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Why the Law of Attraction doesn’t work

The Law of Attraction, promulgated in The Secret, became immensely

popular when The Secret was first published several years ago. Feeding on

people’s greed, The Secret basically said that you can attract whatever you

want in your life – money, success, the perfect relationship, great house,

car etc – simply by focusing on it with the positive intent to have it.

In other words, by using positive intention, or positive thinking, you can

manifest whatever you want for your life.

Positive thinking has actually been around for decades – it was the basis of

the very successful self-help empires of Napoleon Hill, Vincent Peale and

Dale Carnegie – the forerunners of new age thinking applied to success in

your personal life.

Every ‘new’ formula for success based on positive thinking is always a hit –

after all, who wouldn’t want an easy way to get rich? It appeals perfectly to

the greedy, lazy age we live in.

In the rush to get on the band wagon, however, very few stop to wonder, if

it were so easy, how come everyone is not living out their dream? And

anyway, how would the world function if everyone lived their dream – who
would do the kind of work that no one else wanted to do? And would it

really be so much fun if everyone else were also living in a big house and

driving a luxury car?

You can tell by looking at the latest courses and books being offered that

the initial optimism of The Secret is being replaced with disillusion. Now

courses offer to teach you why the Law of Attraction is not working for you

– they say, pay me and I will give you the missing ingredient.

It won’t make much difference.

Osho called the whole thing rubbish, long before The Secret came out. He

says that positive thinking cannot change anything because it is a way of

avoiding looking at the unconscious mind, which is full of our negativity. He

says that ‘by your not seeing it, do you think it disappears? You are just

befooling yourself. You cannot change reality. The night will still be there;

you can think that it is daytime for twenty-four hours, but by your thinking it,

it is not going to be light twenty-four hours a day.’ (See more below)

And now my favorite scientist, Dr Bruce Lipton, has come up with scientific

proof which backs up what Osho has been saying all these years.

He says that positive thinking does not work, because it is done with the

conscious mind. And the conscious mind is not what is running our lives.
Conscious mind is not what is running our lives.

Our lives are run by the sub-conscious mind.

Our lives are run by what Dr Lipton calls the sub-conscious mind, what

Osho calls the unconscious mind.  He says science shows that the

subconscious runs our life 95 – 99 % of the time, every single day. And the

subconscious mind is much more powerful than the conscious mind –

over a million times more powerful as an information processor.

The combined effect of a million times more powerful part of our brain, and

the fact that it runs our lives up to 95% of the time, means that our

conscious mind (where our so called ‘positive thinking’ is) has quite an

uphill battle to be heard!

If our conscious desire fitted with our unconscious ideas,

there would actually be no problem. Then the ‘Law of Attraction’ would

work automatically – no need to do anything to create it.

But most of our unconscious ideas (70% according to Dr Lipton), are

negative and destructive, not what we would consciously want!

And as that is what is running our life, you can see why any attempt at

conscious positive thinking is doomed to failure. Just spitting in the wind.

It means that we may consciously think we want more money, and focus on

the visualization of a nice fat bank account of a few million and repeat a lot

of affirmations to that affect, but if there is a belief in our unconscious mind

that we don’t deserve to be rich, that we will never win the lottery, that it is

something for other people not me, then guess what – no matter how much

and for how long you visualize those millions, you will never get them!

The subconscious mind, says Lipton, is like a tape player – it just goes on

playing the same old tapes we learned in early childhood. Those tapes are

the messages we picked up mostly from our parents, or from anyone else

who was very influential for the first six years of our lives. Most of the tapes

run along the lines of, ‘You are not good enough’, ‘You don’t deserve’,

‘Other people are better than you’, ‘You are not acceptable or respectable

as you are, you have to be better.’

Whether these messages were given to us directly or indirectly, they are

what we picked up from the way we were treated, and those messages

went into our innocent unconscious minds where they became truths. And

then the tape player started re-playing those messages any time we were

in similar situations, and we acted accordingly.

In other words, we started living in a vicious cycle where we went on

proving those negative ideas about us were true, thus making them even

stronger. And it still happens today! We still continue to sabotage our

attempts at happiness, success, love, etc. Just we are not aware that we

are doing it ourselves, because it is, well… unconscious.

And where is our conscious mind in all this? That tiny part that is supposed

to be there for at least 1% of the day?

Well, it is there when we consciously use our creativity to work on a

particular issue or project. But when we are not using it, what does it do? It

day dreams!! It wanders off into the future or the past, and thus becomes

unconscious, according to Osho. When it is somewhere else, it is not

observing the unconscious mechanisms that are actually in this moment

running our behavior.

So, not only are we unaware of when our unconscious tapes are playing,

we don’t even have the ability to use our conscious minds to become

aware of and observe the mechanisms of the unconscious.

I remember the dental sessions with Osho the last two years he was in the

body, when he was trying in every way to get the five of us who were there
to become more aware of our unconscious minds. He kept saying, at first

with a chuckle, things like ‘Anando, can't you read your own mind?’ And

honestly, I have to admit that the answer was ‘No’. He said he was

laughing at the five of us, at our unconscious. ‘I am in a difficult position.  A

man with eyes in the hands of blind people.’ You can imagine how

frustrating it was for us to hear over and over, day after day, ‘You don't

know your unconscious Anando/Amrito/Devageet/Nityamo/Shunyo. I know.’

Yet it was incredibly difficult at that time to see the things he was talking

about.

Lipton says you have to learn how to use the Stop button on the tapes

instead of the automatic Play button, and then to change the tapes.

Osho says basically the same thing, and he also says that the way to do

that is through meditation.

Meditation is, after all, the knack of watching the mind, without getting

involved in it (ie without pressing the play button), and without judging it (it

is after all old tapes that are probably no longer relevant to your life, if they

ever were).

Osho is the greatest teacher of meditation I have ever come across. He not

only explains why we are so identified with our unconscious minds, but
formulates a whole new psychology – the psychology of the buddhas -

where meditation is the stepping stone to being free of our unconscious.

And he gives us over 112 techniques of meditation – no creed or belief

system to follow, just the techniques for your own personal journey, all the

tools you need to make this step.

You can find these meditation techniques in The Book of Secrets, by Osho.

