Man is not yet man: unless consciousness enters into his being, he will remain a machine.
In his whole seventy years' life, if he lives the ordinary so-called life , with no pain of growth, with no pain within him of a growing pearl of exceeding beauty -- then he will not know even seven moments of awareness in his whole life. And even if he knows those seven moments or less, they will be only accidental. For example, he may know a moment of awareness if somebody suddenly comes and puts a revolver on his heart. In that moment, his thinking, his habitual thinking, stops.
For a moment he becomes aware, because it is so dangerous, he cannot remain ordinarily asleep. He is perfectly skillful at doing his things mechanically.
Just stand by the side of the road and watch people, and you will be able to see that they are all walking in their sleep. All are sleep-walkers, somnambulists. And so are you.
Two bums were arrested and charged with a murder that had been committed in the neighborhood. The jury found them guilty and the judge sentenced them to hang by their necks until dead .The two bore up pretty well until the morning of the day set for the execution arrived. As they were being prepared for the gallows, one turned to the other and said, "Dam' me if I ain't about off my nut. I can't get my thoughts together. Why, I don't even know what the day of the week is."
"This is a Monday," said the other bum.
"Monday? My Gawd! What a rotten way to start the week!"
Just watch yourself. Even to the very point of death, people go on repeating old habitual patterns. Now there is going to be no week; the morning has come when they are to be hanged. But just the old habit -- somebody says it is Monday, and you say, "Monday? My God! What a rotten way to start the week!" Man reacts and so a machine. Unless you start responding, unless you become responsible... Reaction comes out of the past, responses comes out of the present moment. Response is spontaneous, reaction is just old habit.
I have heard:
"Pop," said a boy of ten, "how do wars get started?"
"Well, son," began Pop, "let's say America quarreled with England..."
"America's not quarreling with England," interrupted Mother.
"Who said she was?" said Pop, visibly irritated. "I merely was giving the boy a hypothetical instance."
"Ridiculous!" snorted Mother. "You'll put all sorts of wrong ideas in his head."
"Ridiculous, nothing!" countered Pop. "If he listens to you he'll never have any ideas at all in his head."
Just as the dish-throwing stage approached, the son spoke up again. "Thanks Mom, thanks Pop. I'll never have to ask how wars get started again."
Just watch yourself. The things that you are doing, you have done so many times. The ways you react, you have been reacting always. In the same situation you always do the same thing. You are feeling nervous and you take out your cigarette and you start smoking. It is a reaction; whenever you have felt nervous you have done it. You are a machine. It is just a built-in program in you now: you feel nervous, your hand goes into the pocket, the packet comes out. It is almost like a machine doing things. Unless you start destroying these mechanical habits... Sufis have many methods to destroy them.
For example : Do something just contrary to what you have always done. Try it. A patient was complaining again and again to his psychoanalyst "I am always afraid of going home. My wife looks so miserable, so sad, always in despair, that my heart starts sinking. I want to escape from the home."
The psychologist said, "Maybe you are the cause of it. Do something different today - take flowers and ice cream and sweets for the woman, and when she opens the door hug her, give her a good kiss. And then immediately start helping her: clean the table and the pots and the floor. Do something absolutely new that you have never done before."
The idea was appealing and the man tried it. He went home. The moment the wife opened the door and saw flowers and ice cream and sweets, and this beaming man who had never been laughing hugged her, she could not believe what was happening! She was in an utter shock, she could not believe her eyes: maybe this is somebody else! She had to look again. And then when he kissed her and immediately just started cleaning the table and went to the sink and started washing the pots, the woman started crying.
When he came out he said, "Why are you crying?" She said, "Have you gone mad? I always suspected one day or other you would go mad. Now it has happened. Why don't you go and see a psychiatrist?"
That's why in vipassana you feel so silent watching the breath. You have always breathed but you have never watched it; this is something new. When you sit silently and just watch you breath -- coming in, going out, coming in, going out -- the mind feels puzzled: what are you doing? Because you have never done it. It is so new that the mind cannot supply an immediate reaction to it. Hence it falls silent. The fundamental essential thing is one: how to de-automatize you.
Now, when you go to a master you don't expect a buddha to hit you, or do you? When you go to Buddha you go with expectations that he will be compassionate and loving, that he will shower love and put his hand on your head. And this buddha gives you a hit -- takes his staff and hits you hard on the head. Now, it is so shocking: a buddha, hitting you? For a moment the mind stops; it has no idea what to do, it does not function. And that nonfunctioning is the beginning.
But who are you to decide what I should say and what I should not say? And naturally, when something goes
against their expectations they immediately react according to their old conditionings. Those who react according to their old conditionings miss the point. Those who don't react according to the old conditionings fall silent, get into a new space.
Sufis say man is a machine because man only reacts according to the programs that have been fed to him. Start behaving responsively, and then you are not a machine. And when you are not a machine you are a man: then the man is born.
Watch, become alert, observe, and go on dropping all the reactive patterns in you. Each moment try to respond to the reality -- not according to the ready-made idea in you but according to the reality as it is there outside. Respond to the reality! Respond with your total consciousness but not with your mind. And then when you respond spontaneously and you don't react, action is born. Action is beautiful, reaction is ugly.
Only a man of awareness acts, the man of unawareness REACTS. Action liberates. Reaction goes on creating the same chains, goes on making them thicker and harder and stronger.
Live a life of response and not of reaction.
From "OSHO's" Teachings...
(These thoughts have helped tremendously in day to day life..be it relationships, studies, working life, businesses and in our own trading, especially. Try it...its a wonderful feeling to be alive.)
