According to Osho, it is the unconscious—nine times stronger than the conscious and packed with ingrained habits—that keeps us clinging to worldly patterns even when we 'know' they breed misery. The conscious merely thinks; the unconscious does. Only disciplined practice—yoga, sustained awareness, transformative habits—lets conscious insight penetrate and recondition the unconscious, ending this split.
Your hidden automatic mind is stronger than your thinking mind, so you keep doing what hurts until you train that hidden part.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Would you please explain the working of that unknown force which keeps the human mind attached to wordly things and habits in spite of being fully aware that the ultimate result is nothing but misery?
The awareness is not total, the awareness is just intellectual. Logically you follow that "Whatsoever I am doing is leading me to misery," but this is not your existential experience. Just rationally you understand. If you were reason alone then there would have been no problem, but you are "unreason" also. If you had only conscious mind then it was okay. You have unconscious mind also. Conscious mind knows that you are going into misery every day by your own efforts; you are creating your own hell. But the unconscious is not aware, and the unconscious is nine times more than your conscious mind. And that unconscious goes on persisting in its own habits. You decide not to be angry again because anger is nothing but poisoning your own system. It gives you misery. But next time, when someone insults you, the unconscious will put aside your conscious reasoning, will…
And you say that you don't know the meaning of it. That's one of the essential qualities of a sannyasin: to function from the state of not-knowing. If you don't know something, simply say "I don't know." If you know, if you really know, only the say "I know." Much of the misery of the world can disappear if people become a little more alert. People go on saying things which they don't know, they go on pretending, as if they know. Not only do they deceive others, they deceive themselves too. People talk about God and heaven and hell and the theory of karma and rebirth; they go on talking about these things as if they know. They go on believing in their own false knowledge and because of this false knowledge they will never be able to attain to true knowledge.
Chidaaptih pushpam what are the flowers for the worship? -- to be filled with consciousness.
To be a Buddha is not only blissful. It is blissful as far as Buddha himself is concerned. He comes to a peak experience of bliss. But at the same time he has to pay very dearly, because he becomes so sensitive that everything around him gives him pain. He suffers because of others' suffering. A beggar meets you: you pass him unconsciously; there is no problem, it is very convenient. If you become conscious, then it is not so convenient. Then you are bound to come to realize that you have a hand in it, you are part of this ugly world. You are responsible for all that is, whether it is a Vietnam war or a Hindu-Mohammedan riot or poverty. Whatsoever is there, if you become conscious you become responsible. It is difficult now to escape. This is the cost to be paid. So never think that Buddha…
Osho, we find that our tendencies are stronger than our understanding. When watched with awareness, the waves of hatred, jealousy, anger—all these tendencies—seem to rise from the navel center. The witnessing and the rising of the wave happen together. Please tell us why these waves arise from the navel center. Is the unconscious related to the navel center? And is there a large accumulation of these tendencies in the unconscious, or are they produced moment to moment?
The stream of consciousness itself is not divided. The split into conscious and unconscious exists because of repression. First understand this well. A child is born with consciousness one and undivided. There is neither a conscious mind nor an unconscious mind—no such two parts. But soon the division starts, because we teach the child what is right and what is wrong; what is auspicious and what is inauspicious; what to do and what not to do. And all that we brand as “don’t,” “bad”—what will the child do with it? Calling something bad does not destroy it. We say anger is bad. The child hears and understands—but anger doesn’t vanish just because we label it bad, because anger is natural. The child has not learned anger; he is born with it, just as he is born with a body, with eyes and hands. And existence uses anger: anger is energy.…
11. Being bound together as cause-effect, the effects disappear with the disappearance of causes. 12. Past and future exist in the present, but they are not experienced in the present because they are on idfferent planes.
13. WHETHER MANIFEST OR UNMANIFEST, THE PAST, THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE ARE OF THE NATURE OF GUNAS: STABILITY, ACTION AND INERTIA. 14. THE ESSENCE OF ANY OBJECT CONSISTS IN THE UNIQUENESS OF THE PROPORTIONS OF THE THREE GUNAS. 15. THE SAME OBJECT IS SEEN IN DIFFERENT WAYS BY DIFFERENT MINDS. 16. AN OBJECT IS NOT DEPENDENT ON ONE MIND. 17. AN OBJECT IS KNOWN OR UNKNOWN DEPENDING ON WHETHER THE MIND IS COLORED BY IT OR NOT. BEING BOUND TOGETHER AS CAUSE-EFFECT, THE EFFECTS DISAPPEAR WITH THE DISAPPEARANCE OF CAUSES. But still, Patanjali is not saying the same things as Bishop Berkeley. Berkeley says that things are absolutely dependent on mind. He says that when you go out of your room everything in the room disappears. If there is nobody to see, how can things exist? And, in a way, it is difficult to disprove him because he says,…