You can see and hear Bruce Lipton talking about this in this video  (Ignore

the introduction to the video - I am not promoting EFT as I am not familiar

with it)

D ir ec t fr om Os ho:

Once Gautam Buddha was asked, ”Why don’t you teach your people to
pray?” It was an obvious question – a religion without prayer is simply
inconceivable to many people. And the answer Buddha gave is as fresh
today as it was twenty-five centuries before, as new and as
revolutionary. He said, ”I don’t teach my people to pray because their
prayers will harm them. Right now they are not conscious enough to ask
for anything, and whatsoever they ask will be wrong. First, let them
become conscious enough. I teach them how to become more
conscious and then it is up to them.

When they are fully conscious, if they want to pray, they are free. They
are not my slaves. But I can say one thing: that anybody who is fully
conscious has nothing to ask for. He has got everything that one can
ever ask for.”

Mildred had been nagging her family for years, and everyone had
become accustomed to her whining and her sour face. One day she
attended a ”positive thinking” lecture, where the speaker talked for an
hour on the winning qualities of the face with a smile. Mildred went
home, very impressed, and decided to reform.

Next morning she got up early, put on her favorite dress, and prepared a
good breakfast. When the family came in to the dining room she greeted
them with a beaming smile. Her husband George took a good look at her
face and collapsed in a chair. “Along with everything else,” he moaned,
”she has gone and developed lockjaw.”

He could not believe that her smile could be true. It must be lockjaw!

People try to pray, people try to smile, people try to look happy, people
try to be truthful, honest – whatever qualities are praised. But their
unconsciousness stands there behind every act of theirs, and their
unconsciousness distort their honesty, distorts their smiles, distorts their
truth.

But no morality in the world teaches people to first be conscious and

only then to find, by your own consciousness, what qualities you would
like to blossom in your being.... Honesty, sincerity, truth, love,
compassion?

Except for a very few rebels like Gautam Buddha, nobody has thought
about your unconscious, that first it has to be dropped, changed, your
inner being has to be full of light, and then whatever you do is going to
be right. Out of a totally conscious mind nothing can go wrong. But who
listens?
The Rebel, chapter 26

____________________________

The philosophy of positive thinking means being untruthful; it means

being dishonest. It means seeing a certain thing and yet denying what
you have seen; it means deceiving yourself and others.

Positive thinking is the only bullshit philosophy that America has

contributed to human thought – nothing else. Dale Carnegie, Napoleon
Hill, and the Christian priest, Vincent Peale – all these people have filled
the whole American mind with this absolutely absurd idea of a positive
philosophy.

And it appeals particularly to mediocre minds.

Dale Carnegie’s book, HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE

PEOPLE, has been sold in numbers just next to the Christian Bible. No
other book has been able to reach that popularity.

The Christian Bible should not be a competitor in fact, because it is more

or less given free, forced on people. But Dale Carnegie’s book people
have been purchasing; it has not been given to you free. And it has
created a certain kind of ideology which has given birth to many books of
a similar kind. But to me it is nauseating.

… Dale Carnegie started this whole school of positive philosophy,

positive thinking: Don’t see the negative part, don’t see the darker side.
But by your not seeing it, do you think it disappears? You are just
befooling yourself. You cannot change reality. The night will still be
there; you can think that it is daytime for twenty-four hours, but by your
thinking it, it is not going to be light twenty-four hours a day.

The negative is as much part of life as the positive. They balance each
other.
After Dale Carnegie, the great name in the tradition of this positive
thinking is Napoleon Hill. THINK AND GROW RICH is his greatest
contribution to the world – a beautifully written book, but all crap.

Think and grow rich... you don’t have to do anything, you only have to
think in absolutely positive terms and riches will start flowing towards
you. If they don’t come, that simply means that you have not been
thinking absolutely positively.

So these are beautiful games in which you cannot defeat the man who is
proposing the game. He has the key in his hands. If you succeed by
chance, then he succeeds because his philosophy – think and grow rich
– has succeeded. You have been thinking and thinking and thinking and
positively thinking that dollars are showering on you – these are not
snowflakes but dollars showering on you – and suddenly your uncle dies
and leaves you a big inheritance. Naturally, positive thinking works!

But if you don’t succeed... and ninety-nine percent of the time you are
not going to succeed – you know perfectly well that your positive thinking
is not absolutely positive; you know that there is doubt.

Once is a while you open your eyes to see whether they are dollars or
just snowflakes. You see they are just snowflakes, and you again close
your eyes and start thinking that dollars are showering.

But the doubt is there, that these really are snowflakes. Whom are you
trying to befool? All these thoughts are going on: “This is just nonsense,
I shouldn’t waste my time, I could be earning some dollars; this way I am
losing rather than gaining.”

But Napoleon Hill writes beautifully and gives examples of how people
have succeeded by positive thinking. And you can find people – this
world is big enough. For everything you can find an example.
Why one? – you can find hundreds of examples if you just look around
and try to find them. And all these people have been doing just that: they
find examples, and they place the examples in beautiful poetic prose.
And of course you want to be rich, so they exploit your ambition, your
desire. They give you such a simple method – and they don’t ask
anything of you in return.

About Napoleon Hill I remember... he himself was a poor man. That

would have been enough proof to disprove his whole philosophy. He
became rich by selling the book, THINK AND GROW RICH.

But it was not positive thinking that was making him rich – it was fools
around the world who were purchasing the book, it was his work, his
labor, his effort. But in the very beginning days, when his book came out,
he used to stand in bookstores to persuade people to purchase the
book.

And it happened that Henry Ford came in his latest model car and went
into the bookshop to find something light to read. And Napoleon Hill did
not want to miss this chance. He went forwards with his book and he
said, ”A great book has just been published – you will be happy with it.
And it is not only a book, it is a sure method of success.”

Henry Ford looked at the man and said, ”Are you the writer of the book?”

Napoleon Hill said proudly, ”Yes, I am the writer of the book.” And he
can be proud: that book he has written is a piece of art. And to create a
piece of art out of crap is real mastery.

Henry Ford, without touching the book, just asked one question, ”Have
you come in your own car or on the bus?”

Napoleon Hill could not understand what he meant. He said, ”Of course,
I came on the bus.”
Henry Ford said, ”Look outside. That is my private car, and I am Henry
Ford. You are befooling others; you don’t have even a private car and
you write a book called THINK AND GROW RICH! And I have grown
rich without thinking, so I don’t want to bother with it. You think and grow
rich! – and when you grow rich then you come to me. That will be the
proof. The book is not the proof”

And it is said that Napoleon Hill never could gather up the courage to
meet this old man, Henry Ford, again, even though he became a little
richer. But compared to Henry Ford he was always a poor man and was
bound to remain a poor man, always. But Henry Ford’s logic was clear.

