Loving and Love in Marriage

Question : If love becomes destroyed in Marriage, how are we to Live if we wish to share love and thoughts on a day-today Basis, and also raise Children with both a Mother And a Father?

Osho : I have never said that love is destroyed by marriage. How can marriage destroy love? Yes, it is destroyed in marriage, but it is destroyed by you, not by marriage. It is destroyed by the partners. How can marriage destroy love? It is you who destroy it, because you don't know what love is. You simply pretend to know, you simply hope that you know, you dream that you know, but you don't know what love is. Love has to be learned; it is the greatest art there is. If people are dancing and somebody asks you, 'Come and dance,' you say, 'I don't know.'

You don't just jump up and start dancing and have everybody think that you are a great dancer. You will just prove yourself to be a buffoon. You will not prove yourself to be a dancer. It has to be learned -- the grace of it, the movement of it. You have to train the body for it. You don't just go and start painting just because the canvas is available and the brush is there and the colour is there. You don't start painting. You say, 'All requirements are here, so I can paint. You can paint -- but you will not be a painter that way.

You meet a woman -- the canvas is there. You immediately become a lover -- you start painting. And she starts painting on you. Of course you both prove to be foolish -- painted fools -- and sooner or later you understand what is happening. But you never thought that love is an art. You are not born with the art, it is nothing to do with your birth. You have to learn it. It is the most subtle art. You are born only with a capacity. Of course, you are born with a body; you can be a dancer because you have the body.

You can move your body and you can be a dancer -- but dancing has to be learned. Much effort is needed to learn dancing. And dancing is not so difficult because you alone are involved in it. Love is much more difficult. It is dancing with somebody else. The other is also needed to know what dancing is. To fit with somebody, it is a great art. To create a harmony between two persons... two persons mean two different worlds. When two worlds come close, clash is bound to be there if you don't know how to harmonise.

Love is harmony. And happiness, health, harmony, all happen out of love. Learn to love. Don't be in a hurry for marriage, learn to love. First become a great lover. And what is the requirement? The requirement is that a great lover is always ready to give love and is not bothered whether it is returned or not. It is always returned, it is inthe very nature of things. It is just as if you go to the mountains and you sing a song, and the valleys respond. Have you seen an echo point in the mountains, in the hills?

You shout and the valleys shout, or you sing and the valleys sing. Each heart is a valley. If you pour love into it, it will respond. The first lesson of love is not to ask for love, but just to give. Become a giver. And people are doing just the opposite. Even when they give, they give only with the idea that love should come back. It is a bargain. They don't share, they don't share freely. They share with a condition. They go on watching out of the corner of their eye whether it is coming back or not. Very poor people... they don't know the natural functioning of love.

You simply pour, it will come. And if it is not coming, nothing to be worried about -- because a lover knows that to love is to be happy. If it comes, good; then the happiness is multiplied. But even if it never comes back, in the very act of loving you become so happy, so ecstatic, who bothers whether it comes or not? Love has its own intrinsic happiness. It happens when you love. There is no need to wait for the result. Just start loving. By and by you will see much more love is coming back to you. One loves and comes to know what love is only by loving.

As one learns swimming by swimming, by loving one loves. And people are very miserly. They are waiting for some great beloved to happen, then they will love. They remain closed, they remain withdrawn. They just wait. From somewhere some Cleopatra will come and then they will open their heart, but by that time they have completely forgotten how to open it. Don't miss any opportunity of love. Even passing in a street, you can be loving. Even to the beggar you can be loving. There is no need that you have to give him something; you can smile at least. It costs nothing -- but your very smile opens your heart, makes your heart more alive.

Hold somebody's hand -- a friend or a stranger. Don't wait that you will only love when the right person happens. Then the right person will never happen. Go on loving. The more you love, the more is the possibility for the right person to happen, because your heart starts flowering. And a flowering heart attracts many bees, many lovers.You have been trained in a very wrong way. First, everybody lives under a wrong impression that everybody is already a lover. Just being born, you think you are a lover. It's not so easy.

Yes, there is a potentiality, but the potentiality has to be trained, disciplined. A seed exists, but it has to come to flower. You can go on carrying your seed; no bee will be coming. Have you ever seen bees coming to the seeds? Don't they know that seeds can become flowers? But they come when they become flowers. Become a flower, don't remain a seed. Two people, separately unhappy, create more unhappiness for each other when they come together. That's mathematical.

You were unhappy, your wife was unhappy and you both are hoping that being together you both will become happy? This is... this is such ordinary arithmetic -- like two plus two makes four. It is that simple. It is not part of any higher mathematics; it is very ordinary, you can count it on your fingers. You both will become unhappy.

