Love is the experience of only buddhas, not of the unconscious people of whom the whole world is full



LOVE AT PHYSICAL LEVEL IS SIMPLY SEXUALITY WHICH EVEN ANIMALS HAVE

"There are three layers of the human individual: his physiology, the body; his psychology, the mind; and his being, his eternal self."

"Love can exist on all the three planes, but its qualities will be different. On the plane of physiology, body, it is simply sexuality. You can call it love, because the word 'love' seems to be poetic, beautiful.

"But ninety-nine percent of people are calling their sex, love. Sex is biological, physiological. Your chemistry, your hormones – everything material is involved in it. You fall in love with a woman or a man. Can you exactly describe why this woman attracted you? Certainly you cannot see herself, you have not seen your own self yet. You cannot see her psychology either, because to read somebody's mind is not an easy job. So what have you found in the woman? Something in your physiology, in your chemistry, in your hormones, is attracted to the woman's hormones, her physiology, her chemistry. This is not a love affair; this is a chemical affair."

"Just think: the woman you have fallen in love with goes to our doctor, Leeladhar, gets her sex changed, starts growing a beard and mustache. Will you be still loving her? Nothing has changed, only chemistry, hormones. Where has your love gone?"

"Only one percent of people know a little bit deeper. Poets, painters, musicians, dancers, singers have a sensitivity that they can feel beyond the body. They can feel the beauties of the mind, the sensitivities of the heart, because they live on that plane themselves."

"Remember it as a ground rule: Wherever you live, you cannot see beyond that. If you live in your body, if you think you are only your body, you can be attracted only to somebody's body. This is the physiological stage of love."



LOVE AT THE LEVEL OF HEART IS LOVE, BEAUTIFUL BUT TREMENDOUSLY CHANGING

"But a musician, a painter, a poet, lives on a different plane. He does not think, he feels. And because he lives in his heart, he can feel the other person's heart. That is ordinarily called love. It is rare. I am saying only one percent perhaps, once in a while."

"Why are many people not moving to the second plane because it is tremendously beautiful? But there is a problem: anything very beautiful is also very delicate. It is not hardware, it is made of very fragile glass. And once a mirror has fallen and broken, then there is no way to put it together."

"People are afraid to get so much involved that they reach to the delicate layers of love, because at that stage love is tremendously beautiful but also tremendously changing. Sentiments are not stones, they are like roseflowers."

"It is better to have a plastic roseflower, because it will be there always, and every day you can give it a shower and it will be fresh. You can put some French perfume on it. If its color fades you can paint it again. Plastic is one of the most indestructible things in the world. It is stable, permanent; hence people stop at the physiological. It is superficial, but it is stable."

"Poets are known, artists are known to fall in love almost every day. Their love is like a roseflower. While it is there it is so fragrant, so alive, dancing in the wind, in the rain, in the sun, asserting its beauty. But by the evening it may be gone, and you cannot do anything to prevent it."

"The deeper love of the heart is just like a breeze that comes into your room, brings its freshness, coolness, and then it is gone. You cannot catch hold of the wind in your fist. Very few people are so courageous as to live with a moment-to-moment, changing life. Hence, they have decided to fall into a love on which they can depend."



LOVE AT THE LEVEL OF BEING IS LOVINGNESS, WITHOUT ANY OBJECT OF LOVE

"I don't know which kind of love you know – most probably the first kind, perhaps, the second kind. And you are afraid that if you reach your being, what will happen to your love?

"Certainly it will be gone – but you will not be a loser. A new kind of love will arise which arises only perhaps to one person in millions. That love can only be called lovingness."

"The first love should be called sex. The second love should be called love. The third should be called lovingness – a quality, unaddressed – not possessive and not allowing anybody else to possess you."

"That loving quality is such a radical revolution that even to conceive it is very difficult."

"Journalists have been asking me, "Why are there so many women here?" Obviously, the question is relevant, and they are shocked when I answer them. They were not expecting the answer. I have said to them, "I am a man." They looked at me, unbelieving. I said, "It is natural that many more women will be here, for the simple reason that whatsoever they have known in their life before was either sex, or in rare cases, perhaps a few moments of love. But they have never come to know the taste of lovingness." I have told these journalists, "Even the men you see here have grown many feminine qualities in them which have been repressed in the outside society."