No. I do not believe in any philosophy of positive thinking; nor do I

believe in the opposite, in the philosophy of negative thinking – because
both are there. The positive and the negative make one whole. My
philosophy is holistic – neither positivist, nor negativist, but holistic,
realistic. You see the whole in its totality, whatever it is. Good and bad,
day and night, life and death, they both are there.

My approach is to see exactly what is the case.

There is no need to project any philosophy on it.

… You ask me: Am I against positive philosophy? Yes, because I am

also against negative philosophy.

I have to be against both because both choose only half the fact, and
both try to ignore the other half.
And remember: a half-truth is far more dangerous than a whole lie,
because the whole lie will be discovered by you sooner or later. How
long can it remain undiscovered by you? A lie, of course, is a lie; it is just
a palace made of playing cards – a little breeze and the whole palace
disappears.

But the half-truth is dangerous. You may never discover it, you may
continue to think it is the whole truth. So the real problem is not the
whole lie, the real problem is the half-truth pretending to be the whole
truth; and that is what these people are doing.

The philosophy of positive thinking says: “Take everything positively.

The negative should not have any space in your approach, there should
be no negative part.” This is making a part, the positive part, almost the
whole.

The same is true about negative people, although there are none who
preach the philosophy of negative thinking, because who is going to
listen to them? They will say, ”If somebody is smiling, look out – there
must be something he is hiding behind the smile. In fact, he must want to
cry or weep. Look out – don’t be deceived by his smiling; find out the
negative. If he is looking very happy, that means certainly there is
something that he is trying to hide behind his happiness.”

People are so miserable, who is going to listen to such a philosopher?

They will say, ”We are already so miserable, and you are teaching us to
search for more misery! Even if a false smile is there, at least it is there.
Please forgive us, we can’t go on digging and finding the tears. We have
enough tears already. And just a smile – although it may be just a
mannerism, a formality, just a civilized way of meeting somebody....”

When you meet somebody and ask, ”How are you?” – he says, ”I am
perfectly well.” Now, if you are a negative philosopher you have to find
out what this man is hiding: ”How can he be perfectly well? Have you
ever heard of anybody in the world being perfectly well? He is Lying!”
But nobody will listen to a negative philosopher. You also say, ”I am
perfectly well. You are perfectly well? – good.”

And you depart in good spirits. What is the point of showing one’s
wounds to each other and making each other more miserable than
before?

So there is no school of negative philosophers. But there are more

people who believe in negative philosophy without knowing it than there
are people who believe in positive philosophy.

In fact, all these believers in positive philosophy are basically negative.

To hide that negativity they believe firmly in the positive philosophy.

I am not in support of either side. I am in favor of taking the whole truth,

and that’s what I would like you to do too: take the whole truth, because
the negative is as essential as the positive.

You cannot create electricity with only the positive pole; you will need the
negative pole too. Only with both the negative and the positive pole can
you create electricity. Is the negative absolutely negative? It is
complementary, so it is not against the positive.

From Ignorance to Innocence chapter 29 | Positive thinking:

philosophy for phonies

____________________________

The technique of positive thinking is not a technique that transforms you.

It is simply repressing the negative aspects of your personality. It is a
method of choice. It cannot help awareness; it goes against awareness.
Awareness is always choiceless.
Positive thinking simply means forcing the negative into the unconscious
and conditioning the conscious mind with positive thoughts. But the
trouble is that the unconscious is far more powerful, nine times more
powerful, than the conscious mind. So once a thing becomes
unconscious, it becomes nine times more powerful than it was before. It
may not show in the old fashion, but it will find new ways of expression.

So positive thinking is a very poor method, without any deep

understanding, and it goes on giving you wrong ideas about yourself.

… Positive thinking came out of Christian Science. It talks now more

philosophically, but the base remains the same – that if you think
negatively, that is going to happen to you; if you think positively, that is
going to happen to you. And in America that kind of literature is widely
read. Nowhere else in the world has positive thinking made any impact –
because it is childish.

“Think and grow rich” – everybody knows this is simply foolish. And it is
harmful, and dangerous too.

The negative ideas of your mind have to be released, not repressed by

positive ideas. You have to create a consciousness which is neither
positive nor negative. That will be the pure consciousness.

In that pure consciousness you will live the most natural and blissful life.

If you repress some negative idea because it is hurting you.... For

example: if you are angry, and you repress it and try to make an effort to
change the energy into something positive – to feel loving towards the
person you were feeling angry with, to feel compassionate – you know
you are deceiving yourself.

Deep down it is still anger; it is just that you are whitewashing it. On the
surface you may smile, but your smile will be limited only to your lips. It
will be an exercise of the lips; it won’t be connected with you, with your
heart, with your being. Between your smile and your heart, you yourself
have put a great block – the negative feeling that you have repressed.

And it is not one feeling; in life you have thousands of negative feelings.
You don’t like a person, you don’t like many things; you don’t like
yourself, you don’t like the situation you are in. All this garbage goes on
collecting in the unconscious, and on the surface a hypocrite is born,
who says, ”I love everybody, love is the key to blissfulness.” But you
don’t see any bliss in that person’s life. He is holding the whole of hell
within himself.

He can deceive others, and if he goes on deceiving long enough, he can

deceive himself too. But it won’t be a change. It is simply wasting life –
which is immensely valuable because you cannot get it back.

Positive thinking is simply the philosophy of hypocrisy – to give it the

right name. When you are feeling like crying, it teaches you to sing. You
can manage if you try, but those repressed tears will come out at some
point, in some situation. There is a limitation to repression. And the song
that you were singing was absolutely meaningless; you were not feeling
it, it was not born out of your heart.

It was just because the philosophy says to always choose the positive.

I am absolutely against positive thinking. You will be surprised

that if you don’t choose, if you remain in a choiceless awareness, your
life will start expressing something which is beyond both positive and
negative, which is higher than both. So you are not going to be a loser. It
is not going to be negative, it is not going to be positive, it is going to be
existential.

Positive thinking is simply the philosophy of hypocrisy – to give it the

right name. When you are feeling like crying, it teaches you to sing. You
can manage if you try, but those repressed tears will come out at some
point, in some situation. There is a limitation to repression. And the song
that you were singing was absolutely meaningless; you were not feeling
it, it was not born out of your heart. It was just because the philosophy
says to always choose the positive.

I am absolutely against positive thinking. You will be surprised that if you

don’t choose, if you remain in a choiceless awareness, your life will start
expressing something which is beyond both positive and negative,
which is higher than both.

