Habit

Osho, I am ignorant. All around me there is nothing but darkness. What is the path for me?

Music! Darkness is only proof that light can be. Darkness is only evidence that light is possible. So do not look at darkness with a negative outlook. Do not look with the eyes of an atheist; look with the eyes of a theist. Then even in darkness you will sense light hidden within it. Darkness is the womb of light. Do not be alarmed by darkness, nor afraid, nor anxious—be blissful, for the morning must be coming! And the denser the darkness, the nearer the dawn. Deep is this darkness; by the veils of selfishness we have been plundered. A wall of dead matter stands encircling, people speak as if turning their faces away; in this sky there is no sun, no moon, no star. An infinite ocean of imagination this, roaring as it girds the body, fierce— nothing is understood; where is the dusky shore? Beloved, give me that…

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.

Osho, my husband has the habit of chewing tobacco. How can he give it up? Asked by Geeta. First of all, trying to make someone else drop their habits is not a mark of decency. Let the other person understand for themselves. Acknowledge at least that your husband has intelligence. If there is to be a question, let your husband be the one to ask.

The weak always finds a tactic that appears right. Being weak, they must play a kind of politics that looks proper and cannot be easily refused. What will you say? The wife isn’t saying something bad. She says, “Your lungs will be ruined; if you smoke you’ll get TB.” She says it for your own good. The weak will always devise ways to torment you “for your own good.” And she isn’t factually wrong, so you cannot even argue. Husbands begin to enter their homes in fear. The home starts to feel like school for little children—that is how husbands feel about home: a classroom. Lessons are given there—where to take off the shoes, where to put the clothes, don’t smoke, don’t play the radio so loud—thousands of lessons. Slowly the wife becomes a schoolmistress and with her own hands breaks the delicate threads of love. The threads of love…

Osho, I keep turning back to look at the past. It’s futile, yet the habit doesn’t drop. What could be the reason?

Even to a dry tree the vine clings. Support! No other support seems visible. Ahead, only darkness; within, only darkness. The one bright thing seems to be the line of the past along which you have come—this path that is over, that will never be again, that has already happened. You sit arranging these preserved blossoms, these dried flowers. You cling to them. The creeper has twined round a lifeless tree— how much the past coddles the unborn It’s all dead, a corpse. Sometimes it happens: a she-monkey goes on carrying her baby pressed to her chest. Even when the baby dies, she keeps carrying it. It takes days—only when it rots and starts to stink does she drop it in a fright. Otherwise she goes on clutching the corpse—old habit. The past is a corpse—gone, done. Dust. Ash; the ember is out. Don’t keep lying on this ash, don’t…