Love
Planted: September 1, 2022
Last tended: February 25, 2023
I.
Love is the radiance, the fragrance of knowing oneself, of being oneself. Love is overflowing joy. Love is when you have seen who you are; then there is nothing left except to share your being with others. Love is when you have seen that you are not separate from existence. Love is when you have felt an organic, orgasmic unity with all that is.
Love is not a relationship. Love is a state of being; it has nothing to do with anybody else. One is not in love, one is love. And of course when one is love, one is in love β but that is an outcome, a by-product, that is not the source. The source is that one is love.
And who can be love? Certainly, if you are not aware of who you are, you cannot be love. You will be fear. Fear is just the opposite of love. Remember, hate is not the opposite of love, as people think; hate is love standing upside down, it is not the opposite of love. The real opposite of love is fear. In love one expands, in fear one shrinks. In fear one becomes closed, in love one opens. In fear one doubts, in love one trusts. In fear one is left lonely, in love one disappears; hence there is no question of loneliness at all.
When one is not, how can one be lonely? Then these trees and the birds and the clouds and the sun and the stars are still within you. Love is when you have known your inner sky.
Source
Author(s) || Osho
Book || The Guest
Chapter || (06) I Am a Living Light
Date || May 1st, 1979
II.
The real thing is not a relationship but a state; one is not in love but one is love. Whenever I talk about love remember this: I am talking about the state of love. Yes, relationship is perfectly good, but the relationship is going to be false if you have not attained to the state of love. Then the relationship is not only a pretension, it is a dangerous pretension, because it can go on befooling you; it can go on giving you the sense that you know what love is, and you donβt know. Love basically is a state of being; one is not in love, one is love.
And that love arises not by falling in love with somebody. That love arises by going in, not by falling but by rising, soaring upwards, higher than you. It is a kind of surpassing. A man is love when his being is silent; it is the song of silence. A Buddha is love; a Jesus is love β not in love with a particular person, but simply love. Their very climate is love. It is not addressed to anybody in particular; it is spreading in all directions. Whosoever comes close to a Buddha will feel it, will be showered by it, will be bathed in it. And it is unconditionally so.
Love makes no conditions, no ifs, no buts. Love never says, βFulfill these requirements, then I will love you.β Love is like breathing: when it happens you are simply love. It does not matter who comes close to you, the sinner or the saint. Whosoever comes close to you starts feeling the vibe of love, is rejoiced. Love is unconditional giving β but only those that are capable of giving are those who have.
Source
Author(s) || Osho
Book || The Guest
Chapter || (05) A Play with the Devil
Date || April 30th, 1979
III.
Question:
Why is there so much frustration in the world?
Answer:
Because there is so much expectation. Expect, and there will be frustration. Donβt expect, and there will be no frustration. Frustration is a byproduct: the more you expect, the more you create your own frustration. So frustration is not really the problem, it is the result. Expectation is the problem.
Frustration is just a shadow which follows expectation. If you donβt expect even for a single moment, if you are in a state of mind where there is no expectation, then it is simple. You ask a question and the answer comes; there is a fulfillment. But if you ask with any expectations you will be frustrated by the answer.
Everything we do, we do with expectations. If I love someone, an expectation enters without my even knowing it. I begin to expect love in return. I have not yet loved, I have not grown into love yet, but the expectation has come and now it will destroy the whole thing. Love creates more frustration than anything else in the world because, with love, you are in a utopia of expectation. You have not even been on the journey yet and already you have begun to think of the return home.
The more you expect love, the more difficult it will be for love to flow back to you. If you expect love from someone the other will feel it as bondage; it will be a duty for him, something which he has to do. And when love is a duty it cannot fulfill anyone because love as a duty is dead.
Love can only be play, not a duty. Love is freedom and duty is bondage, a heavy burden that one has to carry. And when you have to carry something, the beauty of it is lost. The freshness, the poetry, everything is lost, and the other will immediately feel that it is only something dead which has been given. Love with expectation and you have killed love. It is abortive β your love will be a dead child. Then there will be frustration.
Love as play not as bargain, not because there is something you want to get out of it. Rather, love the other as an end in itself. Be grateful that you have loved and forget about whether it is returned or not.
Donβt make a bargain out of it and you will never be frustrated; your life will become filled with love. Once love has flowered in its totality there will be bliss, there will be ecstasy. I use love only as an example. The same law applies to everything.
