According to Osho, resolve is a positive, creative awakening of inner strength that calmly says 'Enough' and the desire ends; repression is a negative struggle that pushes urges down while secretly feeding them through fear, fantasy, and social concern. Resolve makes you the master; repression keeps you entangled. Cultivate resolve by practicing neutral challenges (e.g., enduring cold), awakening a new force rather than wrestling old impulses.
Resolve is turning on inner strength to stop a craving; repression is trying to hold it down while still thinking about it, which makes it stronger.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, in the previous verse you spoke about resolve. What is the difference between resolve and repression of the senses? We want to understand this.
It is necessary to understand the word deva. Much confusion has arisen from it. Deva is a technical term. In this world, when people die, ordinary people find a womb quickly; a body becomes available immediately. But for a very exceptional, auspicious soul, a suitable womb is not immediately available; it must wait. For a very evil soul too, a womb is not readily available; it also must wait. For ordinary souls the womb becomes available at once—hence an ordinary man dies here and is born there; there is little gap between death and new birth—sometimes moments, sometimes not even that. Wombs are available round the clock; the soul immediately enters. But a superior soul waits for a worthy womb. Such superior souls are called devas. Inferior souls also wait; they are called pretas—ghosts. Those who died doing much evil—such as a Hitler, on whose head lies the murder of…
Osho, a friend has asked: in the practice of resolve (sankalpa), doesn’t a little repression slip in? In the practice of resolve, doesn’t a touch of bodily mortification (kaya-klesh) come in?
Two things need to be understood here. First: if a resolve is taken in order to suppress a tendency, that is a different matter. For example, a person has a habit of overeating. If, to get rid of this habit, he takes a vow of fasting, then there will be repression. But if there is no habit of overeating, nor any idea of fighting overeating, and he takes a vow to fast, then it is simply a resolve; there is no repression in it. In this meditation camp the resolve I have spoken of is not to suppress any tendency, but to expand resolve itself. Resolve can be used to suppress a tendency—it can be, it is, it has been. But that is the negative form of resolve. I go out of this room: two possibilities are there. I go out because being outside feels joyous, or I go out…
With pleasure, the event of diminishing begins; with bliss, the event of growth begins. And as pleasure diminishes, pain increases. Therefore behind every pleasure stands the dark shadow of pain; and behind bliss there is a world ever more luminous—no shadow of sorrow behind bliss. Bliss goes on deepening—because the gathering increases daily, and the possibility of infinite gathering is there. Second: resolve and struggle. It is useful to understand a little what resolve means, and how energy can go up through resolve. Let me give two or four examples so it may come to your mind. Just yesterday a friend was asking me, ‘Muslims keep fasts, Jains and Hindus fast, Christians fast—what is the relation? What will come from staying hungry?’ From staying hungry, nothing ever happens. From hunger nothing can happen. But these people are not mad.
What is repression?
But repression makes you false. It is not by repression that anger, sex, greed are destroyed, no. They are there -- just the labels are changed. They go into the unconscious, they start working from there: they go underground. And, of course, when they are underground, they are more powerful. The whole psychoanalytic movement tries to bring what is underground to the surface. Once is becomes conscious, you can be freed of it. A Frenchman was staying in England, and a friend asked him how he was getting on. He said he was doing very well, except for one thing. 'When I go to a party, the hostess, she does not tell me where is the 'pissoir"...' 'Ah, Georges, you mean she does not tell you where the toilet is? That's just our English prudery. Actually, she will say "Do you want to wash your hands?" and that means the…
A second friend has asked: Osho, in the practice of awakening, of awareness, fear arises, and there is a constant worry that the routine of life may fall into disorder. It also seems that when anger, sex, etc., arise, if one acts on them, they are finished in five to seven minutes—one feels free of them. If you don’t act, their after-echo, their waves, keep resounding within for days. Then it feels as if it would have been better to have done it and been done with it. So what should one do? Is such awakening not repression?
Two things. First, if through “awakening” your anger—which would otherwise be over in five minutes—goes on for two days, understand it is not awakening; it is repression. Repression makes things spread. It creates even more disturbance than indulgence. If sexual desire arises and is over in a moment, but with your so-called awakening it drags on for days, grows dense, and becomes a burden on the mind, know that it is not awakening, it is repression. Many of us don’t rightly understand the difference between awakening and repression. Understand it. Repression means: what has arisen inside, you press it down inside; you don’t allow it to come out. Indulgence means: you let it out on someone. Get the difference clear. Repression means: you force it down upon yourself; indulgence means: you unload it onto the other. Awakening is a third thing—letting it out into the void: neither pressing it down…