Your mind is like your legs—use it when needed, let it rest when not, and stay the boss by mixing head with heart.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, are you absolutely against intellect? Should one never use one's head at all?
I AM NOT ABSOLUTELY against intellect. It has its uses but they are very limited, and you have to understand their limitations. If you are working as a scientist you will have to use your intellect. It is a beautiful mechanism, but it is beautiful only if it remains a slave and does not become the master. If it becomes the master and overpowers you then it is dangerous. Mind as a slave to consciousness is a beautiful servant. Mind as a master of consciousness is a very dangerous master. The whole question is of emphasis. I am not absolutely against intellect -- I use intellect myself, how I can be against it? Right now, talking to you, I am using it. But I am the master; it is not my master. If I want to use it I use it. If I don't want to use it, it has…
Beloved Osho, since I have been here, one feeling gets stronger and stronger -- the only thing that I really want to do is sit on your lap.
USHA, JUST FAR OUT! But please don t start doing it. I have fifty thousand sannyasins: just think of me too, otherwise I will be killed in a stampede. But the idea is great, just as an idea -- don't practise it. The idea is symbolic: a great love is arising in you. It is good, it has to be so. Unless you are in deep love with me nothing is going to happen. Only through love, the transformation happens. And it is good that you have not projected it on me -- otherwise, that too happens... Just the other day, I read in the latest issue of YOUTH TIMES a statement of an Indian film actress, Pratima Bedi. She says,"Rajneesh is sexy." Now, I really enjoyed it! She came to see me once; she must have been there for four or five minutes in front of me. She says…
Yesterday you said don't allow the elephant driver's hook of the intellect to ride over the feelings of the heart. But Osho I find your discourses absolutely logical. Is the mind nourished by the enjoyment of argument? Is it not a danger for me that the argument-nurtured mind will take control of the heart and suppress the experience of feelings? Please show me the path.
What I am saying is certainly logical, but not just logical -- something more too. I speak logically for you, and something more is for me. If I do not speak logically you won't be able to understand. And if I do not say that which is beyond logic, I would not speak at all: what would be the use of speaking? When I am talking, speaking to you two are present: you and I. There is both a speaker and a listener. If it was up to me I would speak In transcendence of logic, I would completely drop arguments, but then you would think I am insane. Then you wouldn't understand anything, you would feel it is just noise with no meaning. I speak logically to fit with your pattern of logical thinking. But if this is all you understand, then your visit here has been useless. It…
I belong to the intelligentsia; I believe in intellect and reason. Is there a way out for me?
It is going to be difficult. The intellect has no why out; the intellect is a cul-de-sac. The intellect moves in a vicious circle. It creates its own world of concepts, words, theories, and lives there. There is no way out from the head. The way out is from the heart, because the heart opens -- so the way out is possible. Intellect lives in a closed way. Intellect has no doors to go out from; it is a closed existence, encapsuled. It is very difficult to communicate with an intellectual, almost impossible. You say something; he hears something else. You show something; he sees something else. His intellect is a constant interference. It is very difficult to communicate; there is no bridge. Communication is possible only between two hearts, not between two heads. Two heads simply collide with each other, conflict -- confusion, but no meeting, no communion. Only…
Beloved Osho, 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?
When I saw the address of Rajiv Gandhi, I remembered the story of Gautam Buddha, and the king of Vaishali. 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…