"From the very beginning a boy is told, "You are a boy, not a girl. Behave like a boy! Tears are okay for a girl, but not for you. Be MANLY." So every boy goes on cutting his feminine qualities. And all that is beautiful is feminine. So finally what is left is just a barbarous animal. His whole function is to reproduce children."

"The girl is not allowed to have anything with manly qualities. If she wants to climb a tree she will be stopped immediately, "This is for boys, not for girls!" Strange! If the girl has the desire to climb the tree, that is enough proof that she should be allowed."

"All old societies have created different clothes for men and for women. This is not right; because each man is also a woman. He has come from two sources: his father and his mother. Both have contributed to his being. And each woman is also a man."

"We have destroyed both. The woman has lost all courage, adventure, reasoning, logic, because those are thought to be the qualities of a man. And the man has lost grace, sensitivity, compassion, kindness. Both have become half."

"This is one of the greatest problems we have to solve – at least for our people. My sannyasins have to be both: half man, half woman. That will make them richer. They will have all the qualities that are available to human beings, not only half."

"At the point of being, you simply have a fragrance of lovingness.

"The journalists have asked me, "Do you love Sheela?"

I said, "Of course. But I love so many women that I don't know even their names. And not only women – I love so many men, because they are also half woman." In one million sannyasins around the world, I cannot point to a single person and say, "This is the person I love."

I can simply say, "I love."

Whoever is ready to receive my love... it is available.



PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD LOOK BORED AND MISERABLE BECAUSE THEY ARE CHAINED WITH INVISIBLE CHAINS: MARRIEAGE, FAMILY, HUSBAND, WIFE, CHILDREN.

"So don't be afraid. Your fear is right: what you think of as love will be gone, but what will come in its place is immense, infinite. You will be able to love without being attached. You will be able to love many people because to love one person is to keep yourself poor. That one person can give a certain experience of love, but to love many people.... You will be amazed that every person gives you a new feeling, a new song, a new ecstasy. Hence, I am against marriage."

"In my vision, marriages in the commune should be dissolved. People can live together their whole life if they want, but that is not a legal necessity. People should be moving, having as many experiences of love as possible. They should not be possessive. Possessiveness destroys love. And they should not be possessed, because that again destroys your love."

"All human beings are worthy of being loved. There is no need to be tethered to one person for your whole life. That is one of the reasons why all the people around the world look so bored. Why can't they laugh like you? Why can't they dance like you? They are chained with invisible chains: marriage, family, husband, wife, children. They are burdened with all kinds of duties, responsibilities, sacrifices. And you want them to smile and laugh and dance and rejoice? You are asking the impossible."

"Make people's love free, make people non-possessive. But this can happen only if in your meditation you discover your being. It is nothing to practice. I am not saying to you, "Tonight you go to some other woman just as a practice." You will not get anything, and you may lose your wife. And in the morning you will look silly. It is not a question of practicing, it is a question of discovering your being."

"With the discovery of being follows the quality of impersonal lovingness. Then you simply love. And it goes on spreading. First, it is human beings, then soon animals, birds, trees, mountains, stars. A day comes when this whole existence is your beloved. That is our potential. And anybody who is not achieving it is wasting his life."

"Yes, you will have to lose a few things, but they are worthless. You will be gaining so much that you will never think again of what you have lost."

"A pure impersonal lovingness which can penetrate into anybody's being – that is the outcome of meditativeness, of silence, of diving deep within your own being."

(From Death to Deathlessness # 17)



LOVE IS A BY-PRODUCT OF A RISING CONSCIOUSNESS, NOT AS A BIOLOGICAL INFATUATION

"Love has to be understood, not as a biological infatuation – that is lust, that exists in all the animals; there is nothing special about it; it exists even in trees. It is nature's way of reproduction. There is nothing spiritual in it, and nothing specially human."