Tr a n s f o r m i n g D e s t r u c t i v e U n c o n s c i o u s E m o t i o n s i n t o C r e a t i v e
Energies

A talk given by Anando to the annual conference of edizione Mediterrannee, Italy, in

2005

From time to time, unconscious emotions – anger, fear, hate, jealousy,

greed, lust, cowardice, etc, run our life. Or it might be more appropriate to

say they ruin our life.

unconscious emotions – anger, fear, hate, jealousy, greed,

lust, cowardice, etc, run our life.

They are unconscious because they take possession of us often for no

rational reason, or with a strength that is out of proportion to the situation

that provoked them. And they eat away at our energy – in the night they

become nightmares and in the day they affect all our actions.

The only way we know how to deal with these unwanted emotions is by

repression or expression.

With repression, the emotion, for example anger, is there, flooding our

body, but we are trying not to be angry. We control it, and in so doing, it

doesn’t just go away, it is simply driven deeper into the unconscious, where

it accumulates as a poison. The more we do this, the more poisoned we

become. It is not healthy, and eventually it drives us neurotic. And we know

that at any moment the accumulated anger can explode, and then it is

uncontrollable.

With repression, we hurt ourselves – we get stomach ulcers and worse.

And we feel we are sitting on top of a volcano, so we are never at ease. We

are restless, and all joy disappears from our life, because if we repress the

energy of anger, we become incapable of expressing anything else either -

because everything is joined inside. There are no watertight compartments

between anger and love. It is not that you can repress anger and express

love; then your love will be false because it won't have any heat, it won't

have the quality of warmth. It will just be a mild mannerism, and you will

always be afraid of moving deeper into it, because then all the repressed

energies may arise.

And we all know that the other alternative, expression - dumping these

emotions onto someone or something else - does not help. In fact it is even

more destructive, perpetuating a vicious cycle that can destroy

relationships as well as our health. And the more we express these

emotions, the more difficult it is not to do it – it becomes a habit, a second

nature. It brings great misery to us, and to others - and to no point. It

creates ugly situations in life, which we have to pay for, and on top of that

we feel guilty, that we should not be angry. Out of the fear of expression,

we repress. But neither is good for us.

Osho, the revolutionary Indian mystic who has turned so many accepted

theories on their head, suggests a third way – understand the unconscious

nature of these emotions, how they function, and use their energy for

creative purposes.

Emotions are energies. And unconscious emotions, all unconscious

energies, can be transformed by the alchemy of awareness into their

opposite, positive values. For example, fear can become love, anger

can become compassion, hatred can become friendliness, lust can

become creativity. It is the same energy, transformed through

understanding.
So Osho’s way is not a question of trying to discard these unconscious

energies, but rather accepting them and using them – they are a part of us,

it is our energy, so to try and reject them is like fighting a part of ourselves.

We are either identified with the mind or we are fighting with the mind.

If we are identified, then we will indulge in anger, in sex, in greed, in

jealousy. If we are fighting, then we will create anti-attitudes. Then we will

be divided. Because fighting is simply one part of mind fighting with another

part, so it cannot lead to transformation. On the contrary, you will become a

madhouse - fighting with yourself, taking revenge upon yourself, yielding to

yourself, being defeated by yourself. Fighting is a kind of cooperation – it

gives power and a reality to whatever you are fighting.

Instead, Osho says, accept that the energy is there, and try to understand

the mechanism behind it. If you can really see and understand the whole

mechanism, it will automatically transform into an energy that you can use

positively and consciously in your life.

For example, if you accept anger and use its energy creatively, it releases

great vitality and passion in you. Then you are not standing back from life,

afraid you might explode, but you can enjoy being in the thick of things,

involved in the whole rich dance of life. Rejecting anger, recoiling from your

own energy, you are rejecting the possibility of being vital. You will be dull.
Similarly if you reject sadness, you will not have any depth. Your laughter

will be shallow, because it will just be on the surface.

When we reject parts of ourselves, because they don’t fit with some ideal

we have created, they don’t fit with the image we have manufactured for

ourselves, then we become phony. And afraid of life. When we don't reject

anything, all energies are ours, we are enriched. Then we have

tremendous energy. And that tremendous energy is a delight.

How does it work? There are two steps: acceptance and awareness. If we

really accept - that in this moment anger is there, or sadness is there, and

this is my energy - then a relaxation happens. The fight stops. And in that

relaxation, awareness of the mechanism of the unconscious is possible.

This awareness automatically transforms, because knowingly you cannot

be angry, knowingly you cannot be greedy. For anger, for greed, for

violence, unawareness is a basic requirement. Just as you cannot

knowingly take poison, just as knowingly you cannot put your hand into a

flame, so you cannot knowingly be angry, once you are aware of what it

does to you.

The vital key to acceptance for this purpose is that you have no

condemnation, no rejection of whatever emotion is there; that you have no

interpretation of whether it is good and bad, you are simply acknowledging

and accepting whatever is there, in that moment.

This is not as easy as it sounds – to see and acknowledge what is, without

judging or commenting on it. It is only possible through meditation. It is not

possible for the mind to be without judgments and comments – just try and

watch your mind for five minutes. But meditation gives you the possibility to

access dimensions of yourself which are beyond your mind – dimensions in

which you can really see facts with awareness, without judging.

Meditation gives you the possibility to watch the workings of the

unconscious within you, objectively. It gives you the possibility to

understand your unconscious energies - how they work, what are their

functions. If you can really watch all the ways of the mind - greed, desire,

ambition, jealousy, possessiveness, domination - one day suddenly you will

find they are not there. Their power was in being unconscious. They have

no other reality. So as soon as you shine the light of awareness on them,

they disappear.

Meditation is needed because normally we are afraid to look at our own

reality – we are afraid that if we come face to face with ourselves, all our

illusions about ourself will fall down.

Another important point: acceptance does not mean resignation – for

example, anger is there and what can I do about it. Acceptance means only

that you accept the fact, as it is. See that anger is there, acknowledge it. Be
aware that it is happening - watch it. It is a beautiful phenomenon - energy

moving in you, becoming hot, bubbling, boiling, sizzling.

It is just like electricity in the clouds. Primitive people used to be afraid of

lightening. Then science learned how to transform that electricity into

energy that runs your air conditioner, the fridge: whatever you need. The

electricity of lightening has become a domestic force, it is no longer angry

and no longer threatening. Through science, an outer force has been

transformed into a friend.

Through meditation, the same happens with inner forces. Anger is just like

inner electricity in your body. It is electricity because you become hot; and

when it is transformed, a deep coolness happens.

