Why do I allow habit to dominate consciousness?

Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHY DO I ALLOW HABIT TO DOMINATE CONSCIOUSNESS? Almost everybody does it, unless one becomes enlightened. The habit is the easier way to do a thing. The whole mechanism of a habit is that you need not be conscious about it. It has become a mechanical part of you, a part of your robot mind: it does things by itself. You can go on thinking other things, dreaming other dreams, and the habit takes every action to its end -- with more perfection because a habit is mechanical, and machines don't commit mistakes. So everybody is dominated by habit. And it is one of the most important things, to get out of this domination. It is moving from mechanicalness to consciousness. In the beginning it is very arduous.

Question: BELOVED MASTER, OLD HABITS DIE HARD! Prem Harideva, it is true... but why? Why do old habits die hard? -- because you are nothing but your old habits. If they die, YOU will die. You don't have anything more, you don't have anything plus. You are just your old habits, old patterns. You are a mechanism, not yet a man; that's why old habits die hard. It is very rare that a man exists, very few and far between. A Buddha is a real man, authentic. A Zarathustra is a real man -- a man worth calling a man. The ordinary humanity is just robotlike: it lives unconsciously, it lives mechanically. And habits are all that you have. If you drop all your habits you will simply start evaporating; you will not find yourself at all. What are you?

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, last night you explained inner stillness through the dimension of inner silence. Please explain inner stillness from some other dimension.

Jesus says that we are just dead -- not alive! One day, he was passing by a fisherman just as the morning sun was going to rise. The fisherman had thrown his net into the lake, and Jesus put his hand on the fisherman's shoulder and said, "Are you going to destroy your whole life just catching fish? I can show you something better to catch. I can make you a fisherman of life." The fisherman looked at Jesus as if some magnet was working on him. Then he threw away his net and followed Jesus. When they were just going out of the village, someone came running and told the fisherman, "Your father is dead. He has just died, so come home. Where are you going?" The fisherman asked permission. He said to Jesus, "Allow me to go home. Soon I will come back. I have to bury my…

Let this be the key. You have to work on it, you have to play around this idea more and more. In whatsoever you are doing, again and again pull yourself into the present. In the beginning the mind rebels, resists; old patterns are powerful, old habits go on dragging you here and there. But slowly slowly as the joy of the present becomes deepened, as you start becoming more and more saturated with it, as you see the contentment that arises out of it and the silence and the celebration, the old patterns are broken, the habits disappear. And that day -- when you start living in the present twenty-four hours a day -- is the day of enlightenment. It does not mean that one will never think about the past but that one will be aware of the present.