Osho – One can get bliss only if one deserves it, if one is worthy. and the way to deserve it is to disappear, not to be. To be is a hindrance.

The ego is the root of all misery. When the ego is not, from every nook and corner of existence bliss starts reaching you as if it were just waiting for the ego to disappear. Ego is a closed state of consciousness: all window, doors, are closed. You are living almost insulated, encapsulated; ego surrounds you like a capsule. Ego is like the egg: there is not even a small window to allow anything to enter. Ego is very much afraid; out of fear it closes itself, it shrinks into itself. That is how we create misery. Bliss is to be in the flow with existence, to be totally with it.

Ego is like frozen ice and egolessness is melted ice. Then you become part of the ocean. Then you don’t have any private goal, you have no destination. Then each moment is so blissful, so incredibly ecstatic, that the mind cannot comprehend it, cannot conceive it. Mind is part of the ego. It knows how to close, it does not know how to open up.

To be a sannyasin means that now your whole effort will be to open up to existence — to the flowers and to the bees and to the stars; how to open to this beautiful music that fills the whole of existence; how to open to this beautiful music that fills the whole of existence; how to open up to this celebration that goes on and on — flowers dancing in the wind and trees enjoying the wind and the stars, always in a state of bliss. Except for man everything is in harmony. Man falls out harmony because he has consciousness.

Consciousness can do two things: it can create ego, it can create egolessness. If it creates ego you live in hell, if it creates egolessness you are in paradise. The whole world is in paradise without knowing it. When man enter paradise he will be entering with full knowing. That is the grandeur, the beauty of man — and that is the danger also, because out of thousands of people only once in a while does a person enter; others simply go on falling into the trap of the ego. Be egoless and all the grace of God is yours. Bliss is by the grace of god.

Source: Osho Book “Scriptures in Silence and Sermons in Stones”

Osho Quotes on Bliss

1. 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!
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.”
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. 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.
15. 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 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.