You don't love me any more?' asked Mulla Nasrudin's wife. 'You never say anything nice to me any more like you used to when we were courting.' She wiped a tear from her eye with the corner of her apron. 'I love you, I love you,' retorted Mulla Nasrudin. 'Now will you please shut up and let me drink my beer in peace?'

Courting is one thing. Don't depend on courting. In fact before you get married, get rid of courting. My suggestion is that marriage should happen after the honeymoon, never before it. Only if everything goes right, only then marriage should happen. Honeymoon after marriage is very dangerous. As far as I know, ninety-nine percent of marriages are finished by the time the honeymoon is finished. But then you are caught, then you have no way to escape. Then the whole society, the law, the court -- everybody is against you if you leave the wife, or the wife leaves you. Then the whole morality, the religion, the priest, everybody is against you.

In fact society should create all barriers possible for marriage and no barrier for divorce. Society should not allow people to marry so easily. The court should create barriers -- live with the woman for two years at least, then the court can allow you to get married. Right now they are doing just the reverse. If you want to get married, nobody asks whether you are ready or whether it is just a whim, just because you like the nose of the woman. What foolishness! One cannot live by just a long nose. After two days the nose will be forgotten.

Who looks at one's own wife's nose? I have heard:A certain ward was staffed completely by nurses who looked as though they were finalists in the Miss World Contest, but every time one of the patients saw them, he stared intently and said, 'Rubbish! 'The man in the next bed could not understand it at all. 'Gorgeous nurses like these to look after you and all you can say is "Rubbish". Why?'

'I was not thinking of the nurses,' said the other sadly, 'I was thinking of my wife.'  The wife never looks beautiful, the husband never looks beautiful. Once you are aquainted, beauty disappears. 

Two persons should be allowed to live together long enough to become aquainted, familiar with each other. And even if they want to get married, they should not be allowed. Then divorces will disappear from the world. The divorces exist because marriages are wrong and forced. The divorces exist because marriages are done in a romantic mood. A romantic mood is good if you are a poet -- and poets are not known to be good husbands or good wives. In fact poets are almost always bachelors.

They fool around but they never get caught, and hence their romance remains alive. They go on writing poetry, beautiful poetry. One should not get married to a woman or to a man in a poetic mood. Let the prose mood come, then settle. Because the day-to-day life is more like prose than like poetry. One should become mature enough. Maturity means that one is no more a romantic fool. One understands life, one understands the responsibility of life, one understands the problems of being together with a person.

One accepts all those difficulties and yet decides to live with the person. One is not hoping that there is only going to be heaven, all roses. One is not hoping nonsense; one knows reality is tough. It is rough. There are roses, but far and few in between; there are many thorns. When you have become alert to all of these problems and still you decide that it is worthwhile to risk and be with a person rather than to be alone, then get married. Then marriages will never kill love, because this love is realistic. Marriage can kill only romantic love.

And romantic love is what people call 'puppy love'. One should not depend on it. One should not think about it as nourishment. It may be just like ice-cream. You can eat it sometimes, but don't depend on it. Life has to be more realistic, more prose. And marriage itself never destroys anything. Marriage simply brings out whatsoever ishidden in you -- it brings it out. If love is hidden behind you, inside you, marriage brings it out. If love was just a pretension, just a bait, then sooner or later it has to disappear.

And then your reality, your ugly personality comes up. Marriage simply is an opportunity, so whatsoever you had to bring out will come out. I am not saying that love is destroyed by marriage. Love is destroyed by people who don't know how to love. Love is destroyed because in the first place love is not. You have been living in a dream. Reality destroys that dream. Otherwise love is something eternal, part of eternity. If you grow, if you know the art, and you accept the realities of love-life, then it goes on growing every day.

Marriage becomes a tremendous opportunity to grow into love. Nothing can destroy love. If it is there, it goes on growing. But my feeling is, it is not there in the first place. You misunderstood yourself; something else was there. Maybe sex was there, sex appeal was there. Then it is going to be destroyed, because once you have loved a woman, then the sex appeal disappears -- because the sex appeal is only with the unknown. Once you have tasted the body of the woman or the man, then the sex appeal disappears.

If your love was only sex appeal then it is bound to disappear. So never misunderstand love for something else. If love is really love.... What do I mean when I say 'really love'? I mean that just being in the presence of the other you feel suddenly happy, just being together you feel ecstatic, just the very presence of the other fulfills something deep in your heart... something starts singing in your heart, you fall into harmony. Just the very presence of the other helps you to be together; you become more individual, more centered, more grounded. Then it is love.