Electricity is hot - it becomes the source of air conditioning. Anger is hot - it

becomes the source of compassion. Compassion is an inner air

conditioning. Suddenly everything is cool and beautiful, and nothing can

disturb you, and the whole existence is transformed into a friend. When you

look through the eyes of anger, somebody becomes an enemy; when you

look through the eyes of compassion, everybody is a friend. When you

love, everywhere is heaven; when you hate, everywhere is hell. It is your

own standpoint, which is projected onto reality.

So the moment you understand your anger, you can channel it: it will

become your servant. Anger is energy. If you do not understand that, it can
make you mad. If you know it, you can transform the energy and use it

creatively. The energies of the emotions are always there – it is a question

of whether you use them or they use you.

So if there is anger within, do not fight with it, do not repress it. Know it,

understand it. When anger takes possession of you, shut yourself in a room

and look at the anger - where it is, what it is, where it has taken hold of your

being. Allow the energy to be there, boiling, bubbling. Don’t suppress it in

any way, just watch where all the flames of anger burn within the

consciousness. Watch your face get red, feel the anger in your hands and

jaw. And go on watching it. Don’t support the anger by going into the

reasons why you are angry – don’t focus on a cause outside, just focus on

your own energy within. And you will be surprised - the more you observe

anger, the fainter it will become. The more conscious you become of anger,

the sooner it will evaporate. Then a moment will come when it will

disappear, and what remains within is peace, silence, tranquility. Like after

a storm. This is the creative use of the negative emotions.

Anger depends on your cooperation. In watching, the cooperation is

broken; you are no more supporting it. It will be there, for a few minutes,

and then it will be gone. Finding no roots in you, finding you unavailable to

cooperate in it, it will dissipate.

So awareness is the second step – first acceptance, then awareness. And

you can be aware only if you accept totally whatever is there. If not, you will

try to avoid it in subtle ways - you will think of something else, you will

pretend it is not there. You will create a façade, or you will try to justify it.

That is a dead end. If you do not accept that it is your anger, your energy,

then you cannot be aware of it.

Accepting anger means, anger is not an act. Rather, you are the source.

Accepting this means throwing away your self-image. And we have all built

beautiful self-images. So this first step is the most difficult: to accept

whatever you are, to accept whatever is there in the moment as a natural

fact without any condemnation.

But if you can accept it, then you can watch it. And watching means, not

being against it, nor for it. It means don’t cooperate with it, don’t indulge in it

and throw it on others, and don't suppress it. Just look at it, observe it.

Normally when we are angry, then our mind is focused on the cause of

anger outside. Someone has insulted you - you are angry. So inside is your

energy of anger, outside is the cause which has provoked your energy to

come up, and you, the watcher, are in between. The natural way of the

mind is to be focused on the cause outside, rather than being aware of the

source of your energy inside.

Just move your focus in - watch it patiently, just let it rise and see what

happens. And you will be surprised. You will see that if you wait, anger

becomes compassion. Just as night becomes day if you wait, in the same

way anger becomes compassion if you can wait a little. The same energy -

just patience is needed.

A few more things to understand. One is about the root causes of anger:

Anything that comes as an obstruction to your desires creates anger. You

cannot drop anger unless desires disappear. People want to drop anger,

and they don't understand that they are wanting to drop a symptom - anger

is only a symptom. It simply shows that somewhere your desire has been

obstructed: something is coming between you, your desire, and the object

of your desire - hence the anger. Anger means, "I will destroy the

obstruction!"

And another thing: never take any action in the mood when the negative

emotion is possessing you; just wait. Don't act when anger is uppermost,

otherwise you will repent, and you will create a chain of reactions to which

there will be no end. Negativity provokes more negativity, anger brings

more anger, hostility brings more hostility. Wait. When you are angry, this is

the moment to meditate. Don't waste this moment - anger is creating such

great energy in you - it can destroy. But energy is neutral - the same

energy that can destroy, can be creative.

This is not repression. Osho is not saying to repress the negative, he is

saying watch the negative. There is a tremendous difference. It is not about

sitting on top of the negative, ignoring the negative, or doing something

against it. It is not that when you are angry, you should smile - no; that

smile would be false, ugly. Instead, close the door and be with your anger.

There is no need to show it to anybody else. It is your business, it is your

energy, it is your life. Keep looking. You will see that anger cannot be there

forever - try it. If you don't do anything, what will happen? Can anger hang

there for ever and ever? Nothing hangs forever. Happiness comes and

goes, unhappiness comes and goes. Everything changes, nothing remains

permanent. Anger has come - it will be going. Just wait. Let anger be there,

but wait, watch.

Don't repress and don't act according to the anger, and soon you will see

that your face is becoming softer, your eyes are becoming calmer, the

energy is changing... Don't force the change, wait for it to come on its own.

This is the secret – this is learning to transform your poisons into nectar.

That is what the ancients called it - transforming your poisons into nectars.

If you can change your greed, your anger, your fear, your lust - the poisons

- with awareness, they transform into nectar. The same thing that was your

disease, becomes your health. The same thing that was your bondage,

becomes your freedom. All that is needed is to bring awareness into the

dark parts of your being.

Relevant excerpts from Osho

__________________________________________________________________________________
____________

What to do with Those Emotions?

Yes, THOSE emotions – the ones that come out of the blue and take us

over, as if we were possessed. That make us do or say things which we

know we are going to regret, but we just cant help ourselves.

If you have no idea what I am talking about, then there is no need to read

any further.

So, what to do with those emotions? Osho has some interesting ideas on

this subject.

First, he says that emotions are neutral, they are not good or bad. It is the

mind which judges them, it is the mind which decides some are OK and

some are definitely not OK. It is our mind that makes us feel guilty or wrong

for having certain emotions, but the emotions themselves are not wrong.

So no need to reject them or supress them or feel ashamed of them.

Second, he says that emotions are simply different expressions of energy.

Just like sometimes it is stormy, and sometimes it is calm. Sometimes it is

dark and rainy, and sometimes it is bright and sunny. That is how life is. We

can complain and say it shouldn’t be rainy, it should be sunny, but will that
change the weather? It just makes us miserable, that’s all. And then we

miss the joys of the rain and the mysteries of the darkness. Our life will be

a little less rich, a little more confined.

So it is with emotions - they are just energy, sometimes stormy, sometimes

sunny. And like all forms of energy, they are always changing and moving.

Third, he says that emotions are not harmful, unless we get identified with

them. And the identification happens through the mind. For example, when

we are sad, the mind always has a reason – ‘ I am sad because my

boyfriend prefers someone else’. And then we get swallowed up in the

story, the whole drama which is running wild in our mind.

