What is the role of the mind in the search for truth?

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…

First you have to become a little happier, you have to learn to be a little more love-full, joyful; your life has to have the color of a little happiness. Then go into the search for truth and you will be moving in the right direction, because then no lie can ever deceive you. You are no more interested in lies, because you are no more interested in consolation and comfort. Now you are ready to know the naked truth as it is. And to be a seeker of truth is the greatest thing in life. Satbodh One cannot find truth by mere thinking. Thinking is not the process that leads you to the truth. It leads only to inference. And inferences are just inferences, they are hypothetical. They may be true, they may not be true. They are just conjectures, not real conclusions.

Real truth is what is experienced as such

The very first foundations of a life of spiritual endeavour are love of oneself and spiritual harmony. Surely you will be confounded to hear this, because you have been often advised to suppress something within you. But I say that there is nothing within you that needs suppression or extirpation. There are certain drives within every man that need to be harnessed, not extirpated; certain forces that must needs be awakened and loved, not suppressed. They should be controlled and directed along the proper course. But those who consider them hostile can never be successful in transforming them. A man of understanding can transform even poison into nectar, but one who has no understanding whatever is sure to turn his nectar into poison. I call understanding nectar and deficiency in it poison. We see that putrefying things, things that emit foul smell, are used as fertilizers. Just now some one…

Beloved Osho,sometimes while just sitting, the question comes up in the mind: what is truth? But by the time I come here I realize that I am not capable to ask. But may I ask what happens in those moments when the question arises so strongly that had you been nearby I would have asked it. Or if you had not replied, I would have caught hold of your beard or collar and asked, "what is truth, Osho?"

When you fall in love with a woman there is some truth -- if you have fallen absolutely unaware, if you have not 'done' it in any way, if you have not acted, managed, if you have not even thought about it. Suddenly you see a woman, you look into her eyes, she looks into your eyes, and something clicks. You are not the doer of it, you are simply possessed by it, you simply fall into it. It has nothing to do with you. Your ego is not involved, at least not in the very, very beginning, when love is virgin. In that moment there is truth, but there is no interpretation. That's why love remains indefinable. Soon the mind comes in, starts managing things, takes possession of you. You start thinking about the girl as your girlfriend, you start thinking of how to get married, you start thinking…

mind is just the opposite of meditation it is the closing of the heart meditation is the opening of the heart man can live through the mind but then life will not have any significance any poetry, any song, any music it will be trivial, mundane, superficial ultimately frustrating a sheer wastage of a great opportunity a very ungrateful way to live because god gives us such an opportunity to grow and we only accumulate the non-essential money, power, prestige there is a famous book by napoleon hill: Grow Rich that is not a way to grow that is a way to remain retarded but that's what has become the philosophy of the common man all over the world everybody is interested in the very superficial the reason is that the door to the divine is closed and the door to the mundane is open our schools, colleges and universities…