Love is not a passion, love is not an emotion. Love is a very deep understanding that somebody somehow completes you. Somebody makes you a full circle. The presence of the other enhances your presence. Love gives freedom to be yourself; it is not possessiveness. So, watch. Never think of sex as love, otherwise you will be deceived.

Be alert, and when you start feeling with someone that just the presence, the pure presence -- nothing else, nothing else is needed; you don't ask anything -- just the presence, just that the other is, is enough to make you happy... something starts flowering within you, a thousand and one  lotuses bloom... then you are in love, and then you can pass through all the difficulties that reality creates. Many anguishes, many anxieties -- you will be able to pass all of them, and your love will be flowering more and more, because all those situations will become challenges. And your love, by overcoming them, will become more and more strong.

Love is eternity. If it is there, then it goes on growing and growing. Love knows the beginning but does not know the end.

I LOVE MY HUSBAND BUT I HATE SEX, AND THAT CREATES CONFLICT. ISN’T SEX ANIMALISTIC?

It is. But man is an animal – as much of an animal as any other animal. But when I say that man is an animal, I don’t mean that man finishes with animality; he can be more than the animal, he can be less also. That is the glory of man, the freedom and the danger, the agony and the ecstasy. 

A man can be far lower than animals, and a man can be far higher than gods. Man has infinite potentiality. A dog is a dog: he remains a dog. He is born a dog and he will die a dog. A man can become a Buddha, and a man can become an Adolf Hitler too. So man is very open-ended on both sides – he can fall back. Can you find any animal more dangerous than man, more mad than man? Just think of a scene: fifty thousand monkeys sitting in a stadium killing small children – throwing them into a fire. What will you think about them? Thousands of children are being thrown into a fire... A great fire is burning just in the middle of the stadium, and fifty thousand monkeys enjoying with joy, dancing, and children are being thrown – their own children. What will you think about these monkeys? Will you not think that the monkeys have gone mad? But this has happened in humanity. In Carthage it happened: fifty thousand men burning children. They burnt three hundred children at one time. as an offering to their god. Their own children!

But forget about Carthage, it is long past. What did Adolf Hitler do in this century’? Of course, this is a far-advanced century, so Adolf Hitler was capable of doing greater things than Carthage. He killed millions of Jews, thousands at a time would be forced into a chamber and gassed. And hundreds of people would be looking from the outside... watching through one-way mirrors. What you will think about these people? What type of men...? People being gassed, burnt, evaporated, and others are watching? Can you think about animals doing such a thing?

During three thousand years, man has been through five thousand wars – killing and killing and killing.And you call sex animalistic? Animals have never done anything more ’animalistic’ than man. And you think man is not an animal?

Man is an animal. And the idea that man is not an animal is one of the hindrances for your growth. So you take it for granted that you are not animals, and then you stop growing. The first recognition has to be this: ’I am an animal and I have to be alert and and go beyond it.’It happened:

A man wrote to a country hotel in Ireland to ask if his dog would be allowed to stay there. He received the following answer: Dear Sir, I have been in the hotel business for over thirty years. Never yet have I had to call in the police to eject a disorderly dog in the small hours of the morning. No dog has ever attempted to pass off a bad cheque on me. Never has a dog set the bed-clothes alight through smoking. I have never found a hotel towel in a dog’s suitcase. Your dog is welcome.

P.S. If he can vouch for you, you can come too!
Animals are beautiful, whatsoever they are; they are just innocent. Man is very cunning, very calculating, very ugly. Man can fall lower than the animals, because man can rise higher than man higher than gods. Man has an infinite potentiality: he can be the lowest and he can be the highest. He has the whole ladder in his being, from the first rung to the last rung. 

So the first thing I would like to say to you: don’t call sex just animalistic, because sex can be just animalistic – that is possible, but it need not be. It can rise higher, it can become love, it can become prayer. It depends on you.

Sex in itself is nothing like a fixed entity; it is just a possibility. You can make it as you like it, as you want it. That is the whole message of Tantra: that sex can become samadhi. That is the vision of Tantra: that sex can become samadhi, that through sex the ultimate ecstasy can enter in you. Sex can become the bridge between you and the ultimate.

You say: I LOVE MY HUSBAND BUT I HATE SEX, AND THAT CREATES CONFLICT. How can you love your husband and yet hate sex’? You must be playing on words. How can you love your husband and hate sex?

Just try to understand it. When you love a man, you would like to hold his hand too. When you love a man, you would like to hug him sometimes too. When you love a man, you would not only like to hear his sound, you would like to see his face too. When you only hear the sound of your beloved, the beloved is far away, the sound is not enough; when you see him too you are more satisfied.

When you touch him, certainly you are even more satisfied. When you taste him, certainly you are even more satisfied. What is sex? It is just a meeting of two deep energies.

