Why is laughter so difficult for me?

Beloved Osho, it is for the first time I have been so close to you. When I am sitting here with you I feel my heart in tune with your heart, I feel a deep love for you. But I also feel my outer seriousness. Why is laughter so difficult for me?

The sardar said, "Don't force me, because the secret is very embarrassing." They said, "Embarrassing? But we thought you are doing great. We always hear laughter -- either you laugh or your wife laughs... no fight." The sardar said, "What happens is, she throws things at me. If she misses, then I laugh; if she hits me then she laughs. The same things are going on, but it is just that we have made a different arrangement -- what is the point? So I have learned how to dodge her, and she is learning how to...." After twenty years the same sardar wanted to divorce his wife. The magistrate had heard about them, that this was the only couple in the whole city who had never been known to fight. They simply laugh -- the whole city knows them as the laughing couple. The magistrate said, "What has gone wrong?…

Beloved Osho, yesterday in lecture you said that laughter was natural. I have also heard you say that what is natural is easy and right. Why do I find it so difficult to laugh -- even at your jokes?

Just be ordinary and laughter will come to you, unless it has gone very deep in you -- unless, Kevala, you have been brought up by Catholics, Jainas, or in some other kind of unnatural way of life; unless you are an ex-nun! Then it will be difficult, but not impossible. I have destroyed many nuns here! Now even if you try to find them you will be surprised -- you will not be able to find any monks and nuns. If you want to know a really destroyed nun, meet Chintana. She has been a great nun. When she came it was impossible for her to laugh, and now I think she is the most laughing woman around here! Whenever she comes to see me I always tell her to go into gibberish. She is the most perfect at gibberish. She makes such beautiful sounds, meaningless; she starts speaking…

Beloved Osho, about four years ago I was in a space which I always remember as "paradise on earth." it felt as if I'd arrived home. Being in such deep and sweet relaxation and love, I felt as if I had fallen deep inside myself. Beloved Osho, why is it so difficult for me to let myself rejoice like that again?

Don't ask for anything to be repeated in your life, because there are always higher things. Why waste your life with anything lower? Always ask for the higher, for the better. And of course, you don't know what is higher and what is greater; again you are just waiting for the unknown. Just as the unknown has given you a gift in the past, it will be giving you many, many gifts; but you have to have the same childlike innocent heart -- waiting and longing, but not definite about what you are asking. Just trust in existence, and you will find better spaces. There is no scarcity of paradises -- there are paradises beyond paradises -- one has just to be innocent and not cling to anything. You are clinging to a certain experience, and that very clinging is becoming a barrier to prevent another experience from happening. If…

Beloved Osho, when I heard you say laughter is a small release from our misery, my mind would not compute. It felt as though hysteria was filling the room as we all laughed, and I am still asking myself, "what happened?"

You can see what happened! It can look like hysteria. For example, when you understand something and laughter happens as a relief from misery, a great energy is released. Every understanding releases accumulated energies in you. For example, you are not laughing the whole day -- only once in a while. You are not being loving the whole day -- only once in a while. What happens to the energy in the big gaps? It accumulates, and if you come to an understanding of a certain phenomenon there is a great release, and the release is so strong that it will feel hysterical. But it is not hysterical; it is really getting relief from energy which could have become hysterical any moment. You can find people in madhouses laughing for hours, laughing so much that tears come to their eyes. They are mad because they could not manage to release…

Osho, I laugh so much at your jokes. I would like to ask one question: why does a joke create so much laughter?

ONE THING: you have never been allowed to laugh; your laughter is repressed. It is like a repressed spring -- any excuse is enough and it comes out. You have been taught to be sad, long faces; you have been taught to be serious. If you are serious, nobody thinks that you are doing something wrong; it is accepted, it is the way things have to be. But if you are laughing, laughing too much, then people will start feeling embarrassed by you. They will start thinking something is weird:'Why is this man laughing'?" And if you are laughing without any reason, then you are mad; then they will take you to the psychiatrist; then they will hospitalize you. They will say, "He laughs without any reason! Only mad people laugh without any reason." In a better world, in a more civilized world, in a really civilized world, laughter will…