Now, it can be a fact that your boyfriend has found another girlfriend. And it

can be a fact that you are feeling sad as a result. That is the reality.

Once you acknowledge that reality, you have a choice. You can either get

lost in the reason why, the story, the justifications  – the whole mind-fuck

about what is wrong with you that he prefers another, how can he do this to

you, how can you go on without him, etc etc etc. You can chew on this for

days, weeks, months – and we all know perfectly well how to do that.

But meditation allows us another alternative. With the help of meditation,

you can separate the emotion from the story the mind has created around

it. You can note that, ‘This is the mind’, and let your mind chew away on the
drama without giving it too much energy, as if it was an old nag droning on

in the corner. And you can put your attention instead on the physical

sensation of the emotion itself.

The first step is to acknowledge that yes, ‘sadness is there’. Note this is

quite a different thing from saying ‘I am sad’. And then allow the sadness to

be there, as an energy, without judging it or trying to reject it. It is, after all,

just an energy, and energy is always neutral.

This is not about indulging yourself in the emotion – indulgence means

being caught up in the mind fuck, the reasons why. The victim story.

Instead, this is about exploring with an open, non-judgmental heart: what is

the energy of this emotion, sadness? What is the actual physical sensation

of it?

Beware of perjorative labels from the mind - for example, the mind might

classify the sensation as ‘heavy’, which is a judgment. Instead, try and find

a non-judgmental word – for example, deep, or quiet or passive. Keep

feeling more and more – what is the sensation of this energy? And where

do I feel it in my body? Move your attention from the mind to your body.

You may find that actually, sadness has depth, and even a sweetness.

Make your own discovery. You will find that all the different emotions have

certain energetic qualities. For example, anger can be a passion, a fire.

You can clean a whole house with the energy of anger if you don’t divert, or

leak, that energy by getting lost in thinking about why you are angry.

And the magic is, that if you can really allow all the different energies to be

there whenever they come floating through your life, provoked by some

situation or other, then you are not their slave anymore. On the contrary,

you are the master. You can watch them come and go, enjoy and use their

different energies in a creative way, and be all the richer for it. And they do

go – by allowing them to be there when they are there, not trying to push

them away, and using their energy, acting them out in your own way,

without getting lost in the reasons why, you see that after a while the

energy has changed into something else. One minute you were crying, just

because tears were there and the body needed to shed them, and the next

minute you are laughing. 

Just to be clear - using the energies of your emotions in a creative way

does not mean dumping them onto someone else. That is definitely a mind

thing, you are again caught up in the reason, the rationale, why the emotion

is there. Maybe someone else did something which provoked the emotion,

but it is your emotional reaction, your energy, not theirs. The anger, or

whatever, has arisen in you, as your reaction. Own it, acknowledge that it is

coming up in you, and take responsibility for it. Then you can use this

energy.
If you are blaming someone, then you are missing the point and denying

your own energy, not to mention being stuck in an old routine from which

there is no escape. Instead, try saying to the other person, ‘Anger is

coming up in me right now, and it is my anger, my energy, so I need to go

for a run or dance or have a good scream or beat some pillows. Or sit

alone and watch it. Or all of the above. Then I can respond to you.’

Taking responsibility that ‘this is my reaction’, also gives you the

opportunity to see what idea or belief in your unconscious mind caused this

reaction, this energy, to arise. Which bit of your ego felt hurt or lost or afraid

or insecure or guilty? What old wound or fear did the other unknowingly

trigger in you? It can be a wonderful doorway to uncovering yet another

unconscious layer that is hiding your true being.

Sound interesting? Try it. After all, as Osho says, what do you have to lose,

except your misery?

an article published by Anando in the italian Osho Times, republished

on  www.meditationfrance.com

Fe a r

An article by Anando published in the italian Osho Times

Fear was one of the biggest issues in my life. Yet I was not even aware of

how much it was affecting me until after I met Osho.

The day I started to become aware of it, I was working as an advocate in

the legal department of the Ranch, in Oregon. The ‘Ranch’ was actually the

huge community that was created around Osho when he was living there in

the ‘80’s. The US government did not take at all kindly to the fact that this

foreigner in their midst was attracting up to 20,000 visitors each year from

all over the world. It was the right-wing fundamentalist christian government

of Ronald Reagan, and the attorney general was the fanatical Ed Meese.

They threw everything they had at us, relentlessly, and we lawyers were

working up to eighteen hours a day, seven days a week.

I was not afraid of the US government. It was still the days when you could

naively believe (well at least I could) that the government would never harm

innocent citizens. Those days were already numbered, but we didn’t know

it then.

No, I was afraid of getting into trouble with a housewife. Actually, she was

no ordinary housewife, she was one of the ‘kitchen cabinet’ of Sheela, the

woman overseeing (read ‘controlling’) the Ranch. This kitchen cabinet was

notorious – if you said ‘no’ to them in any way, you were thrown out. When

Osho later came to know of how they had been operating, he thoroughly

denounced them, but that’s another story.

This particular housewife, who had no legal knowledge whatsoever, wanted

to know everything we were doing, every day. I hated having to waste time
explaining to her in detail what I was doing and why, and then to listen to

her ideas and suggestions, most of which were totally impractical. These

sessions sometimes lasted an hour or so, and then we had to stay up into

the small hours of the night doing the real work.

I was good at my job and had the results to prove it. Enduring this daily

torture was hell for my mind and for my ego (which was probably the point,

but I had neither the time nor the experience to ponder on such things in

those days). 

On this particular day, she insisted on a strategy which was simply

impossible. As in just not do-able. To get rid of her I agreed. And then I

faced the awful reality. To do what she wanted seemed to me legal suicide

for our case, and potential disaster for the ongoing existence of the Ranch.

In my exhausted state, and with my massive ego, I just couldn’t bring

myself to do it.

Which meant I could very easily be thrown out. Thrown out not just from my

job, but from my home, my lover, my friends - from my whole life, because

that is what the Ranch had come to mean to me. Worst of all, it meant

being thrown away from Osho’s presence.

At that moment I tasted fear like I never had before. My whole body was

overtaken by terror and dread. I sat with it for a whole night, unable to
sleep. Numb. And I was shocked to realize that this fear was of just one

person turning against me...

As luck had it, this person flew off to Portland on some assignment the next

day, so my defiance was completely overlooked and legal life went on as

normal. But inside I would never be the same again.