You must be carrying some taboos in your mind, inhibitions. What is sex’? Just two persons meeting at the maximum point – not only holding hands, not only hugging each other’s bodies, but penetrating into each other’s energy realm. Why should you hate sex? Your mind must have been conditioned by the mahatma's, the so-called ’religious’ people who have poisoned the whole of humanity, who have poisoned your very source of growth. Why should you hate? If you love your man, you would like to share your total being with him: there is no need to hate. And if you hate sex, what are you saying’? You are simply saying that you want the man to take care of you financially, to take care of the house, to bring you a car and a fur coat.

You want to use the man... and you call it love’? And you don’t want to share anything with him. When you love, you share all. When you love, you don’t have any secrets. When you love, you have your heart utterly open; you are available. When you love, you are ready to go with him even to hell if he is going to hell.

But this happens. We are very expert with words: we don’t want to say that we don’t love,so we make it look as if we love and we hate sex. Sex is not all love – that’s true, love is more than sex – that’s true; but sex is the very foundation of it. Yes, one day sex disappears, but to hate it is not the way to make it disappear. To hate it is the way to repress it. And whatsoever is repressed will come up one way or other.

Remember, sex is natural. One can go beyond it, but not though repression. And if you repress it, sooner or later you will find some other way to express it; some perversion is bound to enter – you will have to find some substitute. And substitutes are of no help at all; they don't help, they can't help. And once a natural problem has been turned in such a way that you have forgotten about it,and it has bubbled up somewhere else as a substitute, you can go on fighting with the substitute, but it is not going to help.

I have heard...
A stranger got into a suburban railway carriage in which two men were already sitting. One of them had a peculiar mannerism – he scratched his elbow again and again and again. This elbowscratching was nearly driving the stranger mad by the time the victim got out at his station.’Gravely afflicted, your friend’ he said to the other man. ’Yes indeed. He has got a terrible dose of piles.’ ’I’m not talking about piles. I’m talking about all that scratching just now.’ ’Yes, that is right – piles. You see he is a very religious man and a civil servant too. And that scratching of the elbow is just a substitute.’

But substitutes never help; they only create perversions. obsessions. Be natural if you want to go beyond nature some day. Be natural: that is the first requirement. I am not saying that there is nothing more than nature, there is a higher nature – that is the whole message of Tantra. But be very earthly if you really want to rise high in the sky.

Can’t you see these trees? They are rooted in the earth, and the better they are rooted the higher they go. The higher they want to go, the deeper they will have to go into the earth. If a tree wants to touch the stars, the tree will have to go and touch the very hell – that’s the only way. Be rooted in your body if you want to become a soul. Be rooted in your sex if you really want to become a lover. Yes, the more energy is converted into love, the less and less need of sex will be there, but you will not hate it.

Hate is not a right relationship with anything. Hate simply shows that you are afraid. Hate simply shows that there is great fear in you. Hate simply shows that deep down you are still attracted. If you hate sex, then your energy will start moving somewhere else. Energy has to move. Man, if he suppresses sex, becomes more ambitious. If you really want to be ambitious you have to suppress sex. Then only can ambition have energy, otherwise you will not have any energy. A politician has to suppress sex, then only can he rush towards New Delhi. Sex energy is needed. 

Whenever you are suppressing sex, you are angry at the whole world you can become a great revolutionary. All revolutionaries are bound to be sexually repressed. When, in a better world, sex will be simple, natural, accepted without any taboo and without any inhibition, politics will disappear and there will be no revolutionaries there will be no need. When a man represses sex, he becomes too attached to money; he has to put his sexual energy somewhere.

Have you not seen people holding their hundred rupee notes as if they were touching their beloved? Can’t you see in their eyes the same lust? But this is ugly. To hold a woman with deep love is beautiful; to hold a hundred rupee note with lust is just ugly – it is a substitute. You cannot deceive animals... A man went to the zoo and took his son; he wanted to show his son the monkeys there. The son was very interested: he had never seen monkeys. They went there – but no monkeys. So he asked the zoo-keeper ’What has happened? Where are the monkeys?’ 

And the zoo-keeper said ’This is their love season, so they have gone into the hut.’ The man was very frustrated. For months he had been trying to bring the boy. They had travelled far, and now this was love season! So he asked ’If we throw nuts won’t they come out?’ And the zoo-keeper said ’Would you?’ But I think man can come out; if you throw nuts, man HAS to come out. The zoo-keeper is wrong: the monkeys will not come that is certain; if you give them money they will not come. They will say ’Keep your money. The love season is on! Keep your money.’

And if you say ’We can make you President of India’, they will say ’You keep your presidency. The love season is on! But man, if you make him a president, can kill his beloved. If that is the stake, he can do that. These are substitutes. You cannot befool animals.