"So the first thing is to make a clear-cut distinction between lust and love. Lust is a blind passion; love is the fragrance of a silent, peaceful, meditative heart. Love has nothing to do with biology or chemistry or hormones. Love is the flight of your consciousness to higher realms, beyond matter and beyond body. The moment you understand love as something transcendental, then love is no more a fundamental question."

"The fundamental question is, how to transcend the body, how to know something within you which is beyond – beyond all that is measurable. That is the meaning of the word 'matter.' It comes from a Sanskrit root, matra, which means measurement; it means that which can be measured. The French word 'metre' comes from the same root."

"The fundamental question is, how to get away from the measurable and how to enter into the immeasurable. In other words, how to go beyond matter and open your eyes towards more consciousness; and there is no limit to consciousness, the more you become conscious, the more you realize how much more is possible ahead. As you reach one peak, another peak arises in front of you. It is an eternal pilgrimage.

"Love is a by-product of a rising consciousness. It is just like a fragrance of a flower. Don't search for it in the roots; it is not there. Your biology is your roots; your consciousness is your flowering. As you become more and more an open lotus of consciousness, you will be surprised – taken aback – with a tremendous experience which can only be called love. You are so full of joy, so full of bliss, each fiber of your being is dancing with ecstasy. You are just like a rain cloud that wants to rain and shower. The moment you are overflowing with bliss, a tremendous longing arises in you, to share it. That sharing is love.

"Love is not something which you can have from someone who has not attained to blissfulness. And this is the misery of the whole world: everybody is asking to be loved, and pretending to love. You cannot love because you don't know what consciousness is. You don't know the satyam, the shivam, the sundram."

"You don't know truth, you don't know the experience of the divine, and you don't know the fragrance of beauty. What have you got to give? You are so empty, you are so hollow.... Nothing grows in your being, nothing is green. There are no flowers within you. Your spring has not come yet."

"Love is a by-product... when the spring comes and you suddenly start flowering, blossoming, and you release your potential fragrance. Sharing that fragrance, sharing that grace, sharing that beautitude is love."

"And there is no question of making it better. It is already perfect; it is always perfect. If it is, it is perfect. If it is not perfect, it is not there. Perfection and love cannot be separated."

"If you had asked me, Indradhanu, "What is love?" it would have been more truthful, honest, sincere, authentic. But you are asking me, "How can I love better?" You have already accepted as a fact that you know what love is – not only that, your question implies that you already love. Now the question is how to better it."



YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT LOVE IS BECAUSE YOU HAVE NOT GONE DEEPER IN YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS

"I don't want to hurt you, but I am helpless, I have to say the truth to you. You don't know what love is. You can't know because you have not yet gone deeper in your consciousness. You have not experienced yourself. You know nothing of who you are. In this blindness, in this ignorance, in this unconsciousness, love does not grow. This is a desert in which you are living. In this darkness, in this desert, there is no possibility of love blossoming."

"First you have to be full of light, and full of delight – so full that you start overflowing. That overflowing energy is love. Then love is known as the greatest perfection in the world. It is never less, and never more."

"But our very upbringing is so neurotic, so psychologically sick that it destroys all possibilities of inner growth. You are being taught from the very beginning to be a perfectionist, and then naturally you go on applying your perfectionist ideas to everything, even to love."

Just the other day I came across a statement:

"A perfectionist is a person who takes great pains, and gives even greater pains to others. And the outcome is just a miserable world."

"Everybody is trying to be perfect. And the moment somebody starts trying to be perfect, he starts expecting everybody else to be perfect. He becomes a condemner. He starts humiliating people. That's what all your so-called saints have been doing down the ages. That's what your religions have done to you – poisoned your being with an idea of perfection."

"Because you cannot be perfect, you start feeling guilty, you lose respect for yourself. And the man who has lost respect for himself has lost all the dignity of being human. Your pride has been crushed, your humanity has been destroyed by beautiful words like perfection. Man cannot be perfect."



THE MOMENT YOU SAY TO SOMEONE"I LOVE YOU," YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE SAYING.

