According to Osho, the mind (thought) is a usable but blind instrument—logic without intrinsic right or wrong, a sword that can serve either way. The heart lies deeper; it doesn’t think, it loves—alive, changing, subversive to social utility. Deeper still is the soul: silent witnessing being, the source that guides love and employs mind without being enslaved by either.
Your mind thinks, your heart loves, and your soul is the quiet you that watches and gently guides them both.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, all the saints have called the heart the doorway to spiritual experience, and the mind the domain of thought and intellect. What is the difference between heart and mind? What is the difference between heart and soul? How can this difference be made clear? How to recognize it?
There is also danger with love. It is difficult to make a man into a soldier; to make him a soldier you must kill his love completely. Otherwise, when he takes a gun in hand to kill an enemy, his heart will say: “He too has a mother, just as you do. He too has a wife. As your wife wept bitterly when she bid you farewell, his wife must also have wept. He too has small children, and you are about to make them orphans. He too has an old father who has no other staff to lean on in his old age. What are you doing? And why? This man has done nothing to you. For a job paying a mere hundred rupees you will kill a man; and he too, for a pittance, has a gun pressed to your chest!” If even a ray of love arises…
Osho, you often tell us to listen to the heart rather than the mind. But how is one to know which voice is the mind’s and which is the heart’s? Please explain with compassion.
Renuka! The matter is absolutely straightforward. There is not the slightest confusion. The mind always points you outward; the heart always points you inward. When something within says, “Go out—earn money, gain position, prestige, ambition,” know it is the mind speaking, because these are not the heart’s longings. When something says, “Sit silently, close your eyes, dive within yourself, take a plunge into your own being, listen to your life-breath, step into the inner sound that is rising,” then know the heart has spoken. The inner journey is the heart’s message; the outer journey is the mind’s. There is no reason for mistake here. When hatred arises, know the mind has spoken; when love arises, know the heart has spoken. When thoughts surround you, know the mind has seized you; when waves of feeling rise, know you are in the heart. When negation arises—an urge to say “no,” when doubt…
Osho, which is the voice of the mind and which is the voice of the heart? What is the criterion to know? Please explain.
All voices are of the mind; the heart has no voice. Where voices disappear, there is the heart. Silence is the heart’s voice. Emptiness is the heart’s tone. So there is no complication at all. You think one voice is of the heart and another of the mind; you are falling into a great mistake. All voices are of the mind. It is the mind. It is the mind that wants to grasp wealth, and the mind that wants to renounce wealth. The mind is very complex. On one side it says, “Grab it, plunder it, enjoy!” On the other it says, “What’s the point? It’s all insubstantial.” But both are the mind. On one side it says, “Run! Life is only for a few days—win some position.” From the other side it says, “What’s in positions? Look at those who have arrived.” The mind keeps talking to itself, keeps…
Mind is always old. Even a one-day-old child has a one-day-old mind, because mind means the past. It accumulates the past; it is accumulative it goes on accumulating experiences and everything that happens. It is always old and it goes on becoming older and older. But the heart is always young; it never accumulates, it is non-accumulative. It lives in the moment. That's why the mind and the heart are never in agreement, they cannot be in agreement, because the mind talks about the past and the heart wants to live spontaneously, right now. The mind always gives advice, tries to be very wise, calls the heart a fool, mad, and all kinds of names, but the heart never becomes wise in that sense; it remains a fool.
Osho, what is mind?
As I see it, mind is not an object—it is only a function. This fan is running. There is the fan’s moving state and there is its still state. When the fan stops, we do not ask where the “movement” went, because movement was not an object. Movement was simply an activity of the fan. The fan that was moving has become still. The being within us—its moving state is the mind, and its still state is the soul.