I have heard...
The spinster had a parrot who kept repeating ’I want to poke! I want to poke!’ She found this slightly irritating, until a married friend explained what it meant. Then she became very alarmed...’I love that bird, but I’ll have to get rid of him, or the vicar will never call again’ she said. But her more experienced friend said ’Well, if you really love him, you’ll get him what he longs for, which is a female, then he won’t keep on about it all the time.’ Off went the spinster to the bird shop, but the man said ’No can do, no lady parrots coming in all season, Miss. But I can do you a lady owl at a reasonable price.’ Anything was better than nothing, so she popped the owl into the parrot’s cage, and waited with thrilled anticipation... ’I want to poke! I want to poke!’ said the parrot.

’Ooo-Ooo’ said the lady owl.
’Not you, you goggle-eyed freak!’ said the parrot ’I can’t stand women who wear glasses!’

Substitutes won’t do. Man is living with substitutes. Sex is natural, money is unnatural. Sex is natural; power, prestige, respectability, are unnatural. If you really want to hate something, hate money, hate power, hate prestige. Why hate love?

Sex is one of the most beautiful phenomena in the world. Of course, the lowest, that is true, but the higher moves through the lower – the lotus comes out of the mud. Don’t hate the mud, otherwise how will you help the mud to release the lotus? Help the mud, take care of the mud, so that the lotus is released. Certainly, the lotus is so far away from the mud that you cannot even conceive of any relationship. If you see a lotus, you cannot believe that it comes out of dirty mud. But it comes: it is the expression of the dirty mud.

The soul is released from the body. LOVE is released from sex. SEX is a body thing, love is a spiritual thing. Sex is like mud, love is like a lotus. But without the mud the lotus is not possible, so don’t hate the mud.

The whole TANTRA message is simple; it is very scientific and it is very natural. The message is that if you really want to go beyond the world, go into the world deeply, fully alert. aware.

OSHO, The TANTRA, Vision,

Whenever Love happens, you feel very nervous-OSHO

Whenever Love happens, you feel very nervous because you are moving in the unknown. You are moving into something which you cannot manipulate, something which is beyond you, in which you can be lost-lost forever. It may be a point of no return and you never come back. That’s what is happening.

You asked me “recently, sitting before you, I have become bathed in sweat. What is happening??? The whole personality: shivering, afraid, sweating, nervous. A death is happening! That’s what I mean when I say love is happening.

Love and death are two names of the same phenomenon. On the edge of the love once feels so scared that one can be absorbed into it and there may be no possibility to come back. It is death, dawning before you. Love is death, and if you have known love as death you have opened a secret chamber of life. Then you will know death also as love. Then death becomes God.

OSHO

Tale 55 ~ 100 Tales For 10,000 Buddhas

Meditation camp will soon be happening in Manali. Today morning, He asks me if I like the orange colour dress of Laxmi. I say, “Yes Osho, it looks good on her.” He says, “It will look good in the meditation camp, the participants wearing the same colour. You get one dress made like Laxmi’s.” He gives the same message to Karuna also. We both agree to it.

Since that message, He has asked us three time if our orange dresses are ready. And our answer is the same, “Not yet.” There is still quite a time until the meditation camp. To my surprise today, I go to see Him and find this big pile of orange cloth sitting in one of the corners of His room. He asks me to cut the piece of cloth for my dress. I feel ashamed for not making my dress in time and giving Him all this trouble. Maybe I was not serious about it, but He looks serious. With the help of a friend, I cut four meters

of cloth for me with shaky hands. Some unknown fear grips me and I am unable to look at Him. He calls me and I sit near His feet, with the bundle of cloth in my lap, looking at the floor.

He blesses me by keeping His hand on my head and says, “Get this dress made exactly in the same pattern as Laxmi’s. It will look good on you.” I look at His mischievously smiling face and get more confused, not understanding what He is up to.

