Seriousness

 

 

Seriousness is a dangerous disease, and we have been conditioned to be serious. Seriousness has become the very way of people's lives; they have lost all sense of humor. And to lose the sense of humor is to lose something so essential that it cannot be replaced by anything else it is irreplaceable. To lose the sense of humor is to lose contact with God, because that is our only connection. Seriousness is the greatest barrier between man and God, and it has to be dropped.

 

It is very paying -- that is the problem -- to be serious in the world is very paying. It makes you more successful, more efficient, more respectable. All that is true, but the more you succeed in the world, the more you fail in the inner; the more respectable you become in the world, the less and less respectable you are in your own eyes. The more you have medals and rewards and degrees, the less and less rich you are. One starts feeling very beggarly.

 

Only laughter makes a man rich, but the laughter has to be blissful. People laugh -- even serious people laugh -- but then their laughter has the quality of hysteria; it is pathological. It is almost like a freak-out. They have been repressing and repressing and repressing and trying to be serious. Then one day it is too much and they cannot repress it any more and it comes. But then it comes like an hysterical fit, looks mad. That's why in the madhouses you will find people laughing tremendously; they are laughing because they are no more repressing it. But that laughter has no serenity, blissfulness, wisdom. It is just a turmoil, a mad noise. It has no beauty in it... it is not prayerful.

 

I teach a laughter which is blissful and I teach a madness which is the ultimate in sanity. And that's what sannyas is all about: a madness with a method, and a laughter so meditative, so prayerful, so serene, so quiet, that it is almost silent music.

 

And that you will have to learn, because I can see something serious around your heart. That seriousness has to be dropped; you have to become a child again. You have to revive that quality of wonder that every child comes with, the quality of awe. You have to run on the sea beaches again in the sun, collecting seashells. You have to start doing non-serious things -- painting, poetry, music. You have been doing serious kinds of things your whole life.

 

Now sannyas has to take you into a totally different dimension: the dimension of the non-serious, the dimension of the festive, because unless one can celebrate life one cannot be grateful to God. And only in gratefulness is God known. The only proof that God exists is in the gratefulness of people who know how to celebrate. Hence down the ages it has been told: If you wish to seek God then seek the people who can laugh, who can enjoy, who can celebrate. There you will find the first glimpses of the divine humor.

 

Particularly in the East we have not made God very serious. He plays a flute and sings a song and dances. He is a dancer and a painter and a poet and this world is his painting, his song, his dance. We don't think of God as a creator -- that word is bombastic. We think of him as a player, and existence we call leela, a play. And that word "play" is the sense of humor.

 

We are participating in a great drama so there is nothing to be serious about... nothing at all. This has to be your fundamental insight. It will transform you and that will bring many many experiences, insights, blessings, to you. That will become the opening of the door.

 

-Osho, "God’s Got a Thing About You, #14"