What happens when I forget to be aware during my work?

Beloved Osho, you tell us to be aware of everything -- which means to be a witness to everything, every act. When I decide to be aware in work, I forget about awareness, and when I become aware that I was not aware. I feel guilty; I feel that I have made a mistake. Could you please explain?

Manish Bharti, it is one of the basic problems for anybody who is trying to be aware while at work -- because work demands that you should forget yourself completely. You should be involved in it so deeply... as if you are absent. Unless such total involvement is there, the work remains superficial. All that is great, created by man -- in painting, in poetry, in architecture, in sculpture -- in any dimension of life -- needs you to be totally involved. And if you are trying to be aware at the same time, your work will never be first rate, because you will not be in it. So awareness while you are working needs a tremendous training and discipline, and one has to start from very simple actions. For example, walking: you can walk, and you can be aware that you are walking -- each step can be full…

What if one becomes absorbed while doing work?

If you understand it rightly, being totally absorbed in an activity and being aware are two utterly different things. If you are completely absorbed in some work—utterly absorbed—you will become oblivious to the rest of the world. A man’s house has caught fire and he is running toward it; someone greets him on the way—he neither sees nor hears. In truth, he is absorbed in one thing: “My house is on fire,” and he is rushing there. His consciousness is absent everywhere else and present only there. Awareness is a totally different phenomenon. Awareness means the consciousness is equally present everywhere. The mind has not awakened at one center while falling asleep everywhere else. It is simply awake—whatever the center may be. We value absorption in life because our lack of absorption turns into clumsiness in action. For example, a man is doing some work but his mind is engaged…

Mahavira has called apramad—vigilance, awareness, continuous wakefulness—the basis of practice. A friend asks: how can we bring this awareness into our conduct while doing our tasks—in the office, in the shop, while working? If attention remains on awareness, how will the work get done? While engaged in work, what is the place of awareness, and can this itself be a sadhana?

Take attention also as delight. Do not make it a restlessness. Let it not become a burden on your head that “I must work attentively.” Do not load it with strain and effort; let it grow lightly, support it. Whenever the remembrance arises, do it consciously. If you forget, do not worry. When remembrance returns, begin again to do it consciously. If you decide, “Now I will do my work consciously,” you will not be able to do it today itself; it may take years. To keep awareness even for a moment is difficult. You will decide to walk consciously; you will not be able to take even two steps before awareness has gone elsewhere and the feet have started walking elsewhere. Do not be anxious about that; do not repent. Heedlessness is the habit of countless lives; there is no reason to be distressed. We ourselves have cultivated unawareness—whom…

A: Hm mm. To be meditation means an effort to be aware. To be aware of the whole process of life, but in the beginning one can chose some object like breathing. It is a very natural object to be aware: The ingoing and the outgoing of the breath. Be aware constantly: the breath has gone out, it has come in; and the rhythm and the process and the in and out going phenomena, be aware of it. The moment you will be aware, you feel a certain change, a certain chemical change within your mind. Because when you become aware of the breathing process, mind becomes silent. The silence is automatically created. Because your total mind is engaged in seeing, in witnessing the breathing. And the rhythmic circle of breath creates an inner music. That inner music too leads you to more and more silent and sweeter moments within.

Osho, why do I go on forgetting myself?

A little intelligence is needed. Otherwise rather than the so-called religious people becoming religious, they become simply guilt-ridden, they become repentant, they start feeling about themselves as if they are condemned, as if they are not the chosen ones; as if God has thrown them into the dark night and has forgotten them; as if it may have happened to a Buddha or a Kabir or a Krishna or a Zarathustra, but it is not going to happen to them. "They were special people; that's why it happened to them. They were already born enlightened; that's why it happened to them: it can't happen to me, I am an ordinary person." Just to avoid remembering, people have created all kinds of theories. Hindus say Krishna is an incarnation of God. Christians say Jesus is the only-begotten son of God -- mind you, the only-begotten. And all others are bastards? The…