Unconsciousness

 

 

The real values are not buried in the unconscious -- the real values are revealed when you move above consciousness to the superconsciousness.

 

What is buried in the unconscious is what is making man's life so stupid: he may pay attention to a football player's words, an actor's words, and will not heed the words of the wise.

 

Unconsciousness is the basement of the mind. In your unconscious many things are buried which find expression through your conscious. For example, millions of people watch boxing or football matches and really get excited; and they never think about what they are watching. In boxing they are watching sheer violence. But there is enjoyment; this is the expression of hidden violence in you.

 

Society has managed man with an absolutely wrong strategy. The idea of the society has been, that if something is thrown into the basement, into the darkness of the unconscious, you are finished with it. That is not the case. You are not finished with it. It will come up in different form -- and with a vengeance. And it will go on collecting.

 

A small anger is not much to be worried about; it comes and goes. But if you go on suppressing anger, there comes a point when it becomes like a volcano which is just going to burst -- at any excuse.

 

Suppression has been the way, for the whole history, to keep man civilized -- but in fact, it has been the cause of keeping man only superficially civilized, skin-deep civilized. Just scratch anybody a little and you will find the barbarous, the primitive, the animal, all hidden behind him.

 

All your games are, in a subtle way, a satisfaction of your desire to be victorious. In the movies you see violence, you see murder, you see rape -- and any movie which has not murder, rape, seems to have no appeal. These are essential ingredients which attract humanity.

 

In the unconscious your desires are waiting to be satisfied, and this is a vicarious way of satisfying them. You become identified with the murderer or perhaps with the murdered. You become identified with the rapist or with the raped. And a little release happens. That is your joy in seeing a movie, reading a novel. [....]

 

In the unconscious, the real values are not there because nobody has repressed the real values. Real values don't need to be repressed because they are not against anybody, they do not do any harm to anybody. They are the qualities of love and compassion. But man has not experienced them, because they are above the conscious mind.

 

You have to go beyond your conscious mind to have some glimpse of the glorious world of real values -- truth, sincerity, love, friendliness, compassion, sympathy, sensitivity, appreciation of beauty, grace.

 

All those are lined up waiting for you.

 

But the society has put you in a struggle with the unconscious, forcing all your animal heritage into the unconscious; you have to go on continually forcing it down. It is not that once forced down, you are finished with it; it goes on coming up, it wants expression.

 

And you don't have anything else in your life -- creativity of any sort -- in which your energy can be involved, so no energy is left for the unconscious to use. So it is a strange situation; all creative dimensions are closed.

 

The superconscious is not talked about in your educational systems. The only thing talked about is your conscious mind, and that the only way to get any poisonous thing away from you is to throw it into the unconscious.

 

This whole strategy is wrong. That's why human society has come to such a wrong situation, where people are living but not truly alive; they are almost like walking corpses. From the cradle to the grave they are simply dying every day, slowly, slowly. It is a long death, a seventy-year-long death. It cannot be called life -- because no flower blossoms, no song arises, no beauty is created.

 

You do not enrich life. And remember it as a basic dictum: unless you enrich life, you don't have it.

 

If you have life, you must enrich life; you must leave the world better than you found it. But right now it seems you will leave the world more dark, more gloomy, more sad, more miserable.

 

The old strategy has to be abandoned -- absolutely abandoned, without any exception.

 

A few fundamentals have to be remembered. The unconscious has no way of releasing any content directly from itself. It has no doors, it is a basement. For anything to go out of it, it first has to come to the conscious mind. The conscious mind is the door.

 

In the same way the superconscious mind also has no doors. For anything to be expressed, it has to come to the conscious mind. The conscious mind is your ground floor; only from there can anything go out.

 

So the first thing is: the unconscious should be emptied. But one becomes afraid in emptying it, because it is carrying all kinds of ugly features.

 

How to empty the violence that is there, the anger, the sadness... all kinds of worries that you have dumped there because you could not manage to sort them out? How are you going to bring them to the conscious? And if they come, then what are you going to do with them?