16. 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 – Misery to Bliss

1. Buddha is reported to have said, “If you want to get rid of death, get rid of birth.” There is no other way. If you want to get rid of misery, get rid of the lust for happiness. And when there is no misery, there is happiness. But it is not because you desire it; it is because you don’t have any desire. In a deep desireless state, you are full of bliss.
2. Desiring is a wall, no-desiring is a bridge. This is the very essence of Buddha’s teaching. This is his basic message to the world. Bliss is a state of no-desire, misery is a state of desire.
3. When you are blissful, really blissed out, ego disappears. You are, but there is no ego, no idea of I, no idea of separation. In bliss there is a merger with the whole; in misery you are alone and separate. Misery makes you an island and bliss takes all your boundaries away from you. In bliss, the river disappears in the ocean. And we are very afraid to disappear as an ego. We want to keep our identity intact.
4. Misery is a by-product, so is bliss. Misery is a by-product of being asleep, bliss is a by-product of being awake. Hence you cannot seek and search for bliss directly, and those who seek and search for bliss directly are bound to fail, doomed to fail. Bliss can be attained only by those who don’t seek bliss directly; on the contrary, they seek awareness. And when awareness comes, bliss comes of its own accord, just like your shadow, unshakable.
5. Bliss is true happiness. What you call happiness is just misery in disguise. What you call happiness is nothing but entertainment, pleasure. It is momentary — it cannot be true. Truth has to have one quality, and the quality is of eternity. If something is true it is eternal; if it is untrue it is momentary. True happiness is found only when the mind completely ceases functioning. It does not come from the outside. It wells up within your own being, it starts overflowing you. You become luminous. You become a fountain of bliss.
6. Do whatsoever you want to do, but you will end in the same way. Everything ends in misery, everything ends in death. People make tremendous effort, but what can you do? — all your efforts are doomed, because you don’t do the fundamental thing that can bring a radical change. You don’t create consciousness. That is the only radical transformation of life: from misery to bliss. You do everything else except meditate. You will earn money and you will become more and more powerful and you will have all that the world can provide.
7. 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. Remember this statement: your consciousness resting in itself is what bliss is all about. And to be relaxed in one’s own being is to be wise.
8. Truth is very simple, and because it is very simple you don’t look at it. You will have to learn, you will have to become aware, of the simplicity and obviousness of truth. There is nothing more to it. It is simply this: consciousness is bliss, unconsciousness is misery.
9. Put it aside. Dismantle the whole ego! In destroying the ego, you will discover your being. And that discovery is the greatest discovery possible, because it starts a totally new pilgrimage towards ultimate bliss, towards eternal life. You can choose: either frustration, suffering, misery — then go on holding the ego, nourishing it. Or peace, silence, bliss — but then you have to recover your innocence.
10. The law is that bliss or misery both arise in the innermost core of your being. Nobody can give you bliss or misery. You need not go to anybody; you are enough unto yourself. Just go in. Dive deep in your consciousness. And the more conscious you become, the more full of light your life is, the more and more benediction goes on showering on you. The more dark you are, the more unconscious, the more misery is bound to happen.
11. The very idea that ‘I am separate from the world’ is hell. Separation is hell. Drop the ego and see suddenly — all misery disappears, all conflict disappears.
12. All that is needed is a deep insight into your own inwardness. Look into your interiority — that’s what meditation is all about — look in, and you will not find any self there. And when you don’t find any self — it disappears like a shadow in the light — all selfishness disappears on its own accord. Then a totally new quality comes to your existence. You are no longer concerned with creating misery for others; hence you can come out of YOUR misery. And the moment you see inwards, great intelligence is released, great creativity is released. That intelligence brings bliss and, ultimately, even takes you beyond bliss — beyond mind and beyond meditation. It brings you to the ultimate core of existence; peace, tranquility, silence, stillness.
13. Misery gives you a sense of the ego. Misery separates you from existence, defines you. Bliss is a merger, a melting. Your definitions disappear, your ego is found no more. So those who want to feel “I am,” they have to choose misery, there is no other way. The ‘I’ feeds on misery; you may not like misery but you like the ego, and that is the subtle motive for choosing misery. You like bliss, but you don’t want to melt.
14. If I am responsible for my misery, that also means, automatically, that I am responsible for my bliss. If I am responsible for my misery, I can stop it immediately. Let me repeat the word ‘immediately’ — not even for a single moment does one have to wait. It is not a question of changing your past lives, it is not a question of changing the whole society, it is not a question of bringing the dictatorship of the proletariat, and it is not a question of going into years and years of psychoanalysis. It is a simple question of accepting the responsibility that “Whosoever I am, I have created my climate, my being.”
