He has been forced to forget it; he has been compelled to forget it. The society is against it, the civilization is against it. The society has a tremendous investment in misery. It depends on misery, it feeds on misery, it survives on misery. The society is not for human beings. The society is using human beings as a means for itself. The society has become more important than humanity. The culture, the civilization, the church, they all have become more important. They were meant to be for man, but now they are not for man. They have almost reversed the whole process; now man exists for them.

 

Every child is born ecstatic. Ecstasy is natural. It is not something that happens only to great sages. It is something that everybody brings with him into the world; everybody comes with it. It is life's innermost core. It is part of being alive. Life is ecstasy. Every child brings it into the world, but then the society jumps on the child, starts destroying the possibility of ecstasy, starts making the child miserable, starts conditioning the child.

The society is neurotic, and it cannot allow ecstatic people to be here. They are dangerous for it. Try to understand.the mechanism; then things will be easier.

You cannot control an ecstatic man; it is impossible. You can only control a miserable man. An ecstatic man is bound to be free. Ecstasy is freedom. He cannot be reduced to being a slave. You cannot destroy him so easily; you cannot persuade him to live in a prison. He would like to dance under the stars and he would like to walk with the wind and he would like to talk with the sun and the moon. He will need the vast, the infinite, the huge, the enormous. He cannot be seduced into living in a dark cell. You cannot make a slave out of him. He will live his own life and he will do his thing. This is very difficult for the society. If there are many ecstatic people, the society will feel it is falling apart, its structure will not hold anymore.

Those ecstatic people will be the rebels. Remember, I don't call an ecstatic person "revolutionary"; I call him a "rebel." A revolutionary is one who wants to change the society, but he wants to replace it with another society. A rebel is one who wants to live as an individual and would like there to exist no rigid social structure in the world.

…

Become more of the heart, less of the head. Head is just a part; heart is your whole being. Heart is your totality. So whenever you are total in anything, you function from feeling. Whenever you are partial in anything, you function from the head.

Watch a painter painting -- and that is the difference between a real artist and a technician. If the painter is just a technician who knows the technique of how to paint, who knows the know-how, who knows all about colors and the brushes and the canvas and who has gone through the training, he will function through the head. He will be a technician. He will paint, but he will not be totally in it. Then watch a real artist who is not a technician. He will be absorbed in it, drunk. He will not only paint with his hand, and he will not only paint from his head. He will paint with his whole being; his guts will be involved in it -- his feet as much, his blood and bones as much, his marrow. Everything will be involved in it. You can watch it, you can see, you can feel he is totally in it, lost. Nothing else exists. He is drunk. In that moment, he is no more. He is not a doer. The head is a doer. In that moment of total absorption, he is not a doer; he is just a passage, as if God is painting through him.

 

When you come across a dancer -- a REAL dancer, not one who is a performer -- then you will see that he is not dancing, no Something of the beyond is dancing in him. He is totally in It.

It is said about the great dancer Nijinsky that there were moments when he would take such a leap that it was physically impossible -- gravitation does not allow that big a leap. He was asked again and again, "How do you do it?" and he would say, "I am surprised as much as you are surprised. And I cannot MANAGE to do it. When I try to do it it never happens, I fall very short, but when I am in the dance and I am completely lost -- when I am not! -- it happens, as if gravitation suddenly is no more. I become weightless, I don't feel any weight -- as if something starts pulling me upwards rather than downwards."

 

This pull upwards is known in yoga as levitation. Yes, it happens in meditation too. Nijinsky was unknowingly moving into deep meditation. The dance was so total that he became a meditator and levitation happened.

Whenever you are totally into something, you are ecstatic. When you are partially into something, you will remain miserable, because a part will be moving separately from the whole. There will be a division -- a split, a tension, anxiety.

If you love from the head, your love is not going to give any ecstatic experience. If you meditate from your head....

 

I used to go to a river to swim, and I loved it. Whenever I would come back, one of my neighbors always used to watch me, and he would see that I was very ecstatic. One day he asked, "What is happening? I always see you going to the river, and for hours you swim in the river and you remain in the river. I am also coming, because you look so happy." I said, "Please don't come. You will miss, and the river will be very sad. No, don't come, because your very motivation will be a barrier. You can swim, but you will be watching for when that happiness is going to happen. It will never happen -- because it happens only when you are not."

Swimming can become a meditation, running can become a meditation -- anything can become a meditation -- if you are not. Ecstasy is of the heart, is of the total.

 

DANCE, MY HEART! DANCE TODAY WITH JOY.

 

Says Kabir, "DANCE MY HEART!" -- by "heart" is meant your total organic unity -- "DANCE TODAY WITH JOY." And dance today, not tomorrow. Let the dance be here and now, and let it come from your totality. You abandon yourself; you become a drunkard.

 

THE STRAINS OF LOVE FILL THE DAYS AND THE NIGHTS WITH MUSIC, AND THE WORLD IS LISTENING TO ITS MELODIES:

MAD WITH JOY, LIFE AND DEATH DANCE TO THE RHYTHM OF THIS MUSIC.

 

Yes, joy is mad. And only mad people can afford it. The ordinary sane person is so clever, so cunning, calculating, he cannot afford joy, because you cannot control joy. Just as I said a joyful man cannot be controlled by the society, let me say this also to you: that you cannot control your joy, you cannot control your ecstasy. If you want to remain in control, you will never be joyful; then you can only be miserable. Only misery can be controlled -- by the society or even by you!

And when you are madly dancing, madly singing, when you are joyful without any control, without your presence, when the joy is so full, overflowing -- you are flooded with it and all control is abandoned -- then you will see a miracle: death and life dancing together. Because then all duality disappears. If you are dual, duality appears. If you are nondual, duality disappears. When you are split, the whole world is split. It is your own split that is projected onto the screen of the universe. When you are in a nonsplit state, integrated, one, organic, orgasmic, then all duality disappears.

That meeting place is within you. There happens the ultimate union, the ultimate marriage, where you and the whole meet and dissolve into each other, and disappear into each other. That disappearance of the two into one is what ecstasy is.

 

Ecstasy is the ultimate freedom, and then one simply shouts in joy, "This is it! This is it! Eureka! I have found it."

And the irony is that you need not go anywhere to find it. It is already there. It is your very core, your very being. If you decide to find it, you can find it this very moment. It does not need a single moment's postponement. An intense thirst can open the door. A great urgency can right now make you free.
Osho, Ecstasy, the forgotten Language,
Chapter 9: Ecstasy is freeom, Ecstasy is Rebellion