Sannyas is an aspiration to the most distant star. Call it God, samadhi, bliss, the ultimate union, it all simply means the same: that we have to drop our separation and become one again with existence. Then bliss simply happens; it simply showers. You are bathed in it!
Out of deep meditation bliss arises, and then you are so happy the whole day, the whole night… without any cause. It is just bubbling inside you. It is your very nature, your dharma. Then you don’t need any God and you don’t need any priest, and you don’t live in any kind of misery or imprisonment. The moment you feel that something has become phony, something has become pseudo, something has become just a mask, you simply drop it. You remain truthful to your own consciousness — that is your only responsibility.
Happiness is not conditional; nothing is needed to be happy. Only to be alive is needed — and that you are, you already are. Only to be conscious is needed — and that you already are. Hence the mystics and the buddhas say that bliss is our very nature. But the mind is a runner and it keeps dragging you.
In fact bliss is the only criterion to know: Whether you are moving higher or not. As you move higher you feel more bliss More peace, more silence, more tranquillity, More centeredness, simply joyous For no reason at all.
Buddha used to call meditation a great sword, it cuts your problems at the very root. It makes you aware that you need not be afraid of your inner abyss. It is beautiful, it is blissful. You have not experienced its bliss and beauty because you have never gone into it, you have always been escaping. You have not tasted of it; it is nectar, it is not poison. But how are you going to know without tasting it? You are running away from something which can become your life’s fulfillment. You are running away from something which is the only thing worth achieving. You are running away from yourself.
If you have made love to a woman or to a man, and the love was really total and orgasmic, you forget who you are. It is mindblowing. You simply don’t know who you are. In a certain moment of deep orgasmic bliss, oneness happens. That is the whole effort of Tantra: to transform sex into an experience of oneness — because that will be your first experience of oneness, and enlightenment is the last experience of oneness.
You have always been there; it was only desire that was distracting you. Sometimes the desire was for money, sometimes for God, sometimes for power, prestige, sometimes for heaven, paradise, but any desire is enough to distract you from your nature. When there is no desire, where can you go? All desires lead you away from yourself. When there is no desire you are simply centered in your being. That very centeredness is bliss, is ecstasy, is samadhi, is nirvana.
Whenever some bliss happens, trust it, and go in that direction…and you will be moving towards God. Bliss is his fragrance. If you can follow bliss, you will never go astray. If you follow bliss, you will be following nature. And if you are natural, blissful, relaxed, wisdom arises.
Intoxicants will disappear from the world only when meditation has become a world-wide phenomenon, when each single individual has created some meditativeness in his being; when each single individual has become aware, “There is no need to be miserable. Misery is created by me. Life is not misery: life’s nature is bliss. It is my stupidity that I am creating misery out of it.”
Man lives in misery — not because he is destined to live in misery but because he does not understand his own nature, potential, possibilities of growth. This nonunderstanding of oneself creates hell. To understand oneself is to be naturally blissful, because bliss is not something that comes from the outside, it is your consciousness resting in its own nature.
The Bauls belong to the seventh type — joy, celebration, song, dance, ecstasy — ANAND. They make meditation tremendously joyful — because a person can be meditative and can become sad. A person can be meditative and can become very silent and may miss bliss. Because meditation can make you silent, absolutely still, but unless dance happens in it, something is missing. Peace is good, peace is very beautiful, but something is lacking in it; bliss is lacking. When peace starts dancing it is bliss. When peace becomes active, overflowing, it is bliss. When bliss is enclosed in a seed it is peace. And when the seed has sprouted, not only that, but the tree has bloomed and the flowers have come and the seed has become a bloom, then it is SAMADHI. That is the highest type of religion.
People talk of conquering nature, people talk of conquering this and that — how can you conquer nature? You are part of it. How can the part conquer the Whole? See the foolishness of it, the stupidity. You can be with the Whole in harmony, or you can be in conflict with the Whole in disharmony. Disharmony results in misery; harmony results in bliss. Harmony naturally results in a deep silence, joy, delight. Conflict results in anxiety, anguish, stress, tension.
It is impossible for a Buddha to go mad. Everyone else can go mad; only a Buddha cannot. Why only a Buddha? Because he has thrown all his madness out. Meditation means throwing your madness out. When there is no poison within you, you will have a different quality of being. You will be able to fly, you will become weightless. Then bliss is not something that happens to you; it is not something that comes to you from without It is something that arises in you, it is something that is your inherent nature. Then bliss is not accidental. It is you; it is your nature, it is your tao, your being, your very existence. Then, no one can take this bliss from you.
Go with nature. Go absolutely in tune with nature, not upcurrent but with the current. Don’t push the river, float with it. And life will be a bliss, and life will be an ecstasy, and life will be a benediction.
Pleasure is momentary, of time, for the time being; bliss is nontemporal, timeless. Pleasure begins and ends; bliss abides forever. Pleasure comes and goes; bliss never comes, never goes — it is already there in the innermost core of your being. Pleasure has to be snatched away from the other; you become either a beggar or a thief. Bliss makes you a master. Bliss is not something that you invent but something that you discover. Bliss is your innermost nature. It has been there since the very beginning, you just have not looked at it, you have taken it for granted. You don’t look inwards. This is the only misery of man: that he goes on looking outwards, seeking and searching. And you cannot find it in the outside because it is not there.
Pleasure is dependent on others. Happiness is not so dependent on others, but still it is separate from you. Bliss is not dependent, is not separate either; it is your very being, it is your very nature. To attain it is to attain to God, to nirvana.
Osho Quotes on Bliss – II
