This is one context, and you are mixing it with another context. As far as the society, the outside world, the religions, the governments are concerned, you have to be very sharp and very intelligent; otherwise they will enslave you, they will exploit you. They have been doing it for centuries. They have not allowed millions of people to go beyond the age of thirteen as far as the mind is concerned. The person may be seventy years old; he has a mind of a thirteen-year-old child. This is what I mean by retardedness.

Society does not want you to grow up; it simply wants you to grow old. It wants you to function as a machine, a robot – absolutely obedient, no argument, no question. It needs you only to be efficient. To the society, you are not an individual to be respected but only a mechanism to be used, and there is no other insult, no other humiliation more ugly than using people as machines, as things.

Against the society, use the mind. Mind is a perfect means to keep you independent, to keep you alert. It is a good fighter, but it is not a lover. So when there is need to fight, when there is need to stand up for your liberty, use the mind; the heart will not be of any use. The heart knows no way to fight.

But the context is totally different, and I call that man conscious who can use his capacities in their right context and does not get mixed up. Eyes are for seeing – you cannot hear from them. And ears are for hearing – you cannot see from them. So use them whenever the need is there, and don’t let them come in each other’s way.

Mind is a beautiful instrument. It has to be sharpened, but remember its limitations. It should remain a servant to the heart. The moment it becomes the master, the heart simply dies. In slavery, the heart cannot exist.

So there is no contradiction in what I have said – just two different contexts and your consciousness is different from both. So a conscious person can use his heart when needed, can use his mind when needed; can put both to silence when he wants to be absolutely in a state of nirvana where neither the mind is needed nor the heart. When he wants simply to be himself, both are not needed.

If you are the master of your instruments, there is no problem. If you have a flute and I ask you, “Can you stop playing on it for a few moments – I want to talk to you,” and you say, “I cannot do it; the flute won’t stop,” what will be thought about you? You are insane – the flute won’t stop? So you are not playing the flute, but the flute is playing you. When you want to stop the mind, just say: “Stop” – it has to stop. If it moves even a little bit, that means something has to be done urgently. This is dangerous: the servant is trying to be the master. The servant should be the servant and the master should be the master. And beyond both is your being which is neither servant nor master, which simply is. That “isness” is the goal of all meditations.

Osho,
This past week I read three volumes of The Discipline of Transcendence – your discourses on Buddha’s sutras. I became aware of a strange synthesis in myself, that of being a romantic scientist. Tomorrow is the Buddha full moon. You – the lord of the full moon – are very romantic to me. Is it also scientific?