Change Your Mind Not Actions

My own experience is that if you can be silent, and if you can transcend mind and your consciousness can grow, it does not matter what you are doing; your actions are not counted at all, only your consciousness. [...] And it was a surprise to me that as you become silent, as you become conscious, your actions start changing--but not vice versa. You can change your actions, but that will not make you more conscious. You become more conscious, and your actions will change--that's absolutely simple and scientific. You were doing something stupid; as you become more alert and conscious, you cannot do it.

It is not a question of reward or punishment. It is simply your consciousness, your silence, your peace, which makes you look so far away and so deep into everything that you do. You cannot do harm to anybody; you cannot be violent, you cannot be angry, you cannot be greedy, you cannot be ambitious. Your consciousness has given you so much blissfulness ... what can greed give you accept anxieties? What can ambition give you? Just a continuous struggle to reach higher on some ladder.

As your consciousness becomes more settled, all your life patterns change. What religions have called sin will disappear from your life, and what they have called virtue will automatically flow from your being, from your action. But they have been doing just vice versa: first change the acts. It is as if you are in a dark house and you are stumbling over furniture and things, and you are told that unless you stop stumbling, light is not possible. What I am saying is, bring light in and stumbling will disappear, because when there is light why should you stumble over things? Every time you stumble, every time you hit your head on the wall, it hurts. It is a punishment in itself-- a wrong act is a punishment in itself; there is nobody recording your acts. And every beautiful action is a reward unto itself.

But first bring this light in your life. Meditation is an effort to bring this light and to bring this joy and to bring silence and to bring blissfulness.

-- Osho
From 'Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic'