According to Osho, becoming habitual turns you into a mechanical pattern—your actions run on autopilot, awareness shrinks, sensitivity dulls, and the freshness of life disappears. Habit substitutes aliveness with routine; love becomes duty, intelligence becomes repetition, and growth stops. You miss the present moment, because the past keeps replaying itself, making you more closed, bored, and unconscious.
Habits make you act like a sleepy robot, so you stop feeling life’s newness right now.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHY DO I ALLOW HABIT TO DOMINATE CONSCIOUSNESS? Almost everybody does it, unless one becomes enlightened. The habit is the easier way to do a thing. The whole mechanism of a habit is that you need not be conscious about it. It has become a mechanical part of you, a part of your robot mind: it does things by itself. You can go on thinking other things, dreaming other dreams, and the habit takes every action to its end -- with more perfection because a habit is mechanical, and machines don't commit mistakes. So everybody is dominated by habit. And it is one of the most important things, to get out of this domination. It is moving from mechanicalness to consciousness. In the beginning it is very arduous.
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…
Osho, if the movement of life is circular—like day and night, like months and seasons—does it mean we, too, keep merely repeating ourselves again and again?
Strive! Buddha’s last words at the moment of farewell were: Ananda, be ceaselessly engaged in effort! Do not be negligent even for an instant! Do not let even a trace of sloth settle within! For a little sloth, and much is lost. Keep toiling until you awaken; until then, do not grant yourself any rest. Tireless effort! You will have to strike again and again; only then will this darkness break—because you have been maintaining this darkness for so long. Your state has become rock-like, inert. The crust has grown very strong. The soul is hidden within; the spring is within; but the doors are closed. By striking, the doors will break. By striking continuously, the doors will break. Even if the blows are gentle, they must be unbroken. Water falls—gentle blows—and rocks are split. Let the stream of your remembrance fall upon the mechanical rocks within you. If not…
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?
I am not stealing; I’ve not taken a penny; I am bound to my vow; but I never said I will not practice, nor should you expect it. People suffer a little—I know—but this is my life-routine! Should I look at their discomfort or my own? If I cannot sleep at night, and must walk all day, I will die and never return home; their murder will be on your head! Eknath found the argument reasonable. A thief is, after all, a thief. Habits do not drop easily. Habits find new ways, new channels of expression. ‘The shopkeeper never drops his ways; he keeps pinching the scale. He keeps pinching the scale—for he has never known the secret of the Whole.’ Paltu’s words are simple, but filled with nectar. He says: he weighs short because he has never tasted the joy of the Whole.