According to Osho, self-remembering is a medicinal meditation that shifts you from the false, socially manufactured ego back to your original center. By bringing awareness to yourself, it undoes mechanical conditioning, heals the split between conscious and unconscious, restores authenticity and spontaneity, and makes real freedom and bliss possible. The mind becomes grounded, non-peripheral, and capable of choiceless, living intelligence instead of frustrated, programmed reactions.
Remembering yourself brings you back to your true self beneath habits, so you act naturally and feel peaceful.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
"in which way can the practice of self-remembering transform the human mind?"
You can know many things without knowing anything. You can know much about love without knowing love. Then it is an accumulation. If you know love, then it is growth. You can know much about love with the false center; you can love only with the real center. Real centers can mature. The false can only get bigger and bigger without any growth, without any maturity. The false is just a cancerous growth, an accumulation, burdening you like a disease. But you can do one thing: you can change your focus totally. From the false, you can move your eyes to the real. This is what is meant by self-remembering: whatsoever you are doing, remember yourself -- that you are. Don't forget it. The very remembering will give an authentic reality to whatsoever you are doing. If you are loving, first remember that you are; otherwise you will be loving…
We have two words which are very different but which appear very similar. One is self-consciouses, the other is self-awareness. The meaning is exactly the same as far as language is concerned, but existentially there is a great difference. Self-consciousness is a disease. The emphasis is on the self. You become self-conscious only when you are nervous, afraid. If you suddenly have to go for an interview you become self-conscious, or if you are suddenly asked to deliver a lecture standing on a podium you become self-conscious. Facing so many people who are all focussing on you creates great trembling inside. It is said that the mind starts functioning the moment the child is born till one day you stand on a podium to speak, then it stops. Then suddenly you don't know what is what. Suddenly all thoughts disappear. Those are the only moments you know of no-thought.
[And to remind the next sannyasin of that promise Osho gave him the name Akash -- sky!] Mind is a very small thing, it is like a prison cell. And everybody is imprisoned in his own mind: in his prejudices, creeds, dogmas, religions, philosophies -- political and spiritual. Everybody is living in a very small dark cell. The cell is made of conditionings. Meditation means unconditioning the mind and never allowing it to be reconditioned. Otherwise it is very easy to move from one dark cell to another dark cell. A Hindu can become a Christian; that is very easy, there is no conversion. Instead of worshipping Krishna he starts worshipping Christ. In fact linguists say that the word 'Christ' comes from the word 'Krishna'; they are not different words, their root is the same. So you have changed from one cell to another. A Christian can become a Hindu.
Aum tasya nishchintanam dhyanam aum meditation is the constant contemplation of that.
First, the Upanishads know that human consciousness has five steps. We know the three gross ones -- the waking, the dreaming and the sleep. These are three gross -- A-U-M. The Upanishads call the fourth turiya. They have not named it because it is not gross. The fourth is that in which one becomes aware of deep sleep also. If you have been deep in sleep, in a deep dreamless sleep, if in the morning you can say, "I have been in a deep, deep sleep," then someone in you has been aware and remembers somehow that there has been a very deep, dreamless sleep -- but a witness was there. That witness is known as the fourth. But the Upanishads say that even the fourth is not the ultimate, because to be a witness is still to be separate. So when the witness also dissolves, if only the Existence…
Each thing is perceived through knowing. The self shines in space through knowing. Perceive one being as knower and known.
BELOVED, AT THIS MOMENT LET, MIND, KNOWING, BREATH, FORM, These techniques are to change knowledge into experience. These techniques are to change acquaintance into understanding. That which belongs to a Buddha or to a Krishna or to a Christ, through these techniques can belong to you -- that can become your own. And unless it becomes your own, no truth is true. It may be a grand lie, a beautiful lie, but no truth is true unless it becomes your experience -- individually, authentically your own. Three things. First: always remember that your house is on fire. Second: don't listen to the Devil. He will constantly say to you that there is no hurry. And thirdly: remember, acquaintance is not understanding. Whatsoever I am saying here will make you acquainted. It is needed, but it is not enough. It starts you on a journey, but it is not the end.…