According to Osho, there’s no need for a ‘dry line theory’ as speculation: it’s an observable fact that every act leaves a residue of tendency. Without positing a controller, yesterday’s anger or love conditions today’s likelihoods, forming a ‘type.’ This continuity of proclivity preserves order and explains differing reactions, even when particular events and their pains are gone.
What you do again and again becomes your habit, so you’ll react that way tomorrow even without a boss inside you.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, you said there is no need for a controller—as you said about Mahavira—then what is the need for this “dry line theory”?
There is no need for a theory; this is a fact. For example, suppose I was angry all day today: whenever I got angry, I suffered. I was abused, there were quarrels, there was turmoil, I became disturbed. Then I went to sleep at night. You did not get angry all day; you met people with love, remained joyful; you also went to sleep. In the morning we both wake up from the same room. I don’t find my slippers by my bed; you don’t find yours either. Your likelihood of flaring up at once is very small; mine is very great. The dry line of yesterday is with me. My “type” has formed, hasn’t it! The person who has been angry all day will say, “Where are my slippers?” For him the commotion starts again right from the morning. You understand what I mean, don’t you? Those karmas and…
Osho, can we accept this story as a doctrine and move ahead...?
No one ever moves ahead by accepting anything as a doctrine. To accept something as a doctrine means you have already rejected it; you have not understood. You will have to inquire. You must search for the element of this story in your own life. Only if you search will the siddhant be revealed to you. Siddhant is a very unusual word. It means that which has been proven, a consummation. There is no exact equivalent for it in English or other languages. Siddhant does not mean principle. Siddhant means that which you have proved in your own life. What has become your experience—only that is a siddhant. Without your experience, no “principle” is a siddhant at all. It is talk, hypothesis, theory, scripture—but not siddhant. You have to search in life. Search from any corner; you will arrive quickly. When anger arises, the mind at once slips into a…
Osho, when we are reborn, where is the accounting kept? What remains?
We are all bundles of habits. If you want to change these habits, resolve is needed. And the beginning of resolve is this: that it dawns on you that they can be changed. If you think they cannot be changed, your resolve will die completely. A German Jew, Frankl, during the last world war was imprisoned in a great camp. He has written—he has written very astonishing things—in his memoirs. Because he is a psychologist, he kept observing what was happening. December was approaching; the festival days were near. All the prisoners hoped that at least around Christmas there would be release; that around Christmas Hitler would show mercy and people would be freed. Frankl writes: until Christmas, however many tortures the prisoners were given, no one died. People remained ill, but there was a hope—Christmas is approaching. With that hope, there was strength in their life-breath. He writes: the…
If you make some discipline, from where are you going to make it? You will make it out of your past experiences; there is no other way. The discipline will come from the past, it will be the quintessence of all your past experience, and then it will dominate the future which you have not known yet. So that which is no more goes on dominating that which is going to be. This is the human slavery, the mind of slavery. One has to learn how to live in chaos, how to live without discipline, how to live without order... and there is an order! That comes each moment, it arises out of the present, it does not come from the past. There is a discipline but that discipline is not managed by you; it is a response, a spontaneous response to the reality.
Why bring these words in -- karmic patterns, karma, past? There is no need. That's again an effort of the mind to explain things which are not explainable, which don't come within any explanation. For example, karmic.... You don't know what you are talking about -- what karmas? But in life you may find many things that you cannot explain. For example, you see a woman for the first time and you feel suddenly in love. Now the problem arises: where does this love come from? The mind raises a question because it is constantly trying to convert the unknown into the known; the unexplainable has to be reduced to some explanation. The mystery has to be dissolved and analysed, dissected. Maybe in dissection you kill it, but still the mind feels satisfied.