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. And it is good that it remains a fool, it is good that it never becomes old, because that is the only hope for man. That is the only door to know reality, because reality is in the present.
Mind can never know anything about reality. It can have no encounter with reality. The past is always standing in between like a wall, and the wall goes on becoming bigger and bigger every day. That’s why children are more alive, more spontaneous, more beautiful, more joyous than old people. Old people become too experienced and everything that is spontaneous is not possible for an old man. He has a condemnation for it; he has a thousand and one opinions about it.
The mind calls love mad. Out of its experience, observation, knowledge, it creates a false kind of love it calls marriage. Marriage is an invention the mind. It is a very poor substitute. It is an institution. It is more utilitarian, certainly; it has more economic value, it is more marketable, it is more worldly. Love looks mad, but it is love that gives you feel of being alive, not marriage.
And it is the same about anything else. Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism — these are mind things. To be with Jesus is a heart thing, but that is possible only when the master is alive. To be with the pope is a mind thing. He has two thousand years of heritage. Jesus was a madman; no rabbi followed him, no knowledgeable professor followed him, but simple people: carpenters, fishermen, prostitutes, gamblers, drunkards — these type of people who are really simple and in a way more spontaneous. A prostitute is a far more alive being than a rabbi. I respect a prostitute more than a rabbi, because a rabbi is absolutely dead.
Mary Magdalene was far more alive — she could see the beauty of Jesus. But the head-priest of the great temple of Jerusalem could not see: he thought ‘This man is simply dangerous, a madman collecting other mad young people and trying to destroy the whole social structure.’
It was mind crucifying the heart when Jesus was crucified. That has always been so and that will always be so. Only the heart can move into meditation, only the heart is the hope. There is only one hope for man: if he moves from the head to the heart, starts listening to the heart and follows the heart. It is risky: everybody will condemn you, everybody will think that something has gone wrong, that you have gone cuckoo. But that has always been so: the people who had been with Buddha were thought to be cuckoos and the people who are with me are bound to be thought to be cuckoos. But to be a cuckoo with a Buddha is a blessing!
So feel blessed!
Bliss is poetry. It is not science, it is not logic, it is not mind, it is not prose. It is art, it is dance, it is music, it is love: it is poetry. And one has to learn the ways of being poetic; they are totally different. In the world mathematics is needed, not music; logic is needed, not love. So the world teaches you to be logical, but logic destroys your love, which is far more valuable because it is through love that you will know god. It is through being poetic that there is a possibility of knowing the beauty of existence. It is tremendously beautiful, but we need a different perspective to see the beauty, a different vision, a different approach, a different context altogether.
Ordinarily, what we have been taught is not poetry. We have been brought up in a very calculative way. We are being made to be cunning and clever because that is what succeeds in life, that's what helps you to achieve ambitions. You are brought up in such a way that you can go on power trips -- and reality is not a power trip, it is not an ego trip.
One has to put aside the ego and all the calculating and cunning ways. One has to learn something of the aesthetic sense; one has to be more sensitive, more in tune with existence. That's what I call poetry.
I don't mean that you have to read Shakespeare and Milton and Shelley and Byron. When I say poetry, I mean that you have to be in a love affair with life; it should not be calculative. You should be more open to the wind, to the sun, to the rain. You should be more full of wonder than of knowledge; you should live in awe.
Each moment should be a moment of awe, of wonder. Looking at life with the eyes of a child, the whole world becomes god-full. If your heart is full of wonder, then the world is full of god; if your heart is calculative and cunning, god disappears from the world, god dies. Then you live in a godless world, and living in a godless world is not worth living at all. Life loses all significance altogether. It becomes absolutely mundane, a commodity -- and that is the ugliest thing that can happen to a man.
My sannyasins have to live a beautiful life; a life of grace, of poetry, of music and celebration. Dance, because it is through the dance... sing, because it is through singing... that you will become vulnerable to god, open to god. It is not a question of argument, it is not a question of proofs, of philosophy or theology.
The word 'love' defines sannyas precisely. And a heart full of love is naturally full of poetry. To live life in poetry is to be a sannyasin.
- Osho, “The Golden Wind, #18”