Source
Author(s) || Osho
Book || The Great Challenge
Chapter || (12) A Personal Seeking, an Individual Quest
Date || Unknown
IV.
Question:
Freedom can be willed, love not. Please comment.
Answer:
Freedom can be willed because it is your own decision to remain in a prison. It is your own responsibility. You have willed your slavery, you have decided to remain a slave, hence you are a slave. Change the decision, and the slavery disappears.
You have invested in your unfreedom. Any moment you see the point, you can drop it; instantly it can be dropped. Nobody has forced unfreedom on you, it is your choice. You can choose to be free, you can choose to be unfree; you are so free that you can choose either. This is part of your inner freedom β not to choose it is part of your freedom. Hence it can be willed.
But love cannot be willed. Love is a by-product of freedom; it is the overflowing joy of freedom, it is the fragrance of freedom. First the freedom has to be there, and then love follows. If you try to will love, you will create only something artificial, arbitrary. A willed love will not be true love, it will be phony.
And thatβs what people are doing. Love cannot be willed, and they go on willing it. What can be willed: freedom, they go on ignoring. They go on thinking that somebody else is responsible for their slavery and their life of slavery. This is a very topsy-turvy conception of your own life. You are upside-down.
Change the vision. Will freedom, and love will come of its own accord. When love comes on its own accord only then is it beautiful, because only then is it natural, spontaneous.
Willed love will be a kind of acting. You will be pretending β what else can you do? You will be moving through empty gestures β what else is possible? You cannot be ordered to love somebody; you cannot order yourself to love somebody. If it is not there, it is not there; if it is there, it is there. It is something beyond your will. In fact it is just the opposite of will: it is surrender.
When one is totally dissolved into freedom and when one is really free, the ego disappears. The ego is your bondage; the ego is your prison. In total freedom there is no ego found. Surrender happens, you start feeling one with existence β and that oneness brings love.
Source
Author(s) || Osho
Book || The Book of Wisdom
Chapter || (26) The Illogical Electron
Date || March 8th, 1979
V.
A mature person has the integrity to be alone. And when a mature person gives love, he gives without any strings attached to it: he simply gives. And when a mature person gives love, he feels grateful that you have accepted his love, not vice versa. He does not expect you to be thankful for it β no, not at all, he does not even need your thanks. He thanks you for accepting his love.
And when two mature persons are in love, one of the greatest paradoxes of life happens, one of the most beautiful phenomena: they are together and yet tremendously alone, they are together so much so that they are almost one. But their oneness does not destroy their individuality; in fact, it enhances it: they become more individual. Two mature persons in love help each other to become freer. There is no politics involved, no diplomacy, no effort to dominate. How can you dominate the person you love? Just think over it.
Domination is a sort of hatred, anger, enmity. How can you even think of dominating a person you love? You would love to see the person totally free, independent; you will give him more individuality. Thatβs why I call it the greatest paradox: they are together so much so that they are almost one, but still in that oneness they are individuals. Their individualities are not effaced; they have become more enhanced. The other has enriched them as far as their freedom is concerned.
Immature people falling in love destroy each otherβs freedom, create bondage, make a prison. Mature persons in love help each other to be free; they help each other to destroy all sorts of bondages. And when love flows with freedom there is beauty. When love flows with dependence there is ugliness.
Remember, freedom is a higher value than love. Thatβs why, in India, the ultimate we call moksha. Moksha means freedom. Freedom is a higher value than love. So if love is destroying freedom, it is not of worth. Love can be dropped, freedom has to be saved; freedom is a higher value. And without freedom you can never be happy, that is not possible. Freedom is the intrinsic desire of each man, each woman β utter freedom, absolute freedom.
So anything that becomes destructive to freedom, one starts hating it. Donβt you hate the man you love? Donβt you hate the woman you love? You hate; it is a necessary evil, you have to tolerate it. Because you cannot be alone you have to manage to be with somebody, and you have to adjust to the otherβs demands. You have to tolerate, you have to bear them.
Love, to be really love, has to be being-love, gift-love. Being-love means a state of love. When you have arrived home, when you have known who you are, then a love arises in your being. Then the fragrance spreads and you can give it to others.
How can you give something which you donβt have?
To give it, the first basic requirement is to have it.
Source
Author(s) || Osho
Book || The Tantra Vision, Vol 2
Chapter || (02) Freedom Is a Higher Value
Date || May 2nd, 1977
tags: [“evergreen”]
contributors: ["Osho"]