15. The really religious person is one who stops finding excuses for his misery. It needs guts to accept that “I am responsible,” that “This is my choice, I have chosen my life this way,” that “My freedom is there, has always been there, to choose whatsoever I want. I can choose misery, I can choose bliss.” Man’s soul consists of freedom. I teach you freedom. But freedom means taking the responsibility, total responsibility for your life, on your own shoulders, not throwing it onto somebody else.
16. Ego needs continuous fight, because it feeds on fight. The more you fight, the stronger your ego becomes. It is a fighter. That’s why surrender is so difficult. But unless you surrender you will remain in misery. Surrender is the door to bliss, to beauty, to truth, to love, to life, to God. Surrender is the door. And when I say ‘surrender’, I don’t mean that surrender has to be towards someone. That is just an excuse; because you cannot surrender unless you have someone to surrender to — that’s why someone is needed. Otherwise there is no need; you can simply surrender, and the door is open.
17. Whenever you are total the ego disappears. The ego exists only when you are partial. If you have experienced it in some way, sometime… and I see that everybody has experienced it sometime, somewhere. Because it doesn’t fit with your style of life you have forgotten; because it does not fit with your own pattern you do not pay much attention to it; because it doesn’t fit, you by and by forget it, throw it into the unconscious, into the basement of the mind. Otherwise, it has happened to everybody, unknowingly, unawares. Sometimes, just swimming, and suddenly you are filled with an unknown bliss. It happens only if the swimming becomes total. When the swimmer disappears, then the cause of all misery disappears, and then suddenly, God is there.
18. When you feel blissful you are right, moving in exactly the way you should move. Because bliss increases only when you are approaching closer to God, and in no other way. If you are going away from God, anguish arises. You feel more and more frustrated, more and more bored, more and more miserable. Misery is an indication that you are going astray, a natural indication that you have lost track of truth. Bliss simply says that you are falling in line with the whole. Things are becoming harmonious, the garden of the Beloved is coming closer: the air feels cooler, winds bring the fragrance of the flowers, freshness, a new thrill, a new enthusiasm. Then you are moving towards the garden of the Beloved. Maybe you cannot see yet, but the direction is right.
19. You die in misery. Only a few people die blissfully. And when death becomes a bliss, it is a samadhi. When death is a relaxation…real relaxation. Deep inside you surrender, you welcome. You have known life, now you want to know death also. You have lived life, you have enjoyed it. A great trust has arisen in you about life — and you know death is the culmination of life, the crescendo. It must be beautiful! When the whole journey has been beautiful, why not the goal? There is no reason to be afraid. When the whole journey has been such a tremendous joy, why not the end? It is the culmination. You have come home. You welcome, you are ready to embrace death. You relax, you simply slip into death. And that’s the moment! If you can die without any fight, you don’t die — and you are never born again. You have simply slipped out of the body confinements — of the world. You live! — you live eternally. But then you live as an unembodied existence, with no limitations, with no boundaries.
20. you cannot let go of things that are causing you misery because you have not yet seen the investments, you have not yet looked deeply into them. You have not seen that there is some pleasure you are deriving out of your misery. You will have to drop both — and then there is no problem. In fact, misery and pleasure can only be dropped together. And then arises bliss. Bliss is not pleasure, bliss is not even happiness. Happiness is always bound together with unhappiness and pleasure is always bound together with pain. Dropping both…. You want to drop misery so that you can be happy — that is an absolutely wrong approach. You will have to drop both. Seeing that they are together, one drops them; you cannot choose one part. In life, everything has an organic unity. Pain and pleasure are not two things. Really, if we make a more scientific language, we will drop these words: pain and pleasure. We will make one word: painpleasure, happinessunhappiness, daynight, lifedeath. These are one word because they are NEVER separable. And you want to choose one part: you want to have only the roses and not the thorns, you want only the day and not the night, you want only love and not hate. This is not going to happen — this is not the way things are. You will have to drop both, and then arises a totally different world: the world of bliss. Bliss is absolute peace, undisturbedness, neither disturbed by pain nor disturbed by pleasure.
21. People go on saying that they want to become happy, but I rarely come across a person who really wants to be happy. People cling to their misery. Again the same game. With the misery you have something to do. With the misery, some occupation. With the misery you can avoid yourself, you are engaged. With joy there is nothing with which to be engaged, there is nowhere to go. In joy you again disperse and disappear. In misery you are there — you are very much there. Misery gives you a very solid experience that you are. When you are happy, you start disappearing. When you are really happy, you are not, again you are not. In a state of bliss, again you disappear.
22. 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.” Misery needs great efforts, bliss is natural — you cannot create bliss, you can only create misery. And if you don’t create misery, bliss comes of its own accord. Bliss comes effortlessly — you cannot practise it. But for misery you have to make great efforts — and you ARE making great efforts to remain miserable. You have invested much in your misery.

