The Great Path - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 7. MEDITATION IS THE SEED
are all seeking bliss. Your quests may have different names, but the deep meaning is one, and one
only – bliss! You seek bliss whether your feet point toward the tavern or the temple. Whether a man
acts out of sin or virtue, whether a man commits a good act or foul, he is seeking bliss.
Have you ever asked where bliss was lost? Look in the place where you lost it. You search in other
places than where you left it. You have certainly not lost it somewhere outside. It was a taste within,
a flavor you know well.
Psychologists have made a significant statement. They say that a child is in a most blissful state
within the mother’s womb. And he should be! He has no worries, no responsibility, no anxiety about
food or about the weather. The temperature in the mother’s womb is constant. It makes no difference
to the child whether it is burning hot outside or biting cold. He is not affected if the mother is hungry,
or if she is undergoing any emotional or physical strain. The child is fully protected. He just floats in
the womb.
You must have seen the picture of the Lord Vishnu floating in a sea of milk. This is how it is with a
child in the mother’s womb. This picture of Vishnu symbolizes the state of blissful rest that a child
enjoys in the womb. There is a flower sprouting from Vishnu’s navel. That depicts the umbilical cord
which joins the child to the mother. That is the source of its life. As there is water in the ocean, so is
there water in the mother’s womb; even the salt ratio is the same. This is why the mother gets the
urge to eat salty things, for the salt in her body is absorbed by the womb.
The child floats in this water inside the mother’s womb. It is in complete bliss. It knows no worry:
before it is hungry it is feed. There is no need to cry. There is no need to breathe even; the mother
breathes for it. The child is joined with the mother. It is not yet separate. It has no ego: it is not
conscious that ’I am’. The fact is: the child is, but it is completely bathed in existence, and the bliss
of this condition is the bliss that he searches for all of his life.
Psychologists say that your whole life’s quest is an attempt to regain the womb. We devise a
thousand and one ways to recapture this bliss. If you look closely you will observe this fact. You
try to find a comfortable bed to sleep in; comfortable bedding is that in which the temperature is
almost the same as a child curled up in the mother. People who sleep well sleep in this position;
they become babies all over again.
All your efforts are aimed at being relieved of your responsibilities and worries. You try to become
rich, for if you are rich you can use your wealth as a means to dissolve worry about the future.
You seek friendship, you seek love and protection. Alone, you are afraid, for all around there are
enemies, unknown and unfamiliar. You make a house for yourself and you feel safe within its four
walls; look closely, and you will see it is an attempt to create a womb within which you can feel safe.
The child experiences bliss in the mother’s womb. Every child does. Then all his life he spends
searching for this same bliss. That is why, whenever you get a glimpse of this bliss you feel happy.
All your moments of happiness are glimpses of bliss. Psychologists say that the search for liberation
is a search for the womb. The day this whole existence becomes like a womb to you, when you
are completely drowned in it, when your ego is completed annihilated and you have no worries, no
anxiety, you will attain this bliss all over again. This bliss is right within you, but you have lost it; and
because you seek outside yourself, you do not find it.
The Great Path 132 Osho