It’s like a pile of old habits and dreams steering you, and the darkest time comes when that pile cracks so your real self can take the wheel.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
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…
Beloved Osho, when we sleep, the unconscious is experienced as dreams. During dreamless sleep, why does the unconscious stop expressing itself? It seems there must be a lot of repressed material that needs expression. Does dreaming, then, act like a safety valve, allowing just enough material to be expressed so that some steam is let off and the pressure cooker of the unconscious does not completely explode?
No, it is not like that. According to the Eastern psychology, there are four stages of mind; not just two, as it is according to the Western philosophy -- conscious mind, unconscious mind. In the context of the Western division between conscious and unconscious, your question is very relevant. But the truth is that mind has four states: the waking state, which is comparable to the conscious mind; the sleeping state with dreams, which is parallel to the unconscious mind; third, the dreamless sleep which the West has yet to find; and the fourth, the real waking state. The first is only the so-called waking state, and the fourth is real awakening. The second is sleep with dreams, but sleep with dreams is a disturbed state. In an eight-hour night, six hours you are dreaming and for only two hours are there no more dreams. Those two hours belong to…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, THE OTHER NIGHT YOU SPOKE OF THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL -- THAT STATE ONE PASSES THROUGH AS ONE MOVES FROM SUSHUPTI INTO TURIYA. LOOKING AT IT LOGICALLY, IT SEEMS CURIOUS THAT AS ONE MOVES TOWARDS THE ULTIMATE STATE OF AWARENESS, ONE IS -- JUST BEFORE REALIZATION -- OVERCOME MOMENTARILY BY DARKNESS. I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THAT ONE WOULD HAVE BEEN GATHERING MORE AND MORE AWARENESS, THEREBY DISPELLING DARKNESS AS ONE MOVED THROUGH THE STATE OF DEEP MEDITATION -- SO DEEP THAT THERE ARE NO LONGER DREAMS -- TO THE POINT WHERE THE WATCHER IS EVEN ABLE TO WITNESS SUSHUPTI. IS IT PERHAPS, ANALOGOUS TO WHAT HAPPENS AS DEATH APPROACHES? YOU HAVE SPOKEN OF HOW LIFE SUDDENLY ASSERTS ITSELF AT THE POINT OF DEATH -- THE RESURGENCE OF THE BODY'S LIFE-FORCE IN THE FACE OF ITS EXTINCTION.
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…