Awareness: The Key to Living in Balance (Osho Insights for a New Way of Living)

by Osho

Action goes in one direction, thinking goes in another, feeling is somewhere else.

If people are taking marijuana, LSD, and more refined drugs, naturally they are not going to be religious because religion is a very primitive drug. Hence all the religions are against drugs.

And the fourth is the ultimate awareness that makes one awakened. One becomes aware of one’s awareness—that is the fourth. That makes one a buddha, the awakened one.

The body knows pleasure, the mind knows happiness, the heart knows joy, the fourth knows bliss. Bliss is the goal, and awareness is the path toward it.

definition, there is no other criterion. You cannot fall in love if you are aware; then falling in love is a sin. You can love, but it will not be like a fall, it will be like a rise. Why do we use the term falling in love? It is a falling; you are falling, you are not rising. When you are aware, falling is not possible—not even in love. It is not possible; it is simply not possible. With awareness, it is impossible; you rise in love.

Falling in love is a dream state. That’s why people who are in love, you can see it from their eyes: as if they are more asleep than others, intoxicated, dreaming. You can see from their eyes because their eyes have a sleepiness. People who rise in love are totally different. You can see they are no longer in a dream, they are facing the reality and they are growing through it.

Falling in love you remain a child; rising in love you mature. And by and by love becomes not a relationship, it becomes a state of your being. Then it is not that you love this and you don’t love that, no—you are simply love. Whosoever comes near you, you share with them. Whatsoever is happening, you give your love to it. You touch a rock and you touch as if you are touching your beloved’s body. You look at the tree and you look as if you are looking at your belo...

Love is beautiful when you rise through it, and love becomes dirty and ugly when you fall through it. And sooner or later you will find that it proves poisonous, it becomes a bondage. You have been caught in it, your freedom has been crushed. Your wings have been cut; now you are free no more. Falling in love you become a possession: you possess and you allow somebody to possess you. Y...

Look at a husband and a wife: they both have become like things, they are persons no more. Both are trying to possess each other. Only things can be possessed, persons never. How can you possess a person? How can you dominate a person? How can you convert a person into a possession? Impossible! But the husband is trying to possess the wife; the wife is trying the same. Then ...

you want to possess someone, do good. They are not even conscious that they have learned this trick.

Your churches, your temples, your mosques, they have all committed sins toward you because they all became possessors, they all became dominations.

Jesus tries to give freedom, wings to you. Then what happens, how does this church come in? It happens because Jesus lives on a totally different plane of being, the plane of awareness; and those who listen to him, those who follow him, they live on the plane of sleep.

Priests have done so well because they converted freedom into imprisonments, they converted truth into dogmas—they converted everything from the plane of awareness to the plane of sleep.

Don’t become guilty. Understand the sin, but don’t become guilty—and this is very, very delicate. If you become guilty, you have missed the whole thing. Now, in a new way the old pattern starts.

This world that you see around you is not the real world. Not that it doesn’t exist—it exists—but you are seeing it through a screen of sleep. An unconsciousness is in between; you look at it, you interpret it in your own way; you are just like a drunkard.

You are taking the whole existence as a screen, and then you project your own mind on it. You see things that are not there, and you don’t see things that are there. And the mind has explanations for everything. If you raise a doubt, the mind explains. It creates theories, philosophies, systems, just to feel comfortable that nothing is wrong.

Remember, this is the difference between philosophy and religiousness: philosophy is a tranquilizer, religiousness is a shock; philosophy helps you to sleep well, religiousness brings you out of sleep.

And all philosophies are techniques to help you to sleep well; they give you dreams, Utopias.

In sleep you are not aware of what goes on around you, but in your waking hours are you aware of what goes on around you?

Dreams are private. Whatsoever is private, remember, it must belong to the world of dreams. Truth is an open sky; it is for all, it is one.

Whatsoever you are doing, go on doing one thing inside continuously: be aware of yourself doing it.

If two thousand persons fall asleep, they will have two thousand dreams. But if you come to me and ask how to get rid of this dream, the medicine will remain the same: wake up! It is not going to be different; the prescription is going to be the same.

It is a fundamental law in life. Many people try avoiding many things and they fall into those same things.

“Be like a lotus, that’s all. Remain untouched and you are in control. Remain untouched and you are the master.”

So from one standpoint, the mind is like waves—a disturbance. When the ocean is calm and quiet, undisturbed, the waves are not there. When the ocean is disturbed in a tide or strong wind, when tremendous waves arise and the whole surface is just a chaos, the mind from one standpoint exists.

Mulla Nasruddin came once to me, and he is a drunkard. His hands shake—eating, drinking tea, everything falls on his clothes, so all his clothes were stained with tea and food and this and that. So I told Nasruddin, “Why don’t you go to the chemist and find something? There are solutions and these stains can be washed.” He went. After seven days he came back; his clothes were in a worse condition, worse than before. I asked, “What happened? Didn’t you go to the chemist?” He said, “I went. And that chemical solution is wonderful—it works. All the stains of tea and food are gone. Now I need another solution, because that solution has left its own stains.”

Religious people supply you with soaps and chemical solutions, instructions on how to wash away the dirt, but then those solutions leave their own stains. That’s why an immoral person can become moral but remains dirty—now in moral way, but he remains dirty. Sometimes the situation is even worse than before.

