Wherever joy is, God is

“Tantra says that the first thing is to be available to joy,” states Osho commenting on a sutra by Saraha

Says Saraha:

Once in the realm that’s full of joy

The seeing mind becomes enriched…

So the first thing is: the seeing mind. And the second thing is: don’t avoid joys; approach them with open heart, with receptivity, with a welcoming being; absorb them. Wherever joy is, God is. That is the Tantra message in short: Wherever joy is, God is.

And joy has three planes. The first is what we call ‘pleasure’; pleasure is of the body. The second is happiness; happiness is of the mind. The third is bliss; bliss is of the spirit, spiritual. But they all share one reality, and that reality is joy. Joy, converted into the language of the body, becomes pleasure. Joy, received through the body, become pleasure. Joy, received through mind, becomes happiness. Joy, received neither through mind nor through body, received without body, without mind, becomes bliss. These are the three layers of joy.

Joy is the only reality. Joy is God! Joy is the stuff which the existence is made of.

Saraha says: Be available to joy, wherever it comes from. Never deny it. Don’t condemn it. When it is of the body, so what? Then God is knocking at your body. When you are eating and you feel a certain joy, you enjoy your food, it is God; you are swallowing him.

When you hold the hand of a woman or a man or a friend, or anybody, with tremendous love and there is a thrill in your body energy, there is a dance, a deep dance in your body energy; when you are stirred – like electricity something vibrates, something renovates, rejuvenates you, something which makes you more alive than you have ever been before – it is joy; it is God coming through the body. When listening to music you feel tremendously happy, it is joy through the mind. Looking at a flower without touching it and without bringing your mind into it, a moment comes when there is bliss – subtle, silent, profound, benediction. But all are different manifestations of joy.

‘Joy’ is one of the most beautiful words in the English language. It covers the whole range of all kinds of happiness.

Tantra says that the first thing is to be available to joy. You will be surprised by this insistence. Are we not available to joy? Yes, it is sad to say, but it is so – you are not, nobody is. We are more receptive to suffering; we are more ready to suffer than we are ready to be joyful; we are more available to misery than to joy. There is something in it.

Joy takes away your ego, and misery gives you your ego in a very strong way. Misery creates ego, and joy takes it away. Any moment of joy… and you are lost in it. The joy moment is not an ego moment; the misery moment is a very condensed ego moment. When you are miserable, you are; when you are joyful, you are not. So let me repeat: Because we are egoists we are more available to suffering, misery, sadness, unhappiness. We create a joyless life around ourselves. We convert all opportunities of joy into sadness, because that is the only way for the ego to exist. The ego can exist only in hell. In heaven, the ego cannot exist.

You have been told, down the centuries, that if you become egoless you will enter into heaven. I say to you: If you become egoless heaven enters in you. Heaven is not a geographical thing somewhere, it is not that you go there. When you are egoless, you are heaven. When you are egoful, you are hell. It is not that hell is there somewhere at the bottom of existence and heaven is somewhere at the peak of existence – these are just metaphors. Heaven and hell are states of being.

When you are, you are in hell. When you are not, you are in heaven. And that’s why if you are too attached to your ego and you want to feel yourself – that you are separate, different, unique, this and that, then you will remain miserable. Now, the paradox: the ego creates misery, and the ego wants to be joyful. The ego seeks, is very greedy about joy; it wants to have all the joys possible – and the ego creates misery. Now you are trapped. The more misery the ego creates, the more interested the ego becomes in joy. But it cannot create joy: joy is not its function. This insight is a Tantra insight.

And one moment of joy… even once, says Saraha, is enough to change you, sir. He says to the king: One moment, once will be enough argument and proof of what type of life I am living, what type of being I am in.

Osho, The Tantra Vision, Vol 2, Ch 9 (excerpt)