What is the difference between the state of unconsciousness and the state of awareness?

Osho, before discussing the process of entering a conscious death, I would like to ask: what is the difference between stupor and awakening? What do we call the state of unconsciousness? In other words, in wakefulness and in unconsciousness, what is the state of the jivatma’s consciousness?

Religion is a search for attention; so, in their own way, are gambling, battle, hunting. The man who enters the forest to hunt a lion is also seeking attention; so is the yogi in a cave striving at the ajna chakra. The search may be noble or ignoble, desirable or undesirable, successful or futile—but the underlying hunger is one. Attention means: the knowing power within me becomes fully manifest—no part left potential or dormant. Whatever capacity to know I carry turns from potential into actual. In the moment a person is fully awake, in that very moment he fully is. Awakening and being happen together. Think of a seed: the tree is hidden in the seed, but only potentially. The seed can die without becoming a tree; the tree is not a necessity, only a possibility. When the tree manifests, it is the seed in its expressed form. Sleep is…

Before discussing the process of entering death consciously, I would like to ask you: what is the difference between the state of unconsciousness and the state of awareness? What state of mind is called the unconscious state? In other words, what is the individual soul's consciousness like in its conscious and unconscious states?

The mind is unable to find the answer to any question. In fact, it raises a number of questions from each answer it finds. No matter how significant the answer is, the mind will immediately raise dozens of questions -- but it can never find an answer to anything. There is a reason for this: the answer lies in the wholeness. But the mind is helpless. It can't function without making divisions. For example, I am sitting here talking to you. You are listening to me and you are also looking at me. The one you are looking at and the one you are listening to are not two different individuals. However, as far as you are concerned, you are looking with your eyes and hearing with your ears. You have divided me into two parts. If you were to sit close to me and smell my body, you would…

Osho, you have earlier said, “Live moment to moment, live in the present.” Now you are saying, “Return to the past.” What should we do?

So it is with the mind—there are ruts. The past means endless grooves. However much you understand, your intellect agrees, you make decisions, you resolve—at the moment of resolve you feel something is going to change. But not even an hour passes before your decision breaks. Then only self-condemnation is produced, nothing else. Your saints, your fakirs, your priests and pundits—most of the time they only succeed in producing self-condemnation in you, nothing else. Their words are logically correct. You cannot even say they are wrong; you have to admit they are right. In that admission you take a decision. But against what are you deciding? Inside are grooves carved since who knows when, deep tracks. Walking in them has become a habit. It is easy to walk in them. They will pull you again and again. The meaning of returning into the past is: these grooves must be erased.…

Osho, I have had lots of exhilarating moments of what seemed to me to be real consciousness, but then as soon as I have felt conscious I begin to feel unconscious, and it seems more and more to me that being conscious is a state one has to just experience and not recognize. Have you anything to say on this?

THE STATE of real awareness is not exhilarating. It has no excitement in it, it is absolutely peaceful. It is neither hot nor cold. You live in a world of coldness, dullness, hence your mind is constantly seeking for something exciting, exhilarating, elevating. You live always in dark valleys so you hanker for peaks, sunlit peaks. That is your desire, but that is not the nature of consciousness itself. Consciousness is exactly in the middle. It is neither low nor high, it is neither a valley nor a peak, it is neither cold nor hot. Buddha has called it MAJJHIM NIKAYA -- the middle way. It is exactly in the middle, and it is in the middle that transcendence happens. It is neither positive nor negative, neither good nor bad, NETI NETI, neither this nor that. You have come to such a delicate point where everything is balanced. You are…

Question: BELOVED MASTER, WHAT IS UNCONSCIOUSNESS? Consciousness means living with a witness; unconsciousness means living without a witness. When you are walking on the road, you can walk consciously -- that's what Buddha says one should do -- you are alert, deep down you are aware that you are walking; you are conscious of each movement. You are conscious of the birds singing in the trees, the early morning sun coming through the trees, the rays touching you, the warmth, the fresh air, the fragrance of newly opening flowers. A dog starts barking, a train passes by, you are breathing... you are watching everything. You are not excluding anything out of your alertness; you are taking everything in. The breath goes in, the breath goes out... you are watching everything that is happening. It is not concentration, because in concentration you focus on one thing and you forget everything else.