Over the following days I began to be more and more aware of fear – my

fear. I noticed that I was afraid of so many people, of what they thought of

me, of whether they liked me or not…. Finally I had to face the fact that I

had lived my whole life in fear – fear of other people. I realized that almost

everything I did, was done according to other people – whether they would

approve or not.

It was more than depressing. It was horrible. I just couldn’t get away from it.

Everything I did, everywhere I went, it was in my face (and in my stomach

and legs). I felt as if I was living in a pit of fear, a pit so deep that I would

never get out of it.

And then… some time later, I really don’t remember how long, I realized

that it was less. And it became less, and less and less. I can’t say that any

great revelation happened, no bolt of lightening. But later I understood the

truth of what Osho says about awareness. Just seeing, is enough. Seeing

the hell you are living in, really feeling it, realizing that you are responsible
for it and no-one else, and consciously living in it…. how long can you go

on doing that? How long can you consciously go on choosing hell?  

One key Osho gives which I was not aware of at the time, is not to judge

what you are seeing. I hated what I was seeing…. And I guess that’s why it

took me a while to get to the point of acceptance. Meanwhile, I had no

alternative but to go on seeing myself, day after day, slogging through a

mire of fear, trapped by fear. That’s the problem with awareness, once you

start seeing something that had previously been unconscious, you cant go

back to your blissful unawareness and pretend that everything is OK. I

guess in the end I became so familiar with this fear, I just automatically

accepted the fact that, yes, this is how I am living my life. And although I

was unaware of it at the time, that was the turning point.

I find this experience tremendously helpful when working with people in my

courses. Knowing personally that space where you feel there is nothing you

can do to get out of the way you are, I encourage them to follow Osho’s

suggestion – live your hell consciously, without judging it. And have the

courage to own that you are creating it and you are choosing it.

If you can really do that totally, without allowing the mind to surreptitiously

keep you caught in the game by rationalizing that you are trying to get out of

it, then that totality is enough. The day will come, probably sooner for you

than it did for me, because I didn’t understand the science of what Osho
was saying… the day will come when it just drops by itself. And you wont

even notice until some time later when you realize it is not there any more!

To help people to be able to look at their fear from a place of awareness,

without judging, together with Prabodhi I created the CD which goes with

the new Osho book ‘Fear’. It is a guided meditation based on words and

insights from Osho. The Italian version is spoken by Chetana.

It offers a way to transcend fear by finding a place inside yourself where

you can feel secure, and from where you can watch whatever is happening

on the outside, including in your mind, without getting caught up in it. As if

you were watching someone else’s thoughts and emotions and

experiences.

It gives you the opportunity to see things from a different perspective – to

understand things in a different way.

The process is deeply relaxing, and helps you discover a place of peace

and clarity deep inside yourself which is always available to you, which

gives you all the distance that you need to see and understand what is an

appropriate fear, like when a car suddenly cuts in front of you, and what is

an inappropriate fear, where fear is an unconscious habit or way of life, or

an unconscious projection of our imagination.

Being able to look at your fears from outside the mind, in a relaxed and

non-judgmental way, should be enough for the alchemy of awareness to

start doing its job.

__________________________________________________________________________________
______________________-

The 4 Keys to Happiness

Understanding the nature of happiness is a hot new topic in science – it

appears in all the scientific magazines, and the BBC recently devoted a

series of programs to the subject, interviewing scientists from all over the

world. It even has a name, ‘The neuroscience of happiness’.

The scientists have been trying to understand how the different

mechanisms of desire, want, happiness and pleasure work in the brain.

And from their million dollar research on the subject, many of their

conclusions confirm what Osho was saying way back in the 1960’s.

They have ‘discovered’ that most of the things we think will make us happy,

don’t, at least not for long. For example to their surprise they found that

money, beyond enough for basic needs, does not bring more happiness.

Nor do the things money can buy. Research has shown that even people

who win vast sums in a lottery, after just a few years are as miserable as

they were before they won.

Why is this so? First, the things that give us pleasure are usually physical –

sex gives us bodily gratification, money and objects give us mental

gratification. But all these are transitory pleasures.

After a while, we take ‘things’, including people, for granted – even things

that once made us ecstatic. For example, the new lover, or the new car or

house, the new dress or the new technological whizzmo… the initial thrill

soon wears off, and then we are looking for something better, aren’t we?

It is what the scientists call the ‘hedonic treadmill’. We adapt to things so

fast, and the more possessions and accomplishments we have, the more

we need to have, to keep boosting our level of happiness.

Osho explains that this is because the mind is always desiring – that is its

nature. And once it gets what it had been desiring, it looks for the next

object of desire. The mind can never be happy with what it has, it is always

striving after that which it doesn’t have, or cannot have. He says the mind

can exist only with a goal, because it needs a way to remain tense. If the

mind has a goal, then it can remain unfulfilled, frustrated, and living in

hope. And because we are so identified with our minds, we are therefore

always in misery.

Pleasure is not happiness

Happiness, says Osho, is different from pleasure. Pleasure comes from

things. Happiness is not dependant on things, it is not conditional. It is a

state of being that comes from inside you. Happiness is when there is no

desire for something, just a gratitude for what is. Then it is not a temporary

state, because as long as you have gratitude, you have happiness.

According to scientists, happiness is a very desirable state: the evidence

shows that happy people live longer than depressed people, are healthier,

more resilient, and perform better than others. Professor Diener of the

University of Illinois says, "In one study, the difference in life span was nine

years between the happiest group and the unhappiest group, so that's a

huge effect. Cigarette smoking can knock a few years off your life, three

years, or if you really smoke a lot, six years. So nine years for happiness is

a huge effect."

So what makes us happy?

Osho gives four keys to focus on developing in yourself. Of course, his goal

is not happiness per se, his goal is to bring about a total transformation of

ourselves. His goal is bliss, which is even higher than happiness. But he

says that as we start becoming more real and authentic, more tuned into

ourselves than focused on outside things, then happiness comes

automatically, like a shadow.

Part of the transformation process, he explained back in the 60’s, is to

transform our impure emotions to pure emotions, by developing four

qualities. These are, in fact, exactly the same qualities that science is now

proclaiming will improve your ‘happiness level’:

1. Friendliness 

Scientists say that friendship has a much bigger effect on happiness than a

typical person's income. And not just on happiness, but also on health,

because our brains control many of the mechanisms in our bodies which

are responsible for disease. And just as stress can trigger ill health, it looks

as if friendship and happiness can boost our immunity against disease.

