INNER BEING IS NEAR FROM THE HEART, BUT THE WAY OF THE HEART IS DANGEROUS:

As far as I am concerned, the way to your innermost being is closer from the heart than from the mind. Mind is a shortcut if you are going outward, and heart is a very long way. If you are going inward, the whole thing changes into its opposite – heart is the shortcut to being, and mind is the longest way you can think of.

That's why I am all for love, because from love it is very easy to take you to meditation, to take you to the eternity of your life, to take you to your godliness; it is very difficult from the head. First the man has to come to the heart, and then only he can move towards the being.

My emphasis on love has a basic spiritual reason. From the heart the woman can immediately move, and the man can move towards the heart without any difficulty. He has just been wrongly trained; it is only a conditioning. He has been told to be hard, to be strong, to be manly, and all this is nonsense. No man cries and lets his sadness or his joy flow through the tears because he has been told since he was a child that tears are for women, it is girlish. Men never cry and weep.

Yes, women have more love, but they should also be made aware of the other side of the coin. Man has logic. The other side can be illogical. It is not dangerous, it is just a mistake; it can be corrected. That's why I said the way of the heart is beautiful but dangerous.

The other side of love is hate; the other side of love is jealousy. So if a woman gets caught into hate and jealousy, all the beauty of love dies and she is left only with poisons in her hands. She will poison herself and she will poison everybody who is around.

To be loving one has to be more alert because you can fall into the ditch of hate which is just very close by. Every peak of love is very close; the dark valley of hate is surrounding the peak from everywhere – you can slip very easily.

Perhaps that is the reason many women decide not to love. Perhaps that is the reason man has decided to live in the head and forget all about the heart... because it is so sensitive, it feels hurt very easily, its moods change just like the climate changing.

The woman has to drop jealousy, she has to drop hatred.
The man has to drop logic and be a little more loving.

Logic can be used; it is utilitarian. In scientific work it is useful, but not in human relationships. Man has to be careful that logic does not become his only way, that it remains just an instrument he uses and puts aside. The woman has to be aware that she does not fall into hatred, into jealousy, into anger, because they will destroy her most precious treasure of love. And both have to move deeper in love; the deeper they move in love, the closer they will reach to the being.

Being is not very far away; it is the deepest part of love, a love which is absolutely pure, unconditional. A love which is absolutely alert, aware, conscious, immediately turns into a tremendous revolution; it opens the doors of the innermost shrine of being.

(Socrates poisoned again #21)