According to Osho, samskaras end not by replacing bad habits with good ones, but by awakening as the witness: realizing you are separate from every impulse. In vigilant awareness you act, you don’t react; action from mastery leaves no new imprint. Maintain inner sovereignty, use habits without being used—this choiceless awareness dissolves accumulated tendencies across lifetimes.
Be awake inside and watch your habits; choose calmly instead of reacting, and they lose power.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, the samskaras of the previous life become habits in this one. The habits of this life will again become samskaras in the next. Then where is the end?
Yes, preserving yourself, you can play as many games as you like. When the Divine himself is at play, why should you be troubled? But God is the master; and when you too become master of your habits and samskaras, then in your small world you too become divine. Buddha called this “awareness”: do everything, but do it consciously. Even to lift a foot, lift it with awareness. Getting up, sitting down, lying down—with awareness. Do not do anything in a stupor. If you go on cultivating awareness, habits will still form and you will use them, but behind the habit a current of awareness will be flowing. The lamp of consciousness will be burning. That too will be taking shape, its intensity increasing, its light deepening. If in life there remain only habits and more habits, the soul is lost. Be there behind the habits as well—separate, distinct. And…
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…
Osho, awakening regarding bad actions makes them drop away. Then what happens if one becomes aware even of good actions like love, devotion, etc.? Please clarify.
Ramchhavi Prasad! There are three steps of awakening. The first step—primary awakening—the bad comes to an end and the good grows. The unwholesome departs; the wholesome deepens. The second stage—the wholesome begins to melt away; emptiness deepens. And the third stage—even emptiness departs. Then what remains is the natural… then what remains is the natural state, the pure consciousness, sheer awareness—that is Buddhahood, that is nirvana. Begin to awaken, and first you will find—what is wrong starts dropping. Try smoking a cigarette with awareness, you won’t be able to. Not because smoking is a sin. What sin can there be in smoking? A person takes smoke out, brings it in; out and in. What sin is there in that? Whom is he harming? Smoking is not a sin. It is certainly stupidity, but not a sin. Foolishness, yes—but not a sin. Foolishness because you could have taken in clean air…
Osho, how does the cessation of this ego-sense happen? That is, witnessing is not something that is brought in, nor does one make oneself into a witness. It is only because we have become something else that the feeling of witnessing does not arise. So this ego-sense—the “made-ness” we are—how does it come to an end?
No, no—you cannot bring about its cessation. Because the very one who is asking, “How should I end it?”—that itself is the ego. You cannot end it. The ego is so subtle that when it asks, “How do I erase the ego?” it is the ego itself that is asking. The question is not coming from anywhere else. Beyond the ego there is no questioning at all; there, the ego is not. Ego belongs to the mind that asks; it is not part of the consciousness-state of being a witness. Understand it like this: there is water. The water asks, “How can I eliminate my fluidity?” Water can only be by being fluid. It cannot remove fluidity, because in the very definition of water, fluidity is included; it is part of it. We say to it, “Cool down below zero degrees,” or “Heat up to a hundred degrees.” If you…
Whatever self‑introduction you give—if you look closely you will find you always introduce your karma; you never give any news of your being. You cannot. You have no news of it. You only know what you do. You know your doings—what you have done and what you can do. The certificates you carry only report what you can do; they do not report what you are. If you say, “I am a sadhu,” it means you do sadhuta. If someone says, “I am a thief,” it means he steals. One’s karma is saintliness, the other’s karma is theft. But what is being? What is within you? Before you were born from your mother’s womb, what was saint or thief, engineer or doctor? Had someone asked you in the womb, “Who are you?” you would have been in trouble—because then you were neither engineer nor doctor, you had done no business.