Just watch yourself. - OSHO

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.

You take the cigarette out, you put the cigarette in your mouth, you light the cigarette, and this is all going on mechanically. This has been done millions of times, and you are doing it again. And each time you do this it is strengthened; the machine becomes more mechanical, the machine becomes more skillful.

The more you do it, the less awareness is needed to do it. This is why the Sufis say man functions as a machine. Unless you start destroying these mechanical habits... Sufis have many methods to destroy them.

For example, they teach many devices. They say: Do something just contrary to what you have always done. Try it. You come home, you are afraid, you are as late as ever, and the wife will be there ready to quarrel with you. And you are planning how to answer, what to say -- that there was too much work in the office, and this and that. And she knows all that you are planning, and she knows what you are going to say if she asks why you are late. And you know if you say that you are late because there was too much work she is not going to believe it either.

She has never believed it. She may have already checked; she may have phoned the office, she may have already enquired where you are. But, still, this is just a pattern.

The Sufis say: Today go home and behave totally differently. The wife asks you, "Where have you been?" And you say, "I was with a woman making love." And then see what happens. She will be shocked! She will not know what to say, she will not even have any way to find words to express it. For a moment she will be completely lost, because no reaction, no old pattern, is applicable.

Or maybe, if she has become too much of a machine, she will say, "I don't believe you!" -- just as she has never believed you. "You must be joking!" Every day you come home...

🔸OSHO🔸
Unio Mystica, Vol 1