“Seriousness is a state of disease; humor is health. Love, laughter, life, they are aspects of the same energy.”
Osho
Playfulness is one of the most repressed parts of human beings. All societies, cultures, civilizations have been against playfulness because the playful person is never serious.
And unless a person is serious, he cannot be dominated, he cannot be made ambitious, he cannot be made to desire power, money, prestige.
The child never dies in anyone. It is not that the child dies when you grow, the child remains. Everything that you have been is still within you, and will remain within you until your very last breath.
But society is always afraid of nonserious people. Nonserious people will not be ambitious for money or political power; they would rather enjoy existence. But enjoying existence cannot bring you prestige, cannot make you powerfull, cannot fulfill your ego; and the whole world of man revolves around the idea of the ego.
Playfulness is against your ego – you can try it and see. Just play with children and you will find your ego disappearing, you will find that you have become a child again. It is not only true about you, it is true about everyone.
Because the child within you has been repressed, you will repress your children. Nobody allows their children to dance and to sing and to shout and to jump. For trivial reasons ,perhaps something may get broken, perhaps they may get their clothes wet in the rain if they ran out – for these small things a great spiritual quality, playfulness is completely destroyed.
You have to drop all seriousness. You have to drop this seriousness because it has been forced upon you; this is not your nature. You did not come serious into the world, you came laughing. Each child is bubbling with joy and by the time he is four he starts dying. The age of four for the boys and the age of three for the girls is the time when death starts occurring.
My approach towards life is that of laughter. And laughter contains love, laughter contains joy and laughter contains gratitude. Laughter contains a tremendous thankfulness towards God. When you are really in deep belly laughter, your ego disappears. It happens very rarely in any other activity, but in laughter it is bound to happen.
No child is born serious, remember, but we destroy the innocence of the child. We destroy his qualities of wonder and awe, we destroy his laughter, we destroy everything that is beautiful and valuable, and instead we give him a load to carry on his head — of knowledge, of theology, of philosophy.
The more and more he becomes educated by us, the more and more he loses all sense of humor. He can’t see any humor in existence because he starts living through his knowledge; he knows everything. Because of his knowledgeability all wonder is destroyed.
Because of his knowledgeability, the greatest religious quality — awe — is killed
Take hold of your own life. See that the whole existence is celebrating. These trees are not serious, these birds are not serious. The rivers and the oceans are wild, and everywhere there is fun, everywhere there is joy and delight. Watch existence, listen to the existence and become part of it. Then you become a Baul, then you become a lover — because love can exist only with a deep respect for fun, with a deep respect for delight.
Love cannot exist with a serious mind. With a serious mind, logic is in tune. be non-serious. I’m not saying not to be sincere. Be sincere, but be non-serious. Sincerity is something else; seriousness is totally different. Be sincere with existence, then you will be true; you will become part of this cosmic LEELA, this cosmic play.
Osho (Life, Love, Laughter)
Phuro! Be inspired!
Phuro! 