Am I missing the point of experiencing bliss?

Bliss is a state of awareness, watchfulness, meditativeness, of profound silence, peace. Nothing stirs in you, all is quiet, and you are absolutely relaxed. Out of that relaxation something bursts forth at you very center, some energy that has always remained there starts flowing, becomes dynamic. It has been dormant because you were never looking at it. You never paid any attention, you were concerned with the body and the mind. Now, you have turned in. Your whole concern, your whole attention, has settled at the center. You have left the circumference far behind. When the energy is absolutely centered, at the center, bliss happens. Happiness has to move from pleasure to bliss. Bliss is always perfect. You can't have imperfect bliss, it is impossible. It is like you cannot have an imperfect circle: if it is imperfect it is not a circle.

Why do people choose misery to be their foundation? It is really amazing. But there is a reason; misery is helpful for one thing, it helps your ego. And bliss is dangerous for the ego, it kills the ego. And we are all brought up in such a way that we become ego-oriented. Our whole education is to enhance the ego, to make us ambitious -- and ambition is insanity. Ego is nothing but sheer madness, and the egoist is bound to live in misery because he will be afraid of bliss. People talk about bliss; they say "We want bliss," but they are really afraid of bliss. Whenever bliss comes they close their doors, they shrink back, they withdraw into themselves. They close themselves like turtles, they go into their shells -- they hide in their shells -- because the moment bliss happens your ego simply evaporates.

Osho, when we sit in meditation we feel bliss. But later, when we return to work and daily dealings, we forget. The mind gets caught again in activity. By what way can the experience of bliss remain constant?

The essential point is this—the essential point is this: that which comes for a little while in meditation and then is lost is not joy, first of all. It is only the absence of misery. One must understand the difference. It is not bliss. In fact, for an hour you simply forget the web of your life’s suffering—your occupations, anxieties, shop, market, relationships—because your energy is moving in a different direction. From this forgetting the illusion arises that bliss is being attained. Bliss is not being attained; only the usual suffering is, for the time being, not being felt. Hence the misunderstanding. That is not the bliss of meditation. It is only that, because the mind moves in another direction, it forgets the directions in which it is ordinarily entangled. The day the bliss of meditation happens, you will not say that it has gone. It does not go; the…

I start with bliss. The old religious approach was to start with contentment, and they used to say -- and it has been said in many scriptures of the world -- that the contented person is blissful. I say just the opposite is true, the blissful person is contented. And one who is not blissful, his contentment is bogus. So start by being blissful. And it will not be very difficult for you. It will be very simple and very easy. You are almost ready to take the jump! How long will you be here? -- One month. -- Be here. Good. (As Paritosh rises to leave Osho says:) Haridas, help him so he does not take the jump too soon! (much laughter) In India we make small earthen lamps. The poor people use those earthen lamps, they are the cheapest.

To be impotent is not to be celibate. To be poor does not mean that you are beyond desire for riches. You may console yourself: you don't care for riches... and one needs such consolations otherwise life will become unbearable. And those people who escaped from the world were consoling themselves thinking that they had gone beyond. But this is not true transcendence. The true transcendence has to be in the world, amidst the fire of the world. The real sannyasin has to be a lotus in the lake: in the lake and yet the water touches it not. Then there is beauty, then there is grace, and then there is tremendous freedom. When you escape from something you are afraid of it, and in fear there is no freedom. And whatsoever you have escaped from will remain a repressed desire in your being.