Osho says we all have a source of friendliness inside, but life gives us very

few opportunities for it to develop. In fact, most people die without this

source being developed at all, because what we call friendship is usually

hypocrisy and politeness.

He says we have to constantly create a milieu of friendliness around

ourselves, sending waves of friendly energy all around. One method he

suggested back in the 60’s is to do one or two things for others every day,

for which you expect nothing in return. Forty years later, altruism, or

performing acts of kindness to others, is one of the main suggestions being

proposed by happiness scientists.

2. Compassion 

Let’s face it - usually when we look at people, our thoughts are critical

rather than compassionate. But Osho says there is a heart inside the worst

of people, and if you are able to see it, you will be filled with compassion.

This is not the same as pity, which makes us feel superior to others, and

want to help or change them in some way. Compassion involves love and

acceptance of people as they are.

If you can understand compassion, he says, then you will know how to

spread happiness to others, and that in turn will develop the happiness

center inside you. If, on the contrary, you go on being cruel and critical and

judgmental of others, it will feed your own unhappiness. Because we

become what our thoughts focus on.

The concept of compassion has so far been missed by the scientists, but

watch out for it in the future!

3. Cheerfulness 

Osho says that for the spiritual journey, cheerfulness is needed. If you can

live life as a laughter, then it is much easier to enter into meditation, much

easier to discover your real self.  If you live life as a misery, a sadness, you

are burdened, and then you are not able to go far into meditation.
Sadness is just a habit. Cheerfulness can also be cultivated as a habit. We

just have to start looking for the things in life which are full of light, not

darkness, because the way we look at life directly affects what develops

inside us. If we see radiance and light everywhere, Osho says, we will feel

radiant and light – we will feel joy. Life has no meaning of its own – it all

depends on how you look at it. ‘Drop your sadness and say yes to joy. Let

your life become a song’.

Doctors have also discovered the benefits of laughter – in many hospitals

laughter therapists now work with patients, since it has been shown that

people who can laugh heal much faster. That shows laughter has a

tremendously powerful energy...

4. Gratitude 

In the meditation camp Osho was leading when he spoke about this, he

was very clear with the participants that there was to be no grumbling or

complaining, not about the food or the accommodation, or the mosquitoes!

He said this would come in the way of their experiences of meditation,

because a complaining mind is never at peace.

There are so many things in life to be grateful for, and if we can shift our

focus to those things, if we can start to experience and express gratitude

more, he says it will change our life tremendously. We will be filled with so

much peace, and so much mystery and wonder.

The happiness scientists are also big on gratitude – they suggest keeping a

gratitude diary in which every day you write down things for which you are

thankful.

These are four keys Osho gives us, and he says that if we can develop

these pure emotions in ourselves, it will create an inner expansion of our

being. That is because pure emotions are not dependant on others, they

well up from within us, from our being. And because they are not

dependant on outside sources, they are not temporary, transitory feelings.

They are lasting.

Osho quote:

What is happiness?

“It depends. It depends on you, on your state of consciousness or unconsciousness,

whether you are asleep or awake. Happiness will depend on where you are in your
consciousness. If you are asleep, then pleasure is happiness. Pleasure means sensation,
trying to achieve something through the body which is not possible to achieve through the
body, forcing the body to achieve something it is not capable of.

People are trying, in every possible way, to achieve happiness through the body. The body
can give you only momentary pleasures, and each pleasure is balanced by pain in the same
amount, in the same degree. Each pleasure is followed by its opposite because body exists
in the world of duality, just as the day is followed by night and death is followed by life and
life is followed by death. It is a vicious circle. Your pleasure will be followed by pain, your
pain will be followed by pleasure. But you will never be at ease. When you will be in a state
of pleasure you will be afraid that you are going to lose it, and that fear will poison it. And
when you will be lost in pain, of course, you will be in suffering, and you will try every
possible effort to get out of it - just to fall again back into it.
The sleepy person knows nothing else. He knows only a few sensations of the body - food,
sex. This is his world. And whatsoever you call pleasure is, at the most, just a relief of a
tense state. Sexual energy gathers, accumulates; you become tense and heavy and you
want to release it.

The man who is asleep, his sexuality is nothing but a relief, like a good sneeze. A tension
was there, now it is no more there; but it will accumulate again. To the sleeping, pleasurable
sensations are happiness. He lives from one pleasure to another pleasure. He is just rushing
from one sensation to another sensation. He lives for small thrills. His life is very superficial;
it has no depth, it has no quality. He lives in the world of quantity. The non-meditator sleeps,
dreams; the meditator starts moving away from his sleep towards awakening.

Then happiness has a totally different meaning: it becomes more of a quality, less of a
quantity; it is more psychological, less physiological. He enjoys music more, he enjoys
poetry more, he enjoys creating something. He enjoys nature, its beauty. He enjoys silence.
He enjoys what he had never enjoyed before, and this is far more lasting. Even if the music
stops, something goes on lingering in you. And it is not a relief.

The difference between pleasure and this happiness is: it is not a relief, it is an enrichment.

You become more full, you become a little overflowing. Listening to good music, something
is triggered in your being, a harmony arises in you - you become musical. Or dancing,
suddenly you forget your body; your body becomes weightless. The grip of gravitation over
you is lost. Suddenly you are in a different space: the ego is not so solid, the dancer melts
and merges into the dance. This is far higher, far deeper than the joy that you gain from food
or sex. This has a depth.

But this is also not the ultimate. The ultimate happens only when you are fully awake, when
you are a buddha, when all sleep is gone and all dreaming is gone, when your whole being
is full of light, when there is no darkness within you. All darkness has disappeared and with
that darkness, the ego is gone. All tensions have disappeared, all anguish, all anxiety. You
are in a state of total contentment. You live in the present; no past, no future anymore. You
are utterly herenow.
This moment is all. Now is the only time and here is the only space. And then suddenly the
whole sky drops into you. This is bliss. This is REAL happiness.

Seek bliss; it is your birthright. Don't remain lost in the jungle of pleasures; rise a little higher.
Reach to happiness and then to bliss.

Pleasure is animal, happiness is human, bliss is divine. Pleasure binds you, it is a bondage,
it chains you. Happiness gives you a little more rope, a little bit of freedom, but only a little
bit. Bliss is absolute freedom. You start moving upwards; it gives you wings. You are no
more part of the gross earth; you become part of the sky. You become light, you become
joy.

Pleasure is dependent on others. Happiness is not so dependent on others, but still it is

separate from you. Bliss is not dependent, is not separate either; it is your very being, it is
your very nature. To attain it is to attain to God, to nirvana.”

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