Osho,
Why don’t we drop our miseries, our ignorance and unhappiness? How can a man be happy and blissful?

It is one of the most fundamental questions that a man can ask. It is also strange, because it should be easy to drop suffering, anguish, misery. It should not be difficult: you don’t want to be miserable, so there must be some deep complication behind it. The complication is that from your very childhood you have not been allowed to be happy, to be blissful, to be joyous.

You have been forced to be serious, and seriousness implies sadness. You were forced to do things that you never wanted to do. You were helpless, weak, dependent on people; naturally you had to do what they were saying. You did those things unwillingly, miserably, in deep resistance. Against yourself, you have been forced to do so much that by and by one thing became clear to you: that anything that is against you is right, and anything that is not against you is bound to be wrong. And this whole upbringing constantly filled you with sadness, which is not natural.

To be joyous is natural, just as to be healthy is natural. When you are healthy you don’t go to the doctor to inquire, “Why am I healthy?” There is no need for any question about your health. But when you are sick, you immediately ask, “Why am I sick? What is the reason, the cause of my disease?”

It is perfectly right to ask why you are miserable. It is not right to ask why you are blissful. You have been brought up in an insane society where to be blissful without reason is thought to be madness. If you are simply smiling for no reason at all, people will think something is loose in your head – why are you smiling? Why are you looking so happy? And if you say “I don’t know, I am just being happy,” your answer will only strengthen their idea that something has gone wrong with you. But if you are miserable nobody will ask why you are miserable. To be miserable is natural; everybody is. It is nothing special to you. You are not doing something unique.

Unconsciously this idea goes on settling in you, that misery is natural and blissfulness is unnatural. Blissfulness has to be proved. Misery needs no proof. Slowly it sinks deeper into you – into your blood, into your bones, into your marrow – although naturally it is against you. So you have been forced to be a schizophrenic; something has been forced on you that is against your nature. You have been distracted from yourself into something which you are not.

This creates the whole misery of humanity: that everybody is where he should not be, what he should not be. And because he cannot be where he needs to be – where it is his birthright to be – he is miserable. And you have been in this state of going farther and farther away from yourself; you have forgotten the way back home. So wherever you are, you think this is your home – misery has become your home, anguish has become your nature.