"Yes, there is something which man can experience, but which is beyond the ordinary conception of man. Unless man also experiences something of the divine, he cannot know perfection. Perfection is not something like a discipline; it is not something that you can practice. It is not something for which you have to go through rehearsals. But that is what is being taught to everybody, and the result is a world full of hypocrites, who know perfectly well that they are hollow and empty, but they go on pretending all kinds of qualities which are nothing but empty words."

"When you say to someone, "I love you," have you ever thought what you mean? Is it just biological infatuation between the two sexes? Then once you have satisfied your animal appetite all so-called love will disappear. It was just a hunger and you have fulfilled your hunger and you are finished. The same woman who was looking the most beautiful in the world, the same man who was looking like Alexander the Great – you start thinking how to get rid of this fellow."

"It will be very enlightening for you, Indradhanu, to understand this letter written by Paddy to his beloved Maureen:

My darling Maureen,

I met you last night but you did not show up. Next time I will meet you again whether you show up or not. If I am there first, I will write my name on the gatepost to let you know. And if it is you that is first, rub out my name and nobody will be any the wiser.

Darling Maureen, I would climb the highest mountain for your sake, and swim the wildest sea. I would endure any hardships to spend a moment by your side. Your ever-loving, Paddy.

P.S. I'll be over to see you on Friday night if it is not raining."

"The moment you say to someone "I love you," you don't know what you are saying. You don't know that it is just lust hiding behind a beautiful word, love. It will disappear. It is very momentary. Love is something eternal. It is the experience of the buddhas, not the unconscious people of whom the whole world is full. Only very few people have known what love is, and these same people are the most awakened, the most enlightened, the highest peaks of human consciousness."



IF YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW LOVE, FORGET ABOUT LOVE AND REMEMBER MEDITATION.

“If you really want to know love, forget about love and remember meditation. If you want to bring roses into your garden, forget about roses, and take care of the rosebush. Give nourishment to it, water it, take care that it gets the right amount of sun, water. If everything is taken care of, in the right time the roses are destined to come. You cannot bring them earlier, you cannot force them to open up sooner, and you cannot ask a roseflower to be more perfect.”

“Have you ever seen a roseflower which is not perfect? What more do you want? Every roseflower in its uniqueness is perfect. Dancing in the wind, in the rain, in the sun... can’t you see the tremendous beauty, the absolute joy? A small ordinary roseflower radiates the hidden splendor of existence.”

“Love is a roseflower in your being. But prepare your being; dispel the darkness and the unconsciousness. Become more and more alert and aware and love will come on its own accord, in its own time. You need not worry about it. And whenever it comes it is always perfect.”

“Love is a spiritual experience – nothing to do with sexes and nothing to do with bodies, but something to do with the innermost being.”

“But you have not even entered into your own temple. You don’t know at all who you are, and you are asking about love. First, be thyself; first, know thyself, and love will come as a reward. It is a reward from the beyond. It showers on you like flowers... fills your being. And it goes on showering on you, and it brings with it a tremendous longing to share.”

“In human language that sharing can only be indicated as ‘love’. It does not say much, but it indicates the right direction. Love is a shadow of alertness, of consciousness.”

“I teach you to be more conscious, and love will come as you become more conscious. It is a guest that comes, that comes inevitably to those who are ready and prepared to receive it. You are not

even ready to recognize it....”

“If love comes to your door, you will not recognize it. If love knocks on your doors, you may find a thousand and one excuses; you may think perhaps it is some strong wind, or some other excuse. You will not open the doors. And even if you open the doors you will not recognize love because you have never seen love before; how can you recognize it?”

“You can recognize only something which you know. When love comes for the first time and fills your being you are absolutely overwhelmed and mystified. You don’t know what is happening. You know your heart is dancing, you know you are surrounded by celestial music, you know fragrances that

you have never known before. But it takes a little time to put all these experiences together and to remember that perhaps this is what love is. Slowly, slowly it sinks into your being.”

“Love is not to be found in poetry. My own experience is that the people who write poetry about love are the people who do not know love. I am personally acquainted with great poets who have written beautiful poetry about love, and I know they have never experienced love. In fact their poems are just substitutes, consolations. By writing about love they are deceiving themselves and others that they know love.



