According to Osho, habits themselves don't create inertia; only when they become your master do they deaden you. Treat habit as a tool, act consciously, and keep the inner authority with you. Even good habits are harmful if compulsive; when you remain the master, pointless routines drop naturally, and useful ones serve without binding you.
Habits are fine when you use them, but trouble starts when they start using you.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, yesterday you told the story of Saint Peter and the three women. Please tell us what happened after that?
Saint Maharaj! Do use a little of your own intelligence. No story is ever told in full, because some trust must also be placed in your imagination—that you, too, can think a bit. You could have figured out for yourself what would happen next. The matter was so clear. My friend, what else could happen! What had to happen is exactly what happened. Saint Peter had barely dealt with those three women when three goddesses arrived. One had a white mouth-cloth tied over her face—she was a Jain nun. The second was a beautiful French model, and the third a Rajneesh sannyasin. Saint Peter first pointed toward the part below the French girl’s waist and asked, “What did you use this for?” Preening, the beauty replied, “I used it to revel with my eight wedded husbands and about a hundred and fifty lovers. I also used it to earn money…
Osho, the samskaras of the previous life become habits in this one. The habits of this life will again become samskaras in the next. Then where is the end?
Yes, preserving yourself, you can play as many games as you like. When the Divine himself is at play, why should you be troubled? But God is the master; and when you too become master of your habits and samskaras, then in your small world you too become divine. Buddha called this “awareness”: do everything, but do it consciously. Even to lift a foot, lift it with awareness. Getting up, sitting down, lying down—with awareness. Do not do anything in a stupor. If you go on cultivating awareness, habits will still form and you will use them, but behind the habit a current of awareness will be flowing. The lamp of consciousness will be burning. That too will be taking shape, its intensity increasing, its light deepening. If in life there remain only habits and more habits, the soul is lost. Be there behind the habits as well—separate, distinct. And…
Question: BELOVED MASTER, OLD HABITS DIE HARD! Prem Harideva, it is true... but why? Why do old habits die hard? -- because you are nothing but your old habits. If they die, YOU will die. You don't have anything more, you don't have anything plus. You are just your old habits, old patterns. You are a mechanism, not yet a man; that's why old habits die hard. It is very rare that a man exists, very few and far between. A Buddha is a real man, authentic. A Zarathustra is a real man -- a man worth calling a man. The ordinary humanity is just robotlike: it lives unconsciously, it lives mechanically. And habits are all that you have. If you drop all your habits you will simply start evaporating; you will not find yourself at all. What are you?
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHY DO I ALLOW HABIT TO DOMINATE CONSCIOUSNESS? It is immensely important that you get rid of the bondage of the past. Simultaneously the future also disappears because it was only a projection of past memories -- and you are left only with the present. Consciousness is always of the present. And because you are not in the present, you have to delegate actions to your robot. And mind is a robot. People go on doing things, and doing perfectly well, and that makes them feel as if everything is going right. But every machine does it. It is better to commit a few errors, a few mistakes, but be conscious. Humanity begins when you are finished with habits.
Question: Second question: Osho, can lifelong habits be dropped easily? First, be sure what your ‘habit’ is. Ninety-nine out of a hundred are utterly harmless. Needlessly the sadhus and mahatmas make a fuss about them. Someone drinks tea and thinks he’s committing a great sin. What sin? You sip your tea—who is harmed? Tea is thoroughly vegetarian. No harm at all. A little nicotine—no sin in that either. It warms the body a bit, gives a little zest—nothing wrong; a bit of zest is good, it helps you engage in work. But no! In Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram, tea was sin—except for one person: Rajaji alone had the right to tea, being the in-law. Rules cannot apply to the in-law; one must keep in-lawly courtesy—so he had an exemption. For the rest, tea was sin. Once a young man was caught making tea in secret. A scandal in the ashram.