What happens when I experience joy and bliss during meditation but struggle to maintain it throughout the day?

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…

Osho, each day when I sit in meditation I am filled with great joy, with bliss. Then I spend the whole day waiting for the time of meditation. Yet, in the presence of another person, at mealtimes, etcetera, etcetera, I keep forgetting meditation. If there is so much joy in meditation, and such anticipation for it, then why doesn’t the meditative state remain the whole time? Osho, we have only questions and you have only answers. Forgive me!

On every plane, in every dimension—night and day, work and rest, the in‑breath and the out‑breath, meditation and love—between these two extremes there is a coordination. Music is born from the meeting of sound and silence. So too the music of life is born from love and meditation. Hold both! When alone, be in meditation; when someone is present, be in love. In love, completely forget yourself. In meditation, completely forget the other. And this shifting should be so natural, so fluid, that there is not the slightest hitch in it. Let it happen with ease—like stepping out of the house and coming back in; like inhaling and exhaling. I teach you the totality of both—meditation and love—together. The one who practices only meditation will have a certain lack in his personality. He will be dry. So if Jain monks seem dry to you, if Buddhist bhikkhus seem dry, there…

Osho, when a seeker receives a ray of light, what should be done to keep it continuous?

So if this morning you felt good in meditation, then remembering it five or ten times during the day will be very important. In this way, that memory will deepen; and by remembering it again and again, it will begin to become part of the mind’s enduring nature. If this question is approached experimentally in this way, there will be benefit—and it should be done. Often man’s mistake is that he remembers what is wrong and does not remember what is auspicious. One of man’s basic errors is to remember what is negative and to forget what is constructive. Rarely do you recall the moments when you were filled with love; rarely the moments when you felt some wondrous sense of well‑being; rarely the moments when you became very quiet. But what you recall daily are the times you were angry, you were restless; when someone insulted you, or when…

Osho, how can the feeling of bliss be cultivated? How to taste that throb of bliss, that thrill, that excitement, that dance of bliss? How can life be filled with it?

The man said, “What difficulty is there in that? We all do the same.” The fakir replied, “If only! The day everyone on earth does just this, no one will need to go anywhere to seek liberation. For when you sleep, you don’t only sleep—you do a thousand other things. Your sleep is a long disturbance, a long agony, a long nightmare. When you eat, you don’t only eat—you do a thousand things. You appear to be eating but you are also at your shop, or in court fighting a case. Whatever you do, you do a thousand other things along with it. No act of yours gathers your whole being. “There is only one practice: when you do something, do it totally. When you work, total work. When you rest, total rest.” Then you keep traveling between the two banks of bliss, day and night—swinging from one to the…

You have asked a question: we experience bliss for a short while, and then it disappears. How can that bliss remain for longer?

So an ordinary person is sometimes in hell, sometimes in heaven. A very bad person mostly lives in hell. The utterly bad person lives in hell all the time. A good person begins to live in heaven. A very good person lives more and more in heaven. The utterly good person lives wholly in heaven. One who is free of both good and bad begins to live in liberation. To live in liberation means: it is not a place. You will not find it in space by searching: “Here is heaven, here is hell.” These are divisions of the mental world—of the psychology of man. Thus the mental world has three divisions: hell, heaven, and liberation. Hell is what I called sorrow this morning; heaven, pleasure; and by liberation I mean: neither pleasure nor pain—that which is bliss. So do not think that someday, later, we will get the fruit—that…