GOD IS NOT LOVE, LOVE IS GOD – AND THE DIFFERENCE IS TREMENDOUS

Only mystics know love. Other than mystics there is no category of human beings which has ever experienced love. Love is absolutely the monopoly of the mystic. If you want to know love you will have to enter into the world of the mystic.

Jesus says "God is love." He has been part of a mystery school, the Essenes, an ancient school of mystics. But perhaps he did not graduate from the mystery school, because what he is saying is just not right. God is not love, love is God – and the difference is tremendous; it is not just a change of words.

The moment you say God is love you are simply saying that love is only an attribute of God. He is also wisdom, he is also compassion, he is also forgiveness. He can be millions of things besides love; love is only one of the attributes of God. And in fact, even to make it a small attribute of God is very irrational and illogical, because if God is love then he cannot be just; if God is love then he cannot be cruel enough to throw sinners into eternal hell. If God is love then God cannot be the law. One great Sufi mystic, Omar Khayyam, shows more understanding than Jesus when he says, "I will go on just being myself. I am not going to take any notice of the priests and the preachers because I trust that God's love is great enough; I cannot commit a sin which can be greater than his love. So why be worried? – our hands are small and our sins are small. Our reach is small; how can we commit sins which God's love cannot forgive? If God is love then he cannot be present on the last judgment day to sort out the saints and throw the remaining millions and millions of people into hell for eternity."

The teachings of the Essenes were just the opposite; Jesus quotes them wrongly. Perhaps he was not very deeply rooted in their teachings. Their teaching was "Love is God." That is such a tremendous difference. Now God becomes only an attribute of love; now God becomes only a quality of the tremendous experience of love. Now God is no more a person but only an experience of those who have known love. Now God becomes secondary to love. And I say unto you, the Essenes were right.



LOVE IS THE ULTIMATE VALUE, THE FINAL FLOWERING. THERE IS NOTHING BEYOND IT.

"Love is the ultimate value, the final flowering.
There is nothing beyond it.
Hence, you cannot perfect it."

"In fact, before you attain to it you will have to disappear. When love will be there you will not be there."

"A great Eastern mystic, Kabir, has a very significant statement – a statement that can be made only by one who has experienced, who has realized, who has entered into the inner sanctum of ultimate reality. The statement is, "I had been searching for truth, but it is strange to say that as long as the searcher was there, truth was not found. And when the truth was found, I looked all around... I was absent. When the truth was found, the seeker was no more; and when the seeker was, truth was nowhere."

"Truth and the seeker cannot exist together.
You and love cannot exist together."

"There is no coexistence possible: Either you or love, Indradhanu, you can choose. If you are ready to disappear, melt and merge, leaving only a pure consciousness behind, love will blossom. You cannot perfect it because you will not be present. And it does not need perfection in the first place. It comes always as perfect. But love is one of those words which everybody uses and nobody understands. Parents are telling their children, "We love you" – and they are the people who destroy their children. They are the people who give their children all kinds of prejudices, all kinds of dead superstitions. They are the people who burden their children with the whole load of rubbish that generations have been carrying and each generation goes on transferring it to another generation. The madness goes on... becoming mountainous."

"Yet all parents think they love their children. If they really loved their children, they would not like their children to be their images, because they are just miserable and nothing else. What is their experience of life? Pure misery, suffering... life has been not a blessing to them, but a curse. And still they want their children to be just like themselves."

"I was a guest in a family. I was sitting in their garden in the evening. The sun was setting and it was a beautiful, silent evening. The birds were returning back to the trees, and the small child of the family was sitting by my side. I just asked him, "Do you know who you are?"

"And children are more clear, more perceptive than the grownups, because the grownups are already spoiled, corrupted, polluted, with all kinds of ideologies, religions. That small child looked at me and he said, "You are asking me a very difficult question."

"I said, "What is the difficulty in it?"

"He said, "The difficulty is that I am the only child of my parents, and as long as I can remember, whenever some guests come, somebody says my eyes look like my father's, somebody says my nose looks like my mother's, somebody says my face looks like my uncle's, so I don't know who I am, because nobody says anything looks like me."