Osho – If you are in love you are naturally, spontaneously, creative

Osho – If you are in love you are naturally, spontaneously, creative; if you are not in love you are not only uncreative, you become destructive.
Millions of people live without love; hence there is so much destruction in the world, so much anger, violence, hatred. Very rarely do you come across a person who is really creative. Even people who are known as creators are not real creators. Out of one hundred poets, ninety-nine are not really creators… composers maybe, but not creators. Maybe they are clever with words, able to arrange words in rhythms, but they are not creative.
Creativity means that you become a vehicle to God. You are no more there. God functions through you. You allow him space to function — that’s what creativity is. When something starts flowing through you which comes from the above, from the beyond, which you cannot claim as your own, then you are creative. But the door to the beyond only opens in love. Then the whole sky is yours and all the stars start dancing in you.
Love deeply. It is not a question of relationship. Love is a way of life. Be loving — to the trees, to the animals, to the birds, to the rocks, to the pebble. It is not a question of to whom, it is a question of your heart throbbing with love. It has nothing to do with the object of love but with the subjectivity of love.
Then suddenly you have the Midas touch: whatsoever you touch becomes golden. Small things in your hands become extraordinarily beautiful. Your actions, ordinary actions, start having the quality of the extraordinary. Then whatsoever you say is poetry and whatsoever you live is music. Even while you are asleep your energy is in a celebration.
Love is my fundamental approach towards life. If life can be looked at through the eyes of love, life disappears and God is found. If life is looked at through the eyes of logic, even life disappears and there is only matter left. These are three possibilities: through logic the world becomes just matter; through love it becomes divine, it becomes consciousness; and between the two, it is life, a little bit of matter and a little bit of consciousness, because we are in a state of hesitation, divided.
It is because we are divided that life is divided in two: matter and mind. It is our division reflected by life, echoed by life. When we are undivided… and there are two ways to be undivided: either be undivided through logic… but then you will miss all that is beautiful, then life becomes very grey; it loses all color and all joy. It is all matter, and matter is meaningless. Matter can’t have any meaning. Meaning needs consciousness. Look through love and matter disappears and we are living in an ocean of consciousness. With that vision, oceanic joy arises in you — unbounded, infinite. Out of that joy is creativity.
Source – Osho Book “Source – Osho Book “Even Bein’ Gawd Ain’t A Bed of Roses”

Osho – Power cannot fulfill a love need

Osho – The ego goes on agreeing for wrong things, because the ego can exist only with the wrong. It feeds on the wrong. So whenever you feel that your ego is fulfilled, beware! — you have eaten something wrong, you have swallowed something wrong. Whenever you feel egoless, relax — now you have eaten the right, something which is in tune with your nature.
Ego arises out of disturbance, but ego has its own logic. It goes on saying that you are important, that you are the most important man in the world, and you have to prove it. And we are all trying to do this one way or the other — somebody by possessing more money, somebody by possessing a beautiful woman, somebody by possessing prestige,
power, somebody by becoming a president or a premier, somebody by becoming an artist, a poet, somebody by becoming a MAHATMA — but we are all trying in some way or other to prove our innermost fantasy, that we are the most important person in the world. Then you cannot be a lover.
Ambition is poison for love. A lover is not in any need to prove. In fact, he knows that he is loved, and that’s enough. Try to diagnose it very carefully. When you are not loved — and how can you be loved if you don’t love? — when you are not loved and you don’t love, suddenly a great need arises to perform, to do something, to show the world that you are important, that you are needed. There is a great need to be needed. You feel futile, impotent, useless, if you are not needed. The need in itself is not wrong; it is a love need to be needed. If a woman loves you, you are fulfilled — somebody needs you, you are significant. Then you don’t bother about the crowd. You don’t go into the marketplace and shout, “I am important!” Then you are not ambitious; you don’t collect money like an obsession. If somebody loves you, in that love you are dignified, in that love you become a sovereign.
Love makes you an emperor, a sovereign. Love fulfills you so deeply and so greatly; then there is no need to perform or do anything. Ego simply does not exist with love. But if that need is unfulfilled, then you will try to fulfill it somehow: you would like to become a very famous man so many people need you.
But remember, to be loved by one and to be needed by millions is not the same. Even a single person’s love, even a single glance of love is enough; and you can collect millions of people and they can all look towards you, but that will not be satisfying. That’s what politics is, and what the politician is trying to do.
I have never come across a politician whose heart is functioning. The heart is totally dead — but the need is there to be loved, to be needed, somebody to look to. Where to fulfill it? — he gathers crowds. Through the crowds he tries somehow to fulfill the love need. But that crowd does not love him, that crowd is not bothered by him; that crowd is after its own needs. Because he’s in power he seems to be important. They pay their respects to the chair, and the chairman is deceived. Once the chairman is not in the chair, they don’t bother about him.
Have you ever observed that once a politician is out of power he is simply forgotten? Nobody remembers him. He may live for thirty or forty years; nobody will know about him. By and by, he will recede into darkness. Only once, when he dies, will there be a small notice in the newspapers — that the ex-president or ex-premier is dead.
The man who ruled over Russia before Lenin, Kerensky, lived for fifty years after it like a small New York grocer, and nobody knew about him. He was the Prime Minister of Russia, the most important man — the revolution happened and he was thrown out of power. He escaped. For fifty years he lived. Only when he died did people become aware that Kerensky had been alive for all those fifty years.
Power cannot fulfill a love need. You can possess great kingdoms — that will not fulfill your love need. But if you possess one heart which throbs in tune with you, then you are fulfilled.
Source – Osho Book “The Beloved, Vol 1″