Osho Quotes on Bliss

1. Happiness at the second level is joy. Pleasure you cannot share with anybody. It is something so tiny, so fleeting, so small, there is no question of sharing; but joy you can share. At the third level, happiness becomes bliss. Joy you have to share; blissfulness you need not share — it simply surrounds you. Whoever is courageous enough to come close to you will have it. Bliss is not something that you have to do anything about; it is already there around you, it is your milieu. The blissful person — you can call him the awakened, the enlightened, you can give any name… the blissful person is simply showering his bliss continuously. Whoever is thirsty can drink of it.
2. Bliss has no counterpart to it. That is the first thing to understand. Pleasure has pain, happiness has unhappiness, but bliss has nothing as a counterpart; it is an organic whole. Gautam the Buddha used to say, “If you taste the ocean from anywhere, it is salty.” So is the case with the bliss: you can taste it from any corner, from any space, from any direction — -it is just blissfulness. There is nothing opposite to it. Bliss is the only experience in life which has no polar opposite to it. That’s why, once you are blissful, you cannot fall back. There is no way to be unblissful again. I have tried but nothing succeeds.
3. Bliss has some quality of pleasure in it, it has some quality of happiness in it; but it is much more. And the plus is that you feel absolutely fulfilled, contented, with no desire, no expectation. This very moment you are where everybody wants to be, and there is a tremendous feeling that more than this is not possible; there is no way. It is just as there can be nothing bigger than the sky; it is unbounded. It is inconceivable to the mind, because the mind can only conceive limited things. Here you can feel how limited the mind is. It cannot even conceive something unlimited.
4. Bliss is a taste, a feel, and so overwhelming and so intense, that once you have got it you cannot believe how you have been missing it all along: “i cannot figure it out because it is simply there. It was always there; how did I manage to miss it for so many lives?” Once you get it, that is the problem that arises: how have you been missing it? Bliss is just sitting at the very center of your being, ready to be remembered.
5. In the same reference I would like you to understand the original word for sin. The root from where it comes means forgetfulness. This is just strange: sin means forgetfulness. Then the whole of religion has only one meaning: Remembering. There is only one sin — to forget your being. And there is only one virtue — to remember it. And the moment you know who you are, instantly, immediately, all the bliss of the whole existence is yours. You are so full of bliss that you can bless everybody, the whole existence, without exhausting it ever.
6. The smallest blade of grass has an equal value to the greatest star in the sky. In existence there is no hierarchy, nobody is lower, nobody is higher. Everybody is just himself. Some tree is tall, some tree is not tall. That does not mean that the tall tree is greater, superior, and the small tree is not greater, not superior. No, in nature there is no hierarchy. The small tree has the potential of being a small tree. It has brought its potential to its completion; it is happy, blissful. It is not comparing itself with the tall tree. And the tall tree is not looking downwards with the eyes of a president looking at the ordinary people or a prime minister looking at the ordinary people. The tall tree is just a tall tree. It has fulfilled its potential. Both have done exactly the same; whatsoever was their potential, they have brought it to fulfillment… and fulfillment is bliss. What you fulfill does not matter. Fulfillment of your potential is bliss.
7. Only a creative person can know what bliss is. Paint, play music, compose poetry, do anything, not for any other purpose, just for your joy, for no other reason. If you can compose poetry just for your own joy, or a few friends may share it; if you can make a beautiful garden, just for the sheer joy of making it, and anybody who passes by may stand for a while and have a look — that’s enough reward. But this is my experience, that only creative people know what bliss is. Those who are not creative cannot know bliss.
8. Bliss is something totally different. It is not dependent on anybody. It is the joy of creating something; whether anybody appreciates it or not is irrelevant. You enjoyed it while you were making it — that’s enough, more than enough.
9. The last is my most precious request to you, and that is: In existence the most extraordinary thing is to be ordinary. Everybody wants to be extraordinary, that is very ordinary. But to be ordinary and just relax in being ordinary, that is superbly extraordinary. One who can accept his ordinariness without any grudge, any grumbling — with joy, because this is how the whole existence is — then nobody can destroy his bliss. Nobody can steal it, nobody can take it away. Then wherever you are you will be in bliss.
10. It makes me sad that you are not individuals. Somebody is a Christian, somebody is a Hindu, somebody is a Mohammedan, somebody is a Buddhist. You are not individuals. You are blind followers, programmed by other blind followers. But as far as I am concerned, there is no sadness in me. Day and night, I am in absolute bliss. That also makes me sad, that what is possible for me — an ordinary individual like me — why can’t it be possible for all? I do not claim any speciality. I do not claim that I am the only begotten son of God. I do not proclaim that I am the prophet bringing a fresh message from God.
11. I teach contentment. And the basic principle of contentment is to drop your ego. Don’t think for a single moment, “To be or not to be.” Just not to be is the rule. What have you gained by trying to be? Just for a change try not to be, and you will be amazed. The moment you are not, there is contentment, there is silence, there is beauty, there is bliss.
12. I am here, available. If you are thirsty, move closer to me. And soon you will know that light, that insight, that explosion of bliss in which there is no choice. Enlightenment is choicelessness. But don’t misunderstand me. Before that, you will have to move very cautiously, choosing the right against the wrong, choosing the truer so that you can reach to the ultimate truth.