And I choose to be HAPPY.

HOW IS IT THAT WE USUALLY CHOOSE TO BE UNHAPPY? HOW IS IT THAT WE DON’T FEEL AWARE OF THE CHOICE?

If everybody is looking at you, you become important. If nobody is looking at you, you feel as if you are not there, you are no more, you are a non-being. People looking at you, people caring about you give you energy.

The ego exists in relationship. The more people pay attention to you, the more you gain ego. If nobody looks at you, the ego dissolves. If everybody has completely forgotten you, how can the ego exist? How can you feel that you are?

From the very beginning the child learns the politics. The politics are: look miserable, then you get sympathy, then everybody is attentive. Look ill – you become important. An ill child becomes dictatorial; the whole family has to follow him – whatsoever he says is the rule.

When he is happy nobody listens to him. When he is healthy nobody cares about him. When he is perfect nobody is attentive. From the very beginning we start choosing the miserable, the sad, the pessimistic, the darker side of life. That’s one thing.

A second thing related to it is: whenever you are happy, whenever you are joyful, whenever you feel ecstatic and blissful, everybody is jealous of you. Jealousy means that everybody is antagonistic, nobody is friendly; at that moment everybody is an enemy. So you have learnt not to be so ecstatic that everybody becomes inimical towards you – not to show your bliss, not to laugh. If you are ecstatic and dancing everybody will think you are mad. Dance is rejected, singing is not accepted. A blissful man – and we think something has gone wrong.

What type of society is this? If someone is miserable everything is okay; he fits because the whole society is miserable more or less. He is a member, he belongs to us. If somebody becomes ecstatic we think he has gone berserk, insane. He doesn’t belong to us – and we feel jealous.

If people are blissful you cannot lead them to war. No. Someone who is blissful will just laugh and say: This is nonsense!

If people are blissful you cannot make them obsessed with money. They will not waste their whole lives just accumulating money. It will look like madness to them that a person is destroying his whole life, just exchanging his life for dead money, dying and accumulating money. And the money will be there when he is dead. This is absolute madness! But this madness cannot be seen unless you are ecstatic.

If people are ecstatic then the whole pattern of this society will have to change. This society exists on misery. Misery is a great investment for this society. So we bring up children…from the very beginning we create a leaning towards misery. That’s why they always choose misery.

In the morning for everybody there is a choice. And not only in the morning, every moment there is a choice to be MISERABLE or to be HAPPY. You always choose to be miserable because there is an investment. Society has done a great job. Education, culture, and the culturing agencies, parents, teachers – they have done a great job. They have made miserable creatures out of ecstatic creators. Every child is born ecstatic. Every child is born a god. And every man dies a madman.

Unless you recover, unless you reclaim your childhood, you will not be able to become the white clouds I am talking about. This is the whole work for you, the whole SADHANA – how to regain childhood, how to reclaim it. If you can become children again then there is no misery.

I don’t mean that for a child there are no moments of misery – there are. But still there is no misery. Try to understand this.

A child can become miserable, he can be unhappy, intensely unhappy in a moment, but he is so total in that unhappiness, he is so one with that unhappiness, that there is no division. The child is not looking at his unhappiness separate, divided. The child IS unhappiness – he is so involved in it. And when you become one with unhappiness, unhappiness is not unhappiness. If you become so one with it, even that has a beauty of its own.

So look at a child – an un-spoilt child I mean. If he is angry, then his whole energy becomes anger; nothing is left behind, no hold-up. He has moved and become anger; there is nobody manipulating and controlling it. There is no mind. The child has become anger – he is not angry, he has become the anger. And then see the beauty, the flowering of anger. The child never looks ugly – even in anger he looks beautiful. He just looks more intense, more vital, more alive – a volcano ready to erupt. Such a small child, such a great energy, such an atomic being – with the whole universe to explode.

And after this anger the child will be silent. After this anger the child will be very peaceful. After this anger the child will relax. We may think it is very miserable to be in that anger, but the child is not miserable – he has enjoyed it.

If you become one with anything you become blissful. If you separate yourself from anything, even if it is happiness, you will become miserable. So this is the key. To be separate as an ego is the base of all misery; to be one, to be flowing, with whatsoever life brings to you, to be in it so intensely, so totally, that you are no more, you are lost, then everything is blissful.

Misery is unnatural, bliss is your nature. Misery is taught by others, bliss is given by God. Misery is a conditioning, bliss is your inner soul, your essence. Misery is personality, just the structure around you; bliss is your freedom, it is unstructured.