"I said, "This is really difficult."

"But this is what is being done to every child. You don't leave the child alone to experience himself, and you don't leave the child to become himself. You go on loading on the child your own unfulfilled ambitions."

"My personal physician is Dr. Amrito. His father was also a well-known physician. His father has left in his will a strange condition; Amrito will be able to get his heritage if he fulfills the condition. The condition is that the day he is accepted by the Royal College of Physicians as a fellow of the society, he will be able to get the money from the bank. If he never becomes a fellow, if he is not accepted by the Royal College of Physicians, which is the most significant fellowship in the whole world as far as physicians are concerned..."

"When I came to know about it, I could see the incomplete ambition of the poor father. He would have longed his whole life to become a fellow of this royal society. Now he is burdening his son with his ambition. He will be gone, but still he wants his ambition to be fulfilled. And if the son cannot fulfill the condition he will be left as a beggar on the streets, he will not be able to inherit his father's lifelong savings. And he is the only son... the money will rot in the bank, but he cannot get it."

"Fortunately he managed, and managed far better than the father would ever have dreamt of. He became – he was accepted as a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, the youngest in their whole history. People are accepted when they become old, experienced, when they have written many books and papers and done many researches and contributed much. Amrito did everything very quickly. He was the youngest fellow of the royal society."

"Every parent is wanting that his child should be his image. But a child has a destiny of his own; if he becomes your image he will never become himself. And without becoming yourself, you will never feel contentment, you will never feel at ease with existence. You will always be in a condition of missing something."

"Your parents love you, and they also tell you that you have to love them because they are your fathers, they are your mothers. It is a strange phenomenon and nobody seems to be aware of it: just because you are a mother does not mean that the child has to love you. You have to be lovable; your being a mother is not enough. You may be a father, but that does not mean that automatically you become lovable. Just because you are a father does not create a tremendous feeling of love in the child."

"But it is expected... and the poor child does not know what to do. He starts pretending; that's the only possible way. He starts smiling when there is no smile in his heart; he starts showing love, respect, gratitude – and all are just false. He becomes an actor, a hypocrite from the very beginning, a politician. We are all living in this world where parents, teachers, priests – everybody has corrupted you, displaced you, has taken away from yourself."

"My effort here, Indradhanu, is to give your center back to you. I call this centering, meditation. I want you simply to be yourself, with a great self-respect, with the dignity of knowing that existence needed you – and then you can start searching for yourself. First come to the center, and then start searching for who you are."

"Knowing one's original face is the beginning of a life of love, of a life of celebration. You will be able to give so much love because it is not something that is exhaustible – because it is immeasurable, it cannot be exhausted. And the more you give it, the more you become capable of giving it."

"The greatest experience in life is when you simply give without any conditions, without any expectations of even a simple "Thank you." On the contrary, a real, authentic love feels obliged to the person who has accepted his love. He could have rejected it."

"When you start giving love with a deep sense of gratitude to all those who accept it, you will be surprised that you have become an emperor – no longer a beggar asking for love with a begging bowl, knocking on every door. And those people on whose doors you are knocking cannot give you love; they are themselves beggars."

"Beggars are asking each other for love, and feel frustrated, angry, because the love is not coming. But this is bound to happen. Love belongs to the world of emperors, not of beggars. And a man is an emperor when he is so full of love that he can give it without any conditions."

"Then comes an even greater surprise: when you start giving your love to anybody, even to strangers – the question is not to whom you are giving it, just the very joy of giving is so much that who cares who is on the receiving end? When this space comes into your being, you go on giving to each and everybody – not only to human beings but to animals, to the trees, to the faraway stars – because love is something that can be transferred even to the farthest star just by your loving look. Just by your touch, love can can be transferred to a tree. Without saying a single word... it can be conveyed in absolute silence."

"And when I am saying it, I am not only saying it. I am a living example of whatever I am saying to you. Can't you feel my love?... although I have never said it to you. It need not be said, it declares itself. It has its own ways of reaching into the very depths, into your being."

