From Osho:
“Every reaction is unconscious. If you are aware, you never react; you act. Action is conscious; reaction is unconscious.
First of all, the nature of activity and the hidden currents within it must be understood; otherwise no relaxation is possible. Even if you want to relax, it will not be possible unless you have observed, examined, and realised the nature of your activity – because activity is not a simple phenomenon. Many people would like to relax but cannot. Relaxation is like flowering – you cannot force it to happen. You have to understand the whole phenomenon: why you are so active, why you are so obsessed with activity.
Remember these two words: one is “action,” the other is “activity.” Action is not activity; activity is not action. They are diametrically opposite in their nature. Action happens when a situation calls for a response. Activity happens when the situation is irrelevant – it is not a response; the situation is merely an excuse to be active.
Action comes from a mind that is silent – it is the most beautiful thing in the world. Activity comes from a restless mind – it is the ugliest thing. Action is appropriate; activity is inappropriate. Action is moment-to-moment, spontaneous. Activity is burdened with the past. It is not a response to the present moment, but rather an outpouring of the restlessness you carry from the past into the present. Action is creative. Activity is destructive – it destroys you and it destroys others.
Try to see this subtle distinction. For example, you feel hungry and you eat – that is action. But if you are not hungry at all, and yet you go on eating, that is activity. This eating is a kind of violence: you are destroying food, crashing your teeth into each other, crushing the food – it releases a little of your inner restlessness. You eat not because of hunger, but because of an inner compulsion, a drive to discharge violence.
Action is beautiful. It comes as a spontaneous response. Life calls for response; you must act in each moment, but action arises out of the present. You are hungry and you seek food; you are thirsty and you go to the well; you are sleepy and you go to sleep. You act out of the totality of the situation. Action is spontaneous and total.
Activity is never spontaneous; it comes from the past. You may have accumulated it for many years and then it explodes in the present – it has nothing to do with the situation. But the mind is cunning: it will always find explanations for activity. It will always try to prove that this is not activity but action, that it was necessary.
You suddenly explode in anger. Everyone else can see that there was no need for it, that the situation did not call for it at all – that it was simply inappropriate – except you. Others feel: “What are you doing? There was no need for this. Why are you so angry?” But you will find explanations; you will justify it to yourself.
These explanations help you to remain unaware of your madness. These are what Gurdjieff called “buffers.” You create buffers of explanation around yourself so that you do not come to see what is really happening. Buffers absorb the shock. Your activity is never appropriate, but the buffers of explanation do not allow you to see the situation. They blind you – and the activity continues.
If activity is present, you cannot relax. How could you? It is an obsessive need to do something, anything at all. This obsession with activity has to be observed – and it has to be observed in your own life. Whatever I say will have little meaning unless you see in yourself that your activity is misplaced, unnecessary. Why are you doing it?
Action is healthy. Activity is a disease. Discover the distinction within yourself: what is activity and what is action? This is the first step. The second is to be more rooted in action, so that energy moves into action; and whenever activity appears, to become more alert, more aware. If you are aware, activity disappears. The energy is preserved, and the same energy becomes action.
Be aware. Feel the difference between action and activity. And when activity takes hold of you – possession is a better word – when activity possesses you like a spirit (and activity is a spirit from the past, it is dead), when it grips you and you fall into a feverish state, then become more aware. That is all you can do. Watch it. Even if you have to go on doing it, do it with full awareness.
This is a subtle point: activity has to disappear, but not action. It is easy to drop both – to escape to the Himalayas. That is easy. And the other is easy too: to go on with activity and then force yourself to relax for a few minutes every morning or evening. You do not understand the complexity of the human mind, its mechanism. Relaxation is a state. You cannot force it. You can only drop the obstacles, and then it comes by itself, it wells up on its own.
What is relaxation? It is a state in which your energy is not moving anywhere – neither into the future nor into the past; it is simply here with you. You are immersed in the silent lake of your own energy, in its warmth. This moment is all there is. There are no other moments. Time stops – then there is relaxation. If there is time, there is no relaxation. The clock stops and time disappears. This moment is all. You want nothing else; you simply enjoy. You can enjoy ordinary things because they are no longer ordinary. In fact, nothing is ordinary – everything becomes extraordinary.”
Osho
Note: The quotations are translated from Bulgarian and are not presented as verbatim citations.
