What is the unconscious mind and how does it contribute to human sickness?

Beloved Osho, what exactly is this unconscious mind which is also called the dark night of the soul? Is it something belonging to the physical monkey brain? Or is it something of the universal mind, which I am assuming is my own higher mind? Also, if it is not of the physical brain, then is this why it is a waste of time to attempt to end your suffering by putting a bullet through your brain?

"I said `by mistake' because the doors were open and everybody knows that there is nothing in that hut but me and my blanket. And I offered my blanket to him. He was a guest. He tried not to take it, I had almost to force him. And he is so mannerly that he said to me, `Thank you, sir' and he closed the door. This man is a very nice man, you should not harass him." Because that monk said, "You should not harass him," the thief was released. He could not believe it! Neither did he understand that night, nor could he understand the saint's statements in court in his favor. He followed the saint. The monk said, "Are you coming now?" He said, "Yes, I am coming now." He said, "You unnecessarily wasted two years. I was telling you to get into a partnership from the very…

Consciousness and unconsciousness are only one existence -- they are two ends of only one existence. Consciousness can become unconscious, unconsciousness becomes the base for the conscious. This is the third sutra of Yoga. It is essential to understand the sutras because it is on these sutras that the whole structure of all the practices of Yoga are based. The existence of the conscious and the unconscious is now accepted by science. Now science uses a new word: 'psychosomatic'. Previously, it was thought that diseases were of two kinds, physical and mental. One disease is mental and one is physical, because mind is separate and body is separate. Now medical science uses a new term -- psychosomatic or somatic-psychic. Now medical science says, no disease is purely mental, nor purely physical. Disease is psychosomatic. Both are the ends of the same.

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.…

Beloved Osho, can you talk more about the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious mind? It seems that the brain has the capacity to store an experience, say, in a memory bank. Now if that memory ends up in the unconscious, what happens? Is it that the conscious mind represses it and tabs it "censored" or does the unconscious do the censoring? But does the unconscious have any investment in repression? And if not, is it the conscious that is continuously providing the energy to keep this material censored? And if so, is there a key to the unconscious within the conscious? Is this

Mahavira and Buddha continually repeat, "Don't go on in a vicious circle. Just look into your past lives and see whether you have been doing this kind of thing always, for eternity. Do you have any mind or not? any intelligence or not?" Just being reminded that you have been after money for thousands of years and you have attained money in many lives and there was only frustration and nothing else; that you have been after power and you became powerful many times, but after reaching the last rung of the ladder you saw that there is nothing -- that you have been befooled by the society, that ambition is nonsense. You are not to be somebody. You are what you are. There is no question of climbing a ladder and you will be better. Because these experiences of past lives will change the whole character, it is better…

Considering the example of sensual instinct, kindly explain what are the practical ways to encounter the unconscious mind, and how can one know that one has become free from it?

This is how concentration works. So through concentration you can never encounter the unconscious. You can encounter the unconscious only with meditation -- and this is the difference between concentration and meditation. Meditation means your mind working not as a torch but like a flame: everything is enlightened around it -- everything. It is not narrowed down, the light is diffused. It is not moving in one direction -- it is moving in all directions simultaneously so the whole is enlightened. How to do it? I said Sufis use dance as an active meditation and then they can encounter the unconscious. Zen monks in Japan use absurd problems to encounter it. You face some problem which cannot be solved -- which cannot be solved at all! Howsoever you try, the problem is such that it cannot be solved. They call such problems "koans" -- absurd problems. For example, they will…