According to Osho, realization cannot be reached in total ecstasy — total ecstasy happens only after realization. Ecstasy flowers when total frustration with the mind’s hopes collapses ego-driven seeking; the mind drops, energy turns inward (“instasy”), and awakening occurs. Then bliss, beyond happiness and unhappiness, naturally abides; the goal is already left behind, and there’s nowhere further to go.
You don’t get enlightened by joy; when you stop hoping the mind can make you happy and turn inward, the mind falls away and true, beyond-happy peace appears.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
You said one reaches when one is totally frustrated. Can one also reach in total ecstasy?
That is impossible! Because total ecstasy is not possible unless you have reached. When you reach, only then total ecstasy flowers. Otherwise, what will be the need to reach, if you are already totally ecstatic? Then there is no point in going anywhere, you have already reached the goal! In total ecstasy the goal is already left behind. Who wants to reach then? Where will you reach then? There is no more. The path has come to the very end. In total frustration the ecstasy happens. And why do I say in TOTAL frustration? Because if you are still hoping that happiness is possible in this world -- and when I say THIS world always remember I don't mean the world of the trees and the birds and the sky, when I say this world I mean YOUR MIND, THIS mind, this ego centred mind -- if you are still…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, ONCE, SOME YEARS AGO, WHILE MAKING LOVE, I DISAPPEARED. I WOULD LIKE TO SAY, "LITERALLY DISAPPEARED," BECAUSE I FELT AS IF ALL OF ME SIMPLY VANISHED. BUT CERTAINLY MY BODY MUST HAVE BEEN THERE, BECAUSE MY PARTNER DIDN'T NOTICE THAT HE WAS SUDDENLY ALONE. I HEARD MY VOICE SAY: "I AM GOING," AND THEN POSSIBLY ONLY FOR A SECOND OR TWO, NO ONE WAS THERE. THOUGH I HAVE HAD MOMENTS OF JOY WHILE MAKING LOVE SINCE, I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN PRESENT TO KNOW THAT THEY ARE MOMENTS OF JOY. PRESUMABLY ECSTASY WAS THE TRIGGER FOR WHAT HAPPENED, BUT THE HAPPENING ITSELF WASN'T ECSTATIC, IT WASN'T ANYTHING, IT SIMPLY WAS. IS MEDITATION THAT PREVIOUS STAGE OF ECSTASY, OR THAT STATE OF NOT-EVEN-ECSTASY, JUST ISNESS? Ecstasy or blissfulness are all toys to allure you towards meditation. You will find them only in the beginning.
Osho, what does realization feel like? How can a seeker know that something has truly happened? How can one distinguish reality from self-created imagination? How can others recognize the attainment of one who is realized?
You ask: “How can a seeker know that something has truly happened?” When you have a headache, how do you know you have a headache? When I was in school, I had a Muslim teacher—perhaps he is still alive—Rahamuddin, a lovely man, but very strict in one thing: it was almost impossible to get leave from him. He himself never took leave and would not grant it to students. I often needed leave. I would say my stomach hurts, or my head hurts. He said, “Listen, I accept fever; I do not accept stomachache or headache. If you have fever, I can at least take your hand and feel it. But how am I to know whether you truly have a stomachache or headache?” I said, “Since you ask, let me ask you—have you ever had a headache? A stomachache?” He said, “I have.” I said, “What proof can you…
Osho, an ecstasy is spreading within me, but I’m afraid it might slip away!
He says: I know—but it does not come to the tongue. If one knows “I am Brahman,” what fear remains then—that Muslims will be annoyed, that they will hang me, who will say what, what trouble may come? Even that fear? Whenever Mansoor was intoxicated, that one sound arose. Then the master banished him. Mansoor bowed and left, wandering from village to village. But that cry kept resounding. When Mansoor was in his senses, he would not say it. But there were moments when the flood rose—Mansoor disappeared and only God spoke. Then what could Mansoor do! He was arrested. When he was arrested, the caliph asked the master to give a written certificate that this man is a heretic, a kafir, because what he is saying is blasphemy. They say Junaid wrote it. And Mansoor was hanged. But to Mansoor it made no difference. On the day the guards…
Hence the whole mystic approach towards life is how to go beyond body and mind, how to know that which is infinite in you -- the vast, the unbounded, the oceanic. It brings freedom. The ultimate state of consciousness is not a serious phenomenon. It is not sombre, it is not sad. It is full of joy, full of laughter, full of celebration, full of song and dance, because it is a fulfillment: you have come to the ultimate peak of your being. And then flowering happens and your perfume is released to the winds. It can't be serious and sad. All your saints look miserable. They don't seem to have even touched on what I am talking about. They are ascetic people, and asceticism is a kind of masochism, it is self-torture. And when you torture yourself you cannot be joyous -- it is against nature.