According to Osho, the “blissful pain” you feel near someone you deeply love—especially the master—is ripened longing for oneness. It is not ordinary pain but a sweet, ecstatic ache inviting celebration. By rejoicing in it—letting it become song and dance—you dissolve as a separate self; in that disappearance, the doorway to the divine opens.
It’s a sweet ache that comes from loving so much you want to become one—welcome it, and it leads you to something bigger than yourself.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Love makes you less and less material and more and more spiritual. Ultimately love brings you to a point where you are no longer a body but only a soul, just pure energy, vibrating, pulsating, in rhythm with the whole. That's the experience that religions have been searching for down the ages. You can call it God, enlightenment, nirvana, or whatsoever you like, but the experience is of pulsating with the whole; not lagging behind, not pulsating with your own personal rhythm but becoming part of the total so totally that you cannot say "I"; the word "I" becomes irrelevant. You are just a dewdrop falling into the ocean. In that moment bliss arises because you are at peace with the whole, in tune with the whole. This harmony is bliss, this accord is bliss.
Osho, you have said before that bliss is the touchstone of finding the path. But even after reaching the true Master, why is bliss not found?
Because in truth you do not come close. Do not mistake nearness for real closeness. Do not take being near to mean being truly close. Physical proximity is very easy. Many times you have brushed shoulders with Buddhas and passed by. But don’t imagine that means you came close to them. Many times on the endless roads of life you have met awakened ones. For a moment you walked with them, exchanged a few words—said a little of yours, heard a little of theirs. But don’t take that to mean togetherness happened. If true togetherness had happened, you would long since have dissolved into the Vast. Togetherness did not happen. To be in togetherness is a wondrous event. That is why we value satsang so much. We have called satsang the doorway to truth. Truth is the greatest of happenings; its majesty has no end. And its doorway, too, we…
Osho, could you say something about what is going on in Delhi?
I’ll tell a little story. When Lanka’s former ruler Ravana was on his deathbed, Rama sent Lakshman to learn statecraft from him—saying, “Son, we may have won, but we have no experience of running the administration here; go and ask him how to run things.” Lakshman went there and said to Ravana, “You are dying now—tell us how to govern here.” Ravana said, “Half the politics I handled, half Kumbhakarna did. Had you gotten in touch with Kumbhakarna as well?” Lakshman said, “Yes—he said: eat to your heart’s content and then sprawl on the sofa with your eyes closed. This is the best method.” “Tell me,” Ravana asked, “are you going to unleash dictatorship, or will you run things by democracy? Which method will be suitable?” “What will go down well with the people?” “Nothing,” said Ravana. “When you impose dictatorship, the people will yearn for democracy; and when you…
Beloved Osho, what is this longing to be sitting close to you, to rest my head on your feet, to dance so wildly that the rolls royce stops, to play the guitar and sing so loudly, to look into and drown in your eyes, to stop breathing when you move your hand? What is this irresistable pull to be physically close to you?
The body is there today, tomorrow it may not be; but your soul is going to be forever. The irresistable urge is to let your soul, your consciousness, become one with the master. I have called that state the state of a devotee. The student is only intellectually interested; the disciple comes closer -- he is not only intellectually interested, it is not only his curiosity to know more and more -- the disciple wants to be more and more. But there comes a limit, when the disciple cannot resist the urge to be one with the master, to be one with the beloved. This is a spiritual urge. But everybody feels it first as if it is an urge to be physically close. My intuition was perfectly right when I gave you the name "blissful madness". Now the time has come, the time of maturity. And when your madness…
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.