According to Osho, you shouldn’t develop a conscience at all; discard borrowed right–wrong rules implanted by society and grow consciousness—living, present-moment awareness and intelligence. Conscience is a pseudo substitute that breeds guilt, fear, and mechanical behavior. Consciousness meets each unique situation freshly, enabling true, creative responses. Nurture wakefulness rather than obedience; that is authentic growth.
Don’t follow a secondhand rulebook—wake up inside, notice what’s happening now, and let your own clear awareness choose.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, how can one develop a conscience -- something within that will guide one in one's everyday life towards what is necessary for one's development? To do what is required for the unfolding of one's inner life? It seems as if I am always torn and yet there does exist something within at times which I hope could be helped to grow and become a light for me. Carl one learn to intensify one's feelings and emotions in order to bring one closer to a place of real being?
It was difficult to discard Aristotle, very difficult -- a two thousand years' long love affair. But electrons have no obligation, they don't bother at all about Aristotle. They were saying "Get lost!" And finally the physicists had to agree with the electrons. And when they were asked again and again "How is it possible?" they said, "What can we do? It is not a question of possible or not possible -- it is happening! It is so! We understand that it is illogical, that it should not be so, but what can we do? We are helpless! The electrons don't believe in Aristotle." Aristotle has been discarded -- the two-thousand-year-old tradition of logic has become simply irrelevant. Another phenomenon happened after a few years: they came to know that when the electron moves from point A to B, in the middle it disappears. Moving from point A to B,…
That is the moralistic attitude, the puritan attitude, that the moral rules are always right. If something is wrong it is always you, so you have to fit with the moral rules. If you don't fit it creates guilt; if you try to fit, it creates discomfort. If you are stupid you try to fit, but then your whole life becomes a misery. If you are clever, cunning, then you become a hypocrite. You pretend 'Yes, everything is okay. I am fitting in perfectly -- the dress is beautiful, it is lovely!' But then you have to live a double life: one life in your drawing room, the other life, which is your real life, from the backdoor. And then there is a split; then you are constantly in a kind of inner struggle, an inner tension, and you can never be at ease.
There was once a woman who abandoned the religion in which she had been brought up. She left the ranks of the atheists too, and joined another faith. Then she became convinced of the truth of yet another. Each time she changed her beliefs, she imagined that she had gained something, but not quite enough. Each time she entered a new fold she was welcomed, and her recruitment was regarded as a good thing, and a sign of her sanity and enlightenment.
HER INWARD STATE, HOWEVER, WAS ONE OF CONFUSION. AT LENGTH, SHE HEARD OF A CERTAIN CELEBRATED TEACHER, IMAM JAFAR SADIK, AND SHE WENT TO SEE HIM. AFTER HE HAD LISTENED TO HER PROTESTATIONS AND IDEAS, HE SAID, 'RETURN TO YOUR HOME, I SHALL SEND YOU MY DECISION IN A MESSAGE.' SOON AFTERWARDS THE WOMAN FOUND A DISCIPLE OF THE SHEIK AT THE DOOR. IN HIS HAND WAS A PACKET FROM THE MASTER. SHE OPENED IT, AND SAW THAT IT CONTAINED A GLASS BOTTLE, HALF FULL WITH THREE LAYERS OF PACKED SAND -- BLACK, RED AND WHITE -- HELD DOWN BY A WAD OF COTTON. ON THE OUTSIDE WAS WRITTEN: 'REMOVE THE COTTON AND SHAKE THE BOTTLE TO SEE WHAT YOU ARE LIKE.' SHE TOOK THE WADDING OUT AND SHOOK THE SAND IN THE BOTTLE. THE DIFFERENT COLOURED GRAINS OF SAND MIXED TOGETHER, AND ALL THAT SHE WAS LEFT WITH WAS…
One can cultivate character, but then there is no dignity in it; it is arbitrary, artificial, imposed. It in fact creates a schizophrenic state in the person. It makes one split. One is something inside and just the opposite on the outside. It gives you only a beautiful facade, a mask, and a mask cannot have any dignity -- it is dead. It can give you respectability, it can give you much honour, because as far as your behaviour is concerned the society is in control. And the society always respects the people who allow themselves to be controlled and enslaved. The society never respects the rebellious person; it respects the popes and it kills Jesus. It is a very strange world. Christ is crucified and popes are enthroned -- and popes are nothing! They are just parrots. It kills the real and honours the phony.
Moses has said that something is right and something else is wrong and so has Manu and so has Mohammed, but it is not your heart. And the ultimate decision has to be yours. How can Manu, Moses or Mohammed decide for you? -- everything has changed. So much water has gone down the Ganges since Manu. Manu existed five thousand years ago and Hindus are still following his dictates; he has decided what is moral and what is immoral. No, this is sheer nonsense. Life has completely changed. If Manu comes back he will not be able to recognise anything he will be simply bewildered. He will only be able to understand his own book, MANUSMRATI, the book that he wrote five thousand years ago; everything else has changed. But he will certainly laugh at the foolishness of the Hindus -- that they are still following him.