Self-deception is when one part of your mind hides truth from another, and only your inner watcher can stop the hiding.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved master, sigmund freud has explained self-deception by postulating separate parts of the psyche, each part autonomous and capable of pursuing different goals, and each part unknown to the other because they function according to different principles: one according to rationality, and one non-verbal. I also feel this inner schism. Is something like this responsible for my unawareness?
Sigmund Freud is as unaware as you are. And one should ask first if the mind has two separate divisions which know nothing of each other: one functions verbally, linguistically, rationally; one non-verbally, non-linguistically, non-logically. The first thing to remember to ask Sigmund Freud is, how does he come to know? Who is this third one who knows that there are two divisions? There must be a third one, a witness, because there is no connection between the two. The two are not in communication, they function separately. Then how does Sigmund Freud come to know that there are two separate divisions of the mind? He does not know anything of awareness -- he never mentions it. He knows nothing of witnessing -- he never mentions it. Unknowingly, he is using awareness. He is not aware that he is aware of a division, because a third principle is absolutely needed…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, ONCE YOU DESCRIBED YOUR WORK AS A SEARCH FOR THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE BUDDHAS. YOU EXPLAINED THAT FREUD ESTABLISHED ONLY A PSYCHOLOGY OF PATHOLOGY. THEN CAME MASLOV, JANOV, ASSAGIOLI, PERLS AND THE PEOPLE WHO ELABORATED ON THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HEALTH. YOU ADDED THAT YOUR WORK WAS GOING FURTHER -- TRYING TO ESTABLISH A PSYCHOLOGY OF THE AWAKENED ONE, A PSYCHOLOGY OF THE BUDDHAS. YOU SAID THAT YOU WERE STUDYING US IN ORDER TO FIND OUT WHICH ARE THE DIFFICULTIES THAT A SEEKER FINDS ON THE PATH TOWARDS THE REALIZATION OF THE SELF, TOWARDS HIS OWN AWAKENING. NOW, YOU'VE BEEN STUDYING US FOR FIFTEEN YEARS, AND I WOULD LIKE YOU TO GIVE US SOME HINTS ON WHAT YOU FIND IN YOUR LIVING EXPERIMENT. The first thing: all the psychologies are of the mind. The psychology of the Buddhas will be of the no-mind.
How to differentiate between the dictates of the unconscious mind and that of the inner guide? How can one recognize that the inner guide has come into function?
The first thing: because of Freud, much misunderstanding has arisen around the word "unconscious". Freud completely misunderstood it, misinterpreted it. And he has become the very basis of modern knowledge about mind. To Freud, unconscious meant simply the repressed conscious, the suppressed part of the conscious. So all that is evil and bad, immoral, has been suppressed. Because the society cannot allow it, it has to be suppressed within. For Freud, that repressed part is the unconscious -- but not for mystics. Freud is not a mystic; he has not entered his own unconscious. He has been simply observing cases of patients: ill people, abnormal people, mad, insane, pathological. He has been studying the pathological mind, and through the study of the pathological mind -- and that, too, from without -- he concluded that just underneath the conscious there is an unconscious mind. That unconscious mind carries all that has…
Is it possible to deceive a master?
YES, IF THE MASTER WILLS SO. Sometimes the Master wants to be deceived. If it is for your growth, he is ready to do anything -- even to be deceived. If that is the only way to help your cheating characteristic to surface, he will allow himself to be deceived by you. Otherwise not. How can you deceive a Master? He knows you -- as you your-self don't know yourself. He knows the secret most desire of your heart. It may not be conscious even to you. He knows the subtle ways of your ego. And you CANNOT deceive. You can try, but from one point or another, from one side or another, they will be revealed. You will say one thing from your mouth: your eyes will say something else. And the Master is not very much concerned with what you say -- he tries to read you through…
Shibli was asked: `who guided you in the path?' shibli said: `a dog. One day I saw him, almost dead with thirst, standing by the water's edge. Every time he looked at his reflection in the water he was frightened and withdrew, because he thought it was another dog. `finally, such was his necessity, he cast away fear and leapt into the water; at which the reflection disappeared. `the dog found that the obstacle, which was himself, the barrier between him and what he sought, melted away. `in this same way, my own obstacle vanished when I knew that it was what I took to be my own self. And my way
because when you jump into the water, the mirrorlike river is no more mirrorlike. The reflection disappeared. The dog was no more there. And Shibli must have been watching, sitting by the bank, looking at this dog -- his fear, his continuous effort to go and then withdrawing again and again and again. He must have watched very keenly for what was going to happen. And then the dog jumped. The reflection disappeared. `THE DOG FOUND THAT THE OBSTACLE...' was not outside, it was he himself. The dog was not there in the water. The dog in the water was not preventing him, as he was thinking before. It was he himself `... WHICH WAS HIMSELF, THE BARRIER BETWEEN HIM AND WHAT HE SOUGHT, MELTED AWAY.' He was himself the barrier between his thirst and the water, his hunger and the satiety, his discontent and the contentment, his search and…