 

The unconscious is not interested in the object of the violence, it is interested only in getting rid of the violence. You can just beat your pillow, and you will feel immense relief. It will look a little awkward to you, that you are beating your pillow and the pillow has done no wrong to you. You think yourself very cultured, sophisticated, intelligent -- and what are you doing beating the poor pillow who has not done anything? It is not a question of whether the pillow has done anything or not, but beating it will release the violence in you, because violence has nothing to do with the object.

 

Whether you beat somebody or you beat the pillow, it makes no difference to it. Whether you kill somebody or you just kill a teddy bear, it doesn't matter. But killing has to be done. [....]

 

The unconscious simply needs fake objects to get rid of its garbage. There is no need to kill anybody; you can kill a statue, you can kill a photograph, you can burn a photograph -- and feel at ease.

 

And slowly, slowly, whatever comes in your dreams or in your waking hours from the unconscious, give it a reality so that it goes out. Don't repress it; don't think, "This is bad and I should not show it to anybody;" it will become a wound and finally, a cancer.

 

Release it.

 

In your private room you can release it in any way you want. Dynamic meditation was basically devised to help the unconscious unburden itself. The Indonesian latihan does the same.

 

And once the unconscious is completely clean and there is no energy wasted in repressing it, the same energy starts moving upwards -- because remember, that energy cannot remain static; it has to move. Now that there is no work in the unconscious, it starts moving upwards towards lighter spaces in you, and there you will find real values which make man a man and take him beyond the animal.

 

Whatever you experience in the superconscious has also to be brought to the conscious and acted upon. Don't just think great thoughts, don't just go on experiencing beauty -- let your experiences become actions, creativity. Do something about them. And as you start doing something about them you will find that deeper qualities are pouring in.

 

Just writing a poem may release a great source of energy. Making any beautiful act, doing any compassionate act, sharing something that you have, in abundance, with anybody... and your superconscious will start coming more and more to the conscious mind. Now it has got a door to move into the world.

 

And when the superconscious is completely empty, then the collective superconscious starts dropping its great hidden treasures. And when the collective superconscious is emptied you have come to the ultimate glory, the cosmic conscious.

 

From this cosmic superconscious mind, each of your conscious acts starts taking on a fragrance of divinity, of godliness. Whatever you touch becomes gold, whatever you say becomes truth. Each of your movements in life creates ripples of beauty, joy, ecstasy, which will go to the farthest ends of existence, touching millions of people who have never known you and who may never know you -- but they will share your joy.

 

You may have felt it sometime: you are sitting, feeling good, and suddenly you become sad and you don't know why. It is that somebody is releasing ripples of sadness just close by, and they are strong enough to have an impact on you.

 

Sometimes you feel just the opposite: you feel very light, weightless -- for no reason -- a freshness, a joy. You cannot even say to anybody, "I am feeling joyous;" they will think you are crazy because there is no reason to feel joy.

 

What is the reason? You cannot give the reason because you don't know it yourself. It is just somebody's joy that has created a ripple that has touched you.

 

We are very sensitive beings. Like the antenna of your radio, we go on catching every ripple that comes close to us -- very subtle ripples.

 

Most of the time you are suffering other people's sufferings and just once in a while you are enjoying somebody else's joy -- because the sad and the miserable are many, and the joyful, blissful are very few, very rare.

 

If you can understand this, you will also feel a certain distance when you feel sadness. It may not have anything to do with you. When you feel a certain happiness, a certain pleasure, it may not have anything to do with you. You can keep a certain distance and you can watch these feelings -- and watching these feelings will help you to find your own sources.

 

Man is born with great treasures, but he is also born with the whole animal heritage, and somehow we have to empty out the animal heritage and create a space for the treasure to come to the conscious and be shared -- because that is one of the qualities of the treasure: the more you share it, the more you have it.

 

-Osho, "The Transmission of the Lamp, #10, Q1“