Question – Beloved Osho, Can a person who has cosmic consciousness really enjoy pleasures or does he just act as though doing so?
Osho – Only a person who has cosmic consciousness can really enjoy. Only he can enjoy the ultimate bliss. Only he enjoys — the rest of the people are under the false notion of enjoying. They are carrying false coins; actually, they are suffering. Your happiness and pleasures are nothing but the misery and agony which you have experienced. You say and you think that you are experiencing happiness, but in reality you are experiencing misery.
Only the enlightened one enjoys. Ten tyakten bhunjithan — those who renounced, only they enjoyed. He enjoys the divine. You are enjoying trivia, and the so-called enjoyment of the trivial is causing you great misery.
One day a man came and put a lot of money at Ramakrishna’s feet. Ramakrishna said, “Please take it away.”
That man said, “This is another proof of your being a great renouncer.”
Ramakrishna said, “You are a great renouncer, not I, because I am enjoying the divine and you are giving him up. You are collecting money and I am collecting the divine. So tell me, who is the renouncer and who is enjoying? I am the lover of happiness and you are the renouncer.”
A person who is not bothered about diamonds and is collecting stones must be a renouncer. One who is giving up the valuable and is taking care of the nonessential must be called a renouncer. Cosmic consciousness is the ultimate enjoyment. It is entering into the ultimate bliss of life. There is no greater bliss than this. Without it everything else is misery.
So do not ask, “Can a person who has cosmic consciousness really enjoy pleasures?” He cannot enjoy your pleasures because your pleasures are not pleasures. He is enjoyment, he is bliss, but his enjoyment is different from yours.
To know it you will have to give up your enjoyment and you will have to wake up your consciousness. You are in a dream at present; you have not experienced pleasure or happiness, you have only dreamt about it. But the enlightened one enjoys the truth. He enjoys bliss.
Source – Osho Book “The Great Transcendence”