"Indradhanu, first be full of love, then the sharing happens. And then the great surprise... that as you give, you start receiving from unknown sources, from unknown corners, from unknown people, from trees, from rivers, from mountains. From all nooks and corners of existence love starts showering on you. The more you give, the more you get. Life becomes a sheer dance of love."

"To me, this is the state of enlightenment, pure love. And except pure love, there is no God."

(Satyam Shivam Sundram # 4)



IT IS THE CONTINUOUS TEACHING THAT HAS DESTROYED LOVE BECOUSE THE SOCIETY IS AFRAID OF REAL LOVE, IT IS WILD.

"LOVE and hate are just two sides of the same coin. But with love something very drastic has happened. It is unimaginable how this drastic step was taken by people who had all the good intentions in the world. You may never have even suspected what has destroyed love. It is the continuous teaching of love that has destroyed it. Hate is still pure – love is not.

When you hate, your hate has an authenticity.

And when you love it is only hypocrisy."

"This has to be understood. For thousands of years all the religions, politicians, pedagogues, have been teaching one thing, and that one thing is love: Love your enemy, love your neighbor, love your parents, love God."

"Why in the beginning did they start this strange series of teachings about love? They were afraid of your authentic love, because authentic love is beyond their control. You are possessed by it. You are not the possessor, you are the possessed. And every society wants you to be in control."

"The society is afraid of your wild nature, it is afraid of your naturalness, so from the very beginning it starts cutting your wings. And the most basic thing which is dangerous in you is the possibility of love, because if you are possessed by love you can go even against the whole world. A small man possessed by love feels himself capable of doing the impossible. In all old love stories this fact has emerged in a very subtle way; and nobody has even bothered about it or even commented on why this factor comes automatically into old love stories."

"The structure is that the lover is asked to do something impossible; if he can do that impossible thing then he can get the beloved. Of course the parents and the society are not ready to accept this love affair. No society is ready to accept any love affair, but to say no seems to be unmannerly."

"When somebody comes with a proposal of love you can't just say no. Even if you want to say no, and you will say no, a way has to be found – and this is the way. Ask the lover to perform something impossible, something which you know he cannot perform, which is an inhuman task. And if he cannot perform it then you are not responsible; he himself has failed."

"This is a civilized way of saying no. Farhad is told that he can have Siri if, alone, he can create a canal through the mountains and bring the canal to the palace of the king – Siri is the daughter of the king. And the canal has to be of milk, not of water."
"I have been thinking about hundreds of love stories around the world, but somehow or other this factor constantly appears: something impossible is asked. My own understanding is that that factor does not appear without any reason. There is somewhere in the unconscious of the human mind the knowledge that love can make the impossible possible."

"Love is so mad. Once you are possessed with love you don't think in terms of reason and logic, reality. You live in a world of dreams where everything is within your hands. My only concern with these love stories has been to find out something about love which is very essential, and this is what I have found about it: Love makes you so mad that nothing is impossible."



TO KEEP MAN IN CONTROL YOU HAVE TO, FROM A VERY EARLY AGE, CREATE A FALSE IDEA OF LOVE IN MAN, AND GO ON ENFORCING IT CONTINUOUSLY SO HE NEVER BECOMES POSSESSED BY AUTHENTIC LOVE

"I am not saying that it does submit, I am not saying that nature is going to change its ways, I am not saying that love will make miracles possible. No, what I am saying is about this fear that love can make a man so mad that he can start believing in things like this; then he is beyond your control."

"To keep man in control you have to, from a very early age, create a false idea of love in him, and go on enforcing it continuously so he never becomes possessed by authentic love and never goes mad, but always remains sane. Sane means a slave to the rules of the society, sane means a follower of the games of the society."

"Love can make you rebellious.

False love makes you obedient.

But from the very childhood they are diverting your love into unreal dimensions. One thing which is a very cunning strategy is to give your love a mode, a certain direction, which is unfulfillable; and because of it, that which was fulfillable will not be attractive to you."