Become alert. Each moment when you are choosing to be miserable remember: THIS IS YOUR CHOICE. Even this mindfulness will help, the alertness that this is my choice and I am responsible, and this is what I am doing to myself, this is my doing. Immediately you will feel a difference. The quality of mind will have changed. It will be easier for you to move towards happiness.

Then don’t go and ask people how NOT to be miserable. That is absurd. Don’t go and ask masters and gurus how to be happy. The so-called gurus exist because you are foolish. You create the misery, and then you go and ask others how to un-create it. And you will go on creating misery because you are not alert to what you are doing. From this very moment try, try to be happy and blissful.

I will tell you one of the deepest laws of life. You may not have thought about it at all. You have heard – the whole of science depends on it – that CAUSE and EFFECT is the base. You create the cause and the effect follows. Life is a causal link. You put the seed in the soil and it will sprout. If the cause is there, then the tree will follow. The fire is there – you put your hand in it and it will burn. The cause is there and the effect will follow. You take poison and you will die. You arrange for the cause and then the effect follows.

Religion says: Produce the effect and the cause follows. This is absolutely absurd in scientific terms. Science says: If the cause is there, the effect follows. Religion says the converse is also true: you create the effect, and see…the cause follows.

There is a situation in which you feel happy. A friend has come, a beloved has called. A situation is the cause – you feel happy. Happiness is the effect. The coming of the beloved is the cause. Religion says: Be happy and the beloved comes. Create the effect and the cause follows. And this is my own experience, that the second law is more basic than the first. I have been doing it and it has been happening. Just be happy and the beloved comes. Just be happy, and friends are there. Just be happy and everything follows.

Jesus says the same thing in different words: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, then all else will follow.” But the Kingdom of God is the end, the effect. Seek ye first the end – end means the effect, the result – and the cause will follow. This is as it should be.

It is not only that you place a seed in the soil and the tree follows; let there be a tree and there are millions of seeds. If cause is followed by effect, effect is again followed by cause. This is the chain! Then it becomes a circle – start from anywhere, create the cause or create the effect.

And I tell you it is easier to create the effect because the effect depends totally upon YOU; the cause may not be so dependent on you. If I say I can only be happy when a certain friend is there, then it depends on a certain friend, whether he is there or not. If I say I cannot be happy until I attain this much wealth, then it depends on the whole world and the economic situations and everything. It may not happen, and then I cannot be happy.

Cause is beyond me. Effect is within me. Cause is in the surroundings, in the situations – cause is without. EFFECT IS ME! If I can create the effect, the cause will follow.

Choose HAPPINESS – that means you are choosing the effect – and then see what happens. Choose ecstasy and see what happens. Choose to be blissful and see what happens. Your whole life will change immediately and you will see miracles happening around you – because now you have created the effect and causes will have to follow.

Try it! You have been trying the other your whole life – not only this but many other lives also. Now listen to me! Try this magic formula, this mantra I give to you. Create the effect and see what happens; causes immediately surround you, they follow. Don’t wait for the causes; you have waited long enough. Choose happiness and you will be happy.

When I say: BE! – just be the emperor and see – the kingdom follows. I have known it through my experience. I am not talking to you about a theory or a doctrine. Be happy and in that peak of happiness you will see the whole world is happy with you.

There is an old saying: Weep and you weep alone, laugh and the world laughs with you. Even the trees, the rocks, the sand, the clouds, if you can create the effect and be ecstatic, they will all dance with you; then the whole existence becomes a dance, a celebration.

Give it a try!

You are not to do anything to be happy. In fact you have done too much to become unhappy. If you want to be unhappy, do too much. If you want to be happy, allow things, allow things to be. Rest, relax, and be in a LET-GO. Let-go is the secret of life. When you are in a let-go many things, millions of things, start happening. They were already happening but you were never aware.

Osho: My Way: The Way of the White Clouds: CHAPTER 3. TO BE MISERABLE OR ECSTATIC…? Q 1 (Excerpts)

हसते हसते मेरे रोने पे ताज्जुब ना करो
है वही नगमा मगर दूसरे अंदाज़ में ।

Haste Haste mere rone pe tajjub na karo
Hai wohi nagma magar dusare andaaz me.

Don’t be amazed by my crying after a belly laugh
it is the same song but in a different format.

You might have seen this advertisement by Coca-Cola: Happiness Starts with a smile. It’s worth seeing again. Smile is super contagious. I too started smiling and laughing after a while….try it with head phones on and let me know if you smiled 🙂

(57) Coca-Cola: Happiness starts with a smile – YouTube

This is one of my all time favourite comedy songs from “Padosan”. Kishore Kumar, Manna Dey, R.D.Burman and all the legendary actors are at their performance best. Enjoy !!! https://youtu.be/lGfTQ-YFjIE