Osho,
Since I have been a sannyasin, I have thought that I needed to use my mind less if I was to be in touch with my heart. Yet I heard you say the other day that we should train our minds to keep our intelligence alive and help it become sharper and sharper. Could you please clarify this?

Life is not as simple as you think; it is very complicated. It is true that if you want to be in touch with me, you will be more and more in the heart, not in the mind, because the mind has no qualities for inner growth. It has immense powers for outer research – for objective, scientific work – but for religious growth, it is absolutely impotent.

So if you listen to me through the mind, then what I am saying to you is lost in a desert. It will never reach to your heart. That’s why I have always insisted: put the mind aside and be with me with your heart, with your love, with your trust.

But that is only one part of the story. When I said I would like you to make your mind as sharp as possible, that is a totally different dimension, because unless your mind is sharp enough you are going to be enslaved by the society. You are already enslaved by the society because your mind has not fought against it; it has been obedient to it.

Both these statements belong to different contexts, so don’t get mixed up. When I say be with me with your heart, put the mind aside, it is one thing, one context of being a disciple. And if you can really do it totally you can reach to the highest peak – that is of being a devotee.

These are the three stages: The student who listens only from the mind – he will collect knowledge, but he will not become a knower. The disciple who tries to put the mind aside and listen from the heart – he is making an effort. The mind will come again and again in between; the effort will not be total. But still, even if something reaches to the heart, even a few seeds, soon it will change the whole color of your being – the season will not be far away when the heart will start blossoming. That is the point when you reach to the boundary line of being a devotee.

Now you are capable of putting the mind completely, totally away without any interference, as if you are not a mind at all. You are just heart and heart. Your every fiber is simply vibrating with love, openness, vulnerability. The devotee and the master start melting into each other.

The disciple once in a while gets the glimpse, but the devotee becomes totally one with the master. The disciple can fall back, can get into the mind again. The devotee has broken the bridge that leads to the mind. He cannot go back; the past is finished. He has become part and parcel of the master’s energy.