Bliss is equivalent to god. ‘God’ is a beautiful word but it has become ugly because of wrong associations. It has fallen into wrong company. The priests have exploited it so much that I appreciate very much Friedrich Nietzsche’s declaration that god is dead and man is free. In fact he is saying the god of the priests is dead because he only knew about the god of the priests. He had no idea about the god of the buddhas because the god of the Buddhas has nothing to do with any super-human person; it is a state of bliss. One need not believe in god at all.

 

Buddha himself never believed in any god, he was as atheistic as one can be, and yet there has never been such a holy man on earth as he was: so godless and so godlike. His godlikeness is superb, unique. Nobody even comes close to him.

 

Jesus is beautiful, Zarathustra is beautiful, Mahavira is beautiful, Lao Tzu is beautiful, Moses is beautiful, but Buddha has some tremendous beauty around him, some inexplicable grace, something very much of the beyond. And it became possible only because he never believed in the stupid idea of god. He went directly into the search, into the enquiry of the existence of bliss. And because he became blissful he became divine. He knew that god is, not as a person but as a quality.

 

It is as when the sun rises — the same quality. It is as when the cuckoo starts calling from the distance — the same quality. It is there in a rose flower. It is in the eyes of two lovers. It is there when a dancer loses himself in the dance, when the dancer disappears and only the dance remains. Once you have experienced it you will find it everywhere. You will stumble upon god from all sides. Wherever you will go you will encounter him. It is impossible then to avoid him.

 

Since I have known him I have not been able to avoid him for a single moment. Even if you are alone in your room he is inside you. He does not leave you alone: even if you go to the bathroom he is there’ Even if you are asleep in your bed he is sleeping with you. Once you have known, he is always there, in your very breathing, in your very heartbeat. But seek him through bliss, otherwise there is a danger of becoming just a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan. And I want my sannyasins to be aware of all those pitfalls.

 

There is only one way to find truth and that is through bliss. A miserable person cannot find truth. He can theorise about truth, he can think about truth, he may create great systems of philosopher. But all those are just sandcastles or palaces made of playing cards: just a small breeze and the whole palace collapses. All great systems of philosophy have no foundations because the person who created them had no experience of truth. Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Vico, Feverbalh, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Bertrand Russell — all these people have created beautiful theories, but they are all words; they are not sustained by any experience..

 

There have existed two rivers of consciousness: One is of the philosophers Aristotle in the West is the father of that, the originator. The other is of the mystics. That is a totally different kind of river. It has nothing to do with philosophising, it is rooted in existential experience. And it has almost always happened that whenever there was a great mystic his followers always became divided between these currents. The real ones, those who have understood the master, those who have really loved the master, became mystics. And those who have understood only the words of the master have become very knowledgeable; they became the philosophers.

 

Socrates was a mystic. Plato was his disciple but he lost track; he became a philosopher. Aristotle was Plato’s disciple. When Buddha died thirty-six systems of philosophy were born amongst his followers — thirty-six! Almost all kinds of possibilities are exhausted by those thirty-six systems. In fact there cannot be more than thirty-six systems. That is all the possible combinations, the whole world of philosophy exploded.

 

And the real people… Mahakashyapa, one of Buddha’s most authentic disciples, remained silent, he didn’t say anything. He started a totally different tradition, the tradition of the mystics. He transmitted his experience not through words, not through scriptures, but through a totally different kind of communion: the communion of the master and the disciple.

 

It is through Mahakashyapa that the tradition of Zen was born. He was the first, and very great mystics followed. But it is a totally different world: there is no argument about god, no argument about truth, no argument at all. mere, argumentation is not the way but meditation, not mind but meditation. These people became more and more silent. And as you become silent your inner source of blissfulness start exploding. It is the words and theories and the philosophies which function like rocks and don’t allow your springs of bliss to flow.

 

So from this very first moment remember it, that my way is the way of a mystic, not of a philosopher. I believe in bliss, not in theories about bliss. And I want you to taste it, not just to think about it. It is pointless to go on thinking about food — it won’t nourish you. It is stupid to go on thinking about water. Why? — when the river is flowing? You can drink and you can quench your thirst and you can swim in the river and you can become the river and go to the sea.

 

There are foolish people who are standing or sitting on the bank and thinking about water, theorising about water, finding what water consists of and dying of thirst’

 

So don’t be a thinker, don’t be a philosopher, be a mystic. My sannyasins have to be mystics, existential experiencers. It is a part of realisation.

 

Mind is misery. If one wants to be blissful in the mind there is no possibility. Mind is a dis-ease, exactly a disease, a restlessness. But one can transcend mind, one need not remain in it, one can jump out of it. It is our decision whether to be in it or not.

 

The whole phenomenon of religion depends on this possibility, that man can take a jump out of the mind. And that's what meditation is all about: the art of getting out of the mind. And it is not difficult at all, it is very simple. Just watch the mind, with no judgement. Don't be a judge, just be a witness, mirrorlike.

 

The mirror does not say 'How beautiful, how ugly, how disgusting, the mirror simply reflects and remains silent. That's the way of the meditator: he becomes a mirror, he looks at the mind. Thousands of thoughts and desires and memories go on passing day in, day out -- he goes on watching, with no judgement at all. He does not say 'This is good, this is bad, this should not be, this should be, I should choose -- this is a gem, what a beautiful thought! And this is a disgusting thought, this should not be allowed to enter my mind.' If you say those things you get involved. You start getting inside the mind; you become entangled and you lose meditation.

 

Meditation simply means a choiceless awareness. It takes a little time because it is a knack to learn, but if one goes on trying -- whenever you have time just go on trying. Whenever you have any time close your eyes and watch the mind. Enjoy it. It is far more interesting than going to any movie, than sitting like a stupid person before a TV set.

 

It is good that in the West the TV set is now being called the idiot box; in fact only idiots sit before it. The box is not so much of an idiot as the people who Bit before it. And they go on sitting...

 

Now the average American sits before the idiot box five to six hours per day, glued to the chair. If this goes on and on then America is going to become the most stupid country in the world. They have somehow to get rid of this nonsense.

 

And what do they go on watching? -- the same murder and the same violence and rape and the same old stories, the same triangles: two women, one man or two men, one woman. It is such a stupidity! Man has been writing the same story again and again and there are fools who go on watching them. The story is the same, the plot is the same, the strategy is the same, nothing is new in it.

 

It is far more interesting to watch your own mind because it is far more insane and far more inventive too. If you simply go on watching it you will be surprised. You will find more postures for love-making than any psychologist has ever discovered. You will defeat all Masters-and-Johnsons and Kinsey reports and the old master Vatsyayana and all his postures for love making. Your mind is perfectly capable of inventing such absurd postures. And the mind is so interesting... You will do all kinds of violence and all kinds of murders and you will commit suicide and everything will happen -- simply go on watching. And the miracle is you don't have to pay for it!

 

Then slowly slowly this whole scene starts disappearing. As you become more alert it starts disappearing, as you become more conscious it loses its grip on you. One day the greatest miracle in life happens: the mind simply disappears and there is vast emptiness and nothing to observe. You are left in absolute solitude -- that is meditation -- and out of that solitude thousands of flowers of bliss, of beauty, of truth, of god, bloom.

 

- Osho, “The Golden Wind, #29”