"A man who has been taught to love God will feel that in loving a woman or a man he is falling too low. God is there, far above, in the heaven – and this is an ordinary man, an ordinary woman. They have given your love an object so impossible that all that is possible becomes below you. Even if, because of your nature, your biology, you fall in love, there is a part in you which goes on saying, "Something is wrong in it," you go on feeling guilty. This is one thing they have done to your love."

"The second thing they have done is to say, "Love your mother...." Why? – "because she is your mother." Is that enough for love to exist? Do you have to love somebody because that somebody is your mother, your father, your daughter, your brother, your sister? These relationships cannot create love. They may create a certain kind of respect – she is your mother and you can respect her. He is your father, you can respect him; he has brought you up. But love is not something that you can manage."

"Respect is something within your hands, but love is not.

Love is something that when it comes it comes like a cyclone, surrounds you, holds you totally in its grip. You are no longer there. Something higher than you, bigger than you, deeper than you, has taken possession of you.

"To avoid this they have been teaching you hypocrisy in the name of love: Love your mother. Just because of this teaching – love your father, love your mother, love your brother, love your wife, love your husband, love your children – because it has been told so many times you have never asked, "Is it possible? Is it within human capacity to love somebody?" A very fundamental question has been completely forgotten."

"If you are told to love somebody, how are you going to do it? Yes, you can act, you can pretend, you can repeat beautiful dialogues from the movies you have been seeing, from the novels you have been reading. You say beautiful things, but nothing is arising from you. You are not in love, you are just doing a drama. And the tragedy is that most of us continue our whole lives doing the rehearsal, not even the drama. The time for the drama never comes just the rehearsal goes on and on.These are the ways they have spoiled your authenticity about love."



YOUR QUESTION IS, THAT I SAY LOVE AND HATE ARE THE SAME ENERGY; THEN WHY IS THERE SO MUCH HATE IN THE WORLD AND NOT SO MUCH LOVE?

"Your question is, that I say love and hate are the same energy; then why is there so much hate in the world and not so much love?"

"It is because nobody has been teaching you about hate; hence, hate has remained pure, unadulterated. Nobody has bothered about you, nobody has told you how to hate, whom to hate. Because hate has been left untouched by your parents, teachers, and priests, it has a purity, a sincerity."

"When a man hates you, you can trust that he hates you.
But when he loves you, you cannot trust him."

"You know perfectly well that when you hate someone it has a tremendous force, and when you love someone there is not that force. You remember your enemies more than your friends. You can forget your friends but you cannot forget your enemies."

"What is happening?

It is because your love has been distorted, and something unreal, which is not love, has been handed to you. And you have been playing with that toy called love, unaware that you have a potential of love within you."

"So when you love it is just so-so, skin-deep. Scratch it a little bit and it is gone. But when you hate, you hate from your guts. It is not skin-deep – it is gut-deep." "I have been surprised how much purity your hate has, how much authenticity, naturalness, spontaneity. And just because of its spontaneity, naturalness, authenticity, purity, I see in it a certain beauty which is not there in your love. Your love is hocus-pocus."

"This is the reason why in the world you don't see so much love and you see so much hate. You listen to too much talk about love in the world. Everybody is loving everybody else, talking about love, but it is all talk: yakketty-yakketty-yak! It goes on all over the world. Everybody is talking about love – beautiful dialogues – but in fact you see hate everywhere."

"Religions hate each other. Nations hate each other. Political parties hate each other. Classes hate each other. Just go on looking and you will be surprised how many sources of hate there are. And every ten years, twelve years, you need a world war – so much hate and still it gets accumulated. Every day you go on expressing hate that's separate – still it goes on accumulating so much that every ten, twenty years, it explodes into a world war."

"In three thousand years, five thousand wars have been fought in the world. Who is responsible? – the good-doers who are continuously after you, teaching you about love, kindness, compassion."

"Nobody teaches you about hate, so it is still there, far more strong, far more vibrant and young and fresh."

"I would like a time to come when nobody teaches you about love either. You should be left alone. You should be told to be more aware about whatsoever happens to you – hate or love, that is not important. What is important is that if you hate, hate with awareness. If you love, love with awareness."

(From Misery to Enlightenment # 13)



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