Osho on creating misery and joy

Osho – Deva means divine, samoda means delight – divine delight. And let that be your climate – live in it, breathe in it. It is only a question of remembering, and it comes. And you can do it very easily. You can easily become miserable, you can easily become blissful; it is one’s own creation.

And once you have learned the fact – that it is one’s own creation, heaven or hell – then there is no point in being in misery, no point in choosing hell. We go on choosing hell because we are not aware that we are the creators. We think we are forced to be in it, somebody else is doing it, and we go on finding scapegoats. We go on avoiding the real factor that is behind it: it is us. When you are in misery, remember, you have created it, and you can uncreate it immediately because it is just imagination. So these are the three steps towards inner realisation….

First: recognition of the fact that the misery is our own creation. People are such great artists in creating misery – they have become so skillful. That’s all that they create; they don’t create anything else. And naturally, life after life they have been in the profession of creating misery for themselves; they have become proficient. They are not amateurs; they are professionals.

The first thing to recognise is that the misery is of our own creation. In that very recognition it starts disappearing like smoke. It is no more solid. How can it be solid when you see that you are creating it ? How can you go on creating it when you recognise the fact that you are creating it! In that very recognition something clicks; the misery is apart and you are separate. The bridge is broken. And that is one of the greatest steps.

The second step is that we can create our joy, our delight. If we can create misery, then why can’t we create joy? That follows like a shadow to the first. In fact to create misery is more difficult than to create joy. If we can do the difficult job then the second is easier, far easier, because it is far more in tune with our nature; that’s what we desire.

Misery we don’t desire and yet we create. It is against us, so if we can create that which is against us then the second thing is child’s play: to create joy, delight. That is the second step – when you create a climate and you live in it; you create your own world. You paint your own world, you sing your own song. For the first time you become individual and for the first time you become free; now nobody can disturb you. If you want to get disturbed, that’s another thing; that too is your choice. But you are never a victim again so you never make anybody else feel guilty for it.

And the third step is that when you have understood that you create the misery, you create joy; then you must be separate from both because the creator cannot be his own creation. You can paint a picture but you cannot become the painting. You can write a novel but you don’t become the novel. You can sculpt a beautiful statue but you don’t become it. The creator can’t become his own creation.

So if we are the creators of misery and joy, of hell and heaven, of pain and pleasure, then the third step follows very logically. One day suddenly you recognise the third too; it follows the second. They are in a chain: How can you be miserable or how can you be joyful? You are separate. You are a separate reality, you are a witness. And that’s what we call nirvana, enlightenment….

So I am giving you two steps; the third will follow. First, the place where you are, where everybody is – the miserable place, suffering. And this is the step you have to take – samoda. You have to become delight. And the third will come on its own: whenever you are ready, it comes. It comes like a benediction.

Then misery and joy both disappear… then there is utter silence. You can’t define it as joy. No, not even that is possible. It is so much more than joy, it cannot be confined to the word joy, bliss, no. No word will be able to express it; it is just a wordless silence. Ecstasy but with no movement. Nothing moves in it because nothing is in it. It is total silence, total absence. First misery disappears, joy, delight arrives; then joy disappears, the witness arrives, and finally the witness is gone. That is nirvana, that is the great nothingness.

Source – Osho Book “Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There”

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