Somebody comes and praises you and puffs up your ego, and you feel so great. And then somebody comes and punctures you, and you are simply flat on the ground. You are not your own master. Anybody can insult you and make you sad, angry, irritated, annoyed, violent, mad. And anybody can praise you and make you feel at the heights, can make you feel that you are the greatest, that Alexander the Great was nothing compared to you. And you act according to others’ manipulations. This is not real action.

But don’t misunderstand—the whole of India, for example, has been misunderstanding people like Buddha; hence the whole country has become inactive. Thinking that all the great masters say, “Sit silently,” the country became lazy, lousy. The country lost energy, vitality, life. It became utterly dull, unintelligent, because intelligence becomes sharpened only when you act.

Your mind functions like a camera, it goes on collecting pictures—it is an album. And then out of those pictures you go on reacting. Hence, you are never true to life,

With the mind, that is the problem—and the better mind you have, the more will be the problem. Lesser minds don’t come across that problem so much. It is the mind of the genius that is stuck between two polarities and cannot choose. And then he feels in a limbo.

became a disciple to this man. He said, “Teach

We must realize that whatever the situation is, whatever the case is with you, you are responsible and no one else. If you are responsible, then something is possible. If someone else is responsible, then nothing is possible.

This is a basic conflict between the religious mind and the irreligious mind. The irreligious mind always thinks that something else is responsible—change the society, change the circumstances, change economic conditions, change the political situation, change something, and everything will be okay. We have changed everything so many times, and nothing is okay. The religious mind says that whatsoever the situation, if this is your mind, then you will be in hell, you will be in misery You won’t be able to attain silence.

Consciousness is the real thing, character the false entity. Character is needed by those who don’t have consciousness.

Character is needed because people are unconscious. Character is just a lubricant; it helps you to run your life in a smooth way. George Gurdjieff used to say character is like a buffer. Buffers are used in railway trains; between two compartments there are buffers. If something happens, these buffers prevent the compartments from clashing with each other. Or it is like springs: cars have springs so you can move smoothly. The springs go on absorbing the shocks; they are called shock absorbers. That’s what character is: it is a shock absorber.

People are told to be humble. If you learn how to be humble, it is a shock absorber—by learning how to be humble you will be able to protect yourself against other people’s egos. They will not hurt you so much; you are a humble man. If you are egoistic, you are bound to be hurt again and again—the ego is very sensitive—so you cover up your ego with a blanket of humbleness. It helps, it gives you a kind of smoothness. But it does not transform you.

My work consists of transformation. This is an alchemical school; I want you to be transformed from unconsciousness into consciousness, from darkness into light. I cannot give you a character; I can only give you insight, awareness. I would like you to live moment to moment, not according to a set pattern given by me or given by the society, the church, the state. I would like you to live according to your own small light of awareness, according to your own consciousness.

Be responsive to each moment. Character means you have a certain ready-made answer for all the questions of life, so whenever a situation arises, you respond according to the set pattern. Because you respond according to the ready-made answer, it is not a true response, it is only a reaction. The man of character reacts, the man of consciousness responds: he takes the situation in, he reflects the reality as it is, and out of that reflection he acts. The man of character reacts, the man of consciousness acts. The man of character is mechanical; robotlike he functions. He has a computer in his mind, full of information; ask him anything and a ready-made answer rolls down from his computer.

You have been told a certain thing in your childhood; it has remained there. You have grown, life has changed, but that answer that was given by your parents or by your teachers or by your priests is still there. And if something happens, you will function according to the answer that was given to you fifty years before. And in fifty years so much water has gone down the Ganges; it is a totally different life.

How many rules can you make for people? It is stupid, meaningless. That’s how people are religious, and still they are not religious: they always find a way to get out of those rules of conduct and commandments. They can always find a way through the back door. And character can at the most give you only a skin-deep, pseudo mask—not even skin-deep: just scratch your saints a little bit and you will find the animal hidden behind. On the surface they look beautiful, but only on the surface.

And it is part of human nature that we go on looking to the outside. We watch everybody except ourselves; hence we know more about others than about ourselves. We know nothing about ourselves. We are not witnesses to our own functioning of the mind, we are not watchful inside.

You need a 180-degree turn—that’s what meditation is all about. You have to close your eyes and start watching. In the beginning you will find only darkness and nothing else. And many people become frightened and rush out, because outside there is light.

You need inner light, a light that has its source in your very being, a light that cannot be extinguished even by death, a light that is eternal. And you have it, the potential is there! You are born with it, but you are keeping it behind you; you never look at it.

And because for centuries, for many lives, you have looked outside, it has become a mechanical habit. Even when you are asleep, you are looking at dreams—dreams mean reflections of the outside. When you close your eyes, you again start daydreaming or thinking; that means again you become interested in others. This has become such a chronic habit that there are not even small intervals, small windows, into your own being from where you can have a glimpse of who you are.

The inner light is eternal; it has no beginning, no end.

I am not interested in telling you to drop your faults, to make yourself good, to improve your character—no, not at all. I am not interested in your character at all; I am interested only in your consciousness.

Become more alert, more conscious. Just go deeper and deeper into yourself till you find...

You are living on the periphery, and on the periphery there is always turmoil. The deeper you go, the deeper the silence that prevails. And in those experiences of silence, light, joy, your life starts moving into a differ...

So don’t be worried about the errors and the mistakes and the faults. Be concerned about one single thing, one single phenomenon. Put your total energy into one goal, and that is how to be more conscious, how to be more awakened. If you put your total energy in...