts; he imposes his fictions on the facts. A certain Dr. Banerjee came to me; he wanted my help. He said, "I am a scientist." He is the head of a department at Rajasthan University, doing some research work in parapsychology; he is the head of the parapsychology department. He told me that he wanted my help because he was doing some scientific work on the theory of reincarnation: that man is born many times again and again. I talked with him and I said, "Do you believe in reincarnation?" He said, "Certainly. I am a Hindu and I believe that it is true. Now I want to prove it scientifically." I said, "Then your research is…

Don't feel at all that you have a difficult body -- what to do with it? Use it and you will be tremendously benefited. Just become a witness: walking, sitting, cycling, just become a witness. Everything is going to be difficult. I have heard my sannyasins saying that when you go on the bicycle they all become afraid that you may fall any moment! But remain alert, take it playfully, and when you have become very centred and you know absolutely that you are not the body, then start working on the mind. Start with the body because the body is gross, and the mind is subtle. Then put the same focus on the mind: 'I am not the mind.' You have to do these two things and witnessing arises. To become a witness is to be free from everything.