Osho – A loving person cannot be ambitious; it is impossible for a loving person to be ambitious

[A sannyasin, returned from the West, says she is not ready to live in the West. She has a strong desire to be loved, feels a desperation that she hasn’t been loved. Osho says that is one of the basic problems that touches everyone.... ]
Osho – …because we live in a society which is absolutely loveless, so everybody is hungry for love, desperately hungry, dying for it, starving. And the problem is that unless you love people they cannot love you – and you cannot love because you have not been loved. This is the vicious circle. To be able to love one needs to be loved, otherwise a person never becomes able to love.

They have been experimenting with monkeys…. If the mother hugs the monkey, the monkey becomes capable of hugging other females in later life. If the mother is not allowed to hug the child – the child is fed and taken care of but the mother is not allowed to hug the child – then the child is never able to hug any other woman for all his life. He has simply not learned the language; he cannot love because he has not been loved, so he does not know what love is all about.

Psychoanalysts have been surprised to discover that if the mother does not hug and kiss the child – the monkey-child – it will never be able to make sexual contact with a female… he will not know how to make love either. The mother hugging him somehow gives off a certain energy which resounds in his being, creates sexuality, creates the possibility for love. That warmth functions on some of the chakras inside.

If those chakras have never been revolved then you are simply at a loss. Man is the only animal who is at a loss, the only loveless animal on the earth. We are being taught everything except love, and whatsoever we are being taught goes against love. Not only that we are not taught love – we are taught ways which go against love. We are taught how to hoard money, how to become rich, we are taught how to become successful, how to be ambitious, how to become respected – we are taught everything – and these are against love.

A loving person cannot be ambitious; it is impossible for a loving person to be ambitious. Ambition needs a hungry person, a person who has never been loved and who cannot love. Because of that starvation, he projects his hunger and love onto something: money, power, prestige. That becomes his love affair – then he is ready to die for it!

There are millions of people who live only to accumulate money and they don’t know of anything
else that life is for; money has become their beloved. Then there are people who are just hankering for their whole life for a higher post. They are the ladder-climbers: they go on climbing up the ladder, not knowing where they are going and for what.

If they are pulled down the ladder they are very angry – if they go on up they are not happy; either way their life is in vain. We are taught ambition, we are taught desire, we are taught aggression, we are taught to hate people, to doubt people. We are taught to be inimical to people, never to trust anybody. All are against you and you are competing with everybody else for your survival. That’s what they call survival of the fittest. So be more egoistic, be more ambitious, be more aggressive, have more energy so that you can force your way amongst other competitors. But if you love, all these things disappear – then who bothers?

Love is so fulfilling. Who needs much money? Love is so tremendously satisfying. Who wants
power? It is a transfer: if you can love a man deeply you will not need anybody else’s appreciation; that one man’s appreciation is enough. That one man has looked into your eyes and seen your potentiality. That one man has looked deeply into your heart and has loved you. That one man has looked into you and seen what is great in you, what is beautiful in you, and you have looked into his eyes and seen the reflection of your being there. It is enough – you become worthy. Suddenly you have worth – you are not just useless, you have tremendous worth.

And the worth is not of the quality of utility – not that you are useful, that’s why that man is in love with you. He is simply in love with you! Love is unconditional. It is not that you are moral, that you are virtuous, that you are educated, that you belong to a very famous family – these things are irrelevant; he simply loves you as you are! It is not that he sees that in the future you will become very famous, it is not that in the future you will become a great intellectual, a great author, a great actress, no! He simply loves you as you are; this very moment as you are, is enough for him. That gives worth! That is missing.

But remember it is not only your problem – it is everybody’s problem. So don’t make much fuss
about it. Just try to understand it and find a way to get out of it. If you don’t understand it, getting out will be difficult. What happens if you don’t understand? If you don’t understand you go on crying for love and you go on waiting for somebody to come. Prince charming will come and will kiss you and you will be turned into a beautiful human being and then everything will be okay; but up to then, you have to wait.

And meanwhile you are dying, meanwhile your energies are shrinking, meanwhile you are not growing, meanwhile you have become stagnant. Those princes only come in stories, they don’t come in reality. In reality you have to seek them: you have to move towards them, you have to invite them, you have to take the initiative.

Love will happen only to those people who seek it, otherwise not. So if you really want to be loved, just waiting won’t help. Start seeking. There are so many beautiful people; in, fact each person is so beautiful. Maybe he does not suit you – that’s one thing – but nobody is ugly, nobody can be ugly. They all come out of god. How can they be ugly?

Each person has intrinsic value, and the value is tremendous. Just seek somebody with whom your vibe falls in tune, somebody with whom you feel at-one-ment… with whom you fall en rapport. And don’t wait – waiting is wasting! The society is loveless, so nobody is going to come because they are also waiting, remember!

Everybody is waiting and everybody is afraid to take the first step, because the society is loveless. If somebody comes to you and proposes he is afraid you may reject him, and rejection hurts, it hurts very much. In being rejected by a person one feels, ’Again I am proved to be worthless. It was better not to ask. At least I could hope – now there is no hope.’

If one is rejected too many times, by and by one starts sinking within oneself, becomes dead, closes. There is always fear of being rejected, so nobody approaches anybody, nobody takes the initiative; everybody is waiting for the other to take the initiative, and the other is in the same plight. So in the future only those people are able to love and be loved who will take great initiative. Take the initiative! I don’t think there is any problem. You just have to get out of your self-imposed imprisonment.

Nothing is there and there is nobody blocking you. In fact there is no guard on the prison door: the door is open. You are there just out of old habit and you are afraid that if you go and take the initiative, if you are rejected, then? Nothing
to be worried about!

Rejection is not really rejection of you. Maybe the man himself is afraid; he is rejecting just to protect himself. There can be a thousand and one reasons: he is cold, he does not know what love is, he cannot vibrate with love energy or wherever he has ever tried, he has failed. Now the failure has become sealed and he does not want to come across failure again. Maybe he has loved women and they have frustrated him… a thousand and one reasons.

So there is no reason to think that when someone rejects you he is rejecting you. His rejection will have some reasons within himself, it is his problem. Feel compassion when somebody rejects, don’t feel rejected: that is the whole art of moving into love. And it is good to be rejected ninety-nine times if at the hundredth time you are accepted; it is worth it, that risk was worth it.

Nobody rejects you because you never take any initiative and nobody ever accepts you – that is hell! Just the other day I was reading a diary of a poet, and I loved his definition of hell. He says, ’Hell is the place where people are waiting to be loved and nobody ever turns up.’ I liked it… that’s right! All are waiting… and the waiting becomes long – hell is said to be eternal.

Bertrand Russell has written a book against christianity – ’Why I am not a Christian’ – and one of the main reasons that he has given against Christianity is that Jesus says that hell is eternal, and Russell says that this is not possible and this is not fair either… and the logic is correct.

Russell says ’If I expose to a court all the sins that I have committed in this life’ – and Christians
believe in only one life, so there is no problem about it – ’the hardest judge cannot sentence me
to more than four years’ gaol’. Even if those sins have to be included which he had thought of but never committed, then too, not more than eight years. And for these small sins – small, mediocre, mundane – he will be thrown into eternal hell? That looks unfair!

And anybody who has a little reasoning will see the point – that Russell is right and Jesus is wrong. But I say to you that Jesus is right and Russell is wrong, because the reason is something very different…. Hell is not eternal but it appears to be eternal. Have you watched sometimes? – in deep misery time passes so slowly, as if it is not passing at all.

Your mother is dying and you are sitting by the side of the bed. It is the middle of the night and you know she is dying, you know that she may not be able to see the morning again. It is only a few hours but they look so long – as if years are passing – and the clock seems to have stopped, it is not moving. Pain lengthens time.

Your beloved has come and you are sitting by the side of him, silent or singing or talking, and time flies so fast. Hours pass like minutes, days pass like hours, and you always feel that it was not enough. It is already the middle of the night and you have not even finished your talk – nothing has ever started.

Time passes fast when you are in a blissful mood, time stops when you are in a painful mood; that is the whole meaning. Jesus saying that hell is eternal is simply proposing Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, nothing else – that it depends on your mood, it is relative. Maybe hell is only for one minute but it will look eternal. And heaven – maybe it is eternal – will look like one minute. So come out of this hell….

And I am creating here people whose whole religion is love, my whole message is that of love. I
don’t call any love sin, I don’t call any love good or bad – love is good! Even the lowest kind of love is good because it is at least the lowest rung of the ladder. So don’t be disheartened; take courage, find a friend! And remember always not to think about love in romantic terms, mm? otherwise much frustration happens out of it. That too is a misery. Society is loveless and people have very wrong notions about love. First they don’t get love and if sometimes they do, they are not satisfied by it because they have great perfectionistic ideals, inhuman ideals.

If you love a man, he will perspire and his perspiration stinks. If you love a man you will not like a thousand and one things in him… sometimes very small things. You cannot get a perfect man. Not are you perfect nobody is perfect: there are limitations, frