Listening

Beloved Osho, I used to listen to you without understanding and feel perfectly blissful -- and I've heard you say that this is right listening. Lately I've had an intense desire to understand what you say. At first I was sad; it seemed I had taken a wrong turn. But it feels good: my head tingles and feels intensely alive. Is there anything I can do other than enjoy it?

So it is good to start the journey from the heart. The intelligent man's way is the way of the heart, because the heart is not interested in words; it is interested only in the juice that comes in the containers of the words. It does not collect containers; it simply drinks the juice and throws away the container. The mind does just the opposite: it throws away the juice and collects the containers. Containers look beautiful, and a great collection of containers makes a man a great intellectual giant. If you start the journey from the head you will go on round and round and round inside the head. Your head will become swollen; you will become more egoistic. Hasya was asking me, "Why don't we invite intellectuals, authors, writers, professors to understand you?" This is the problem: they cannot understand. It is good if they read my books;…

Suman has asked, “How should I listen?”

When you listen with your eyes open, one kind of experience happens. When you listen with your eyes closed, another kind of experience happens. Both kinds are useful. Sometimes listen with your eyes open, sometimes with your eyes closed. Flow between these two experiences. Make them the two banks, and let the river of your life flow between them. Both are right. Both are necessary. Whichever your heart longs for at a given moment, enter that experience. Sometimes listen with your eyes open—this too is a way to become absorbed in me. Sometimes listen with your eyes closed—this too is a way.

Beloved Osho, when I sit in front of you and listen to you speak, I feel as if a process of osmosis is happening. I find I don't intellectually listen. Is this the right way or am I missing something?

This is the right way. If you listen to me intellectually you miss, not something, but all. Intellectual listening is a kind of deafness. When I say something, you can listen to the word. You have a mind, a library in the mind of all your prejudices, philosophies, ideologies. The word has to go through all those preconceived patterns, and by the time it reaches to you it is no longer the same. It has changed so many times, passing through the whole process of intellectual listening, that when it comes out it is absolutely something else. And yet it appears to be rationally the right thing; it fits with your mind. The process of listening has managed to cut it here and there, change it here and there; to color it here and there, to make it what you want it to be, not what it is. And you…

And what if I am listening only to you?

If you are listening only to me, only to me, and you do not hear the sound of the fan or the car horn on the street, then that is concentration. Then it is a kind of stupor. And then you will be hypnotized by me. You will understand me less and be influenced more. And remember: the less one understands, the more one is influenced. Why? The rules of being influenced are different; the rules of understanding are very different. If nothing else is heard—if you hear only me, and your whole consciousness is fixed on me—then you will become unconscious. You will be hypnotized. Then whatever I say will seem right and will enter you, because you are in a stupor. That is concentration. But awareness means that all that is happening right now all around is happening, and you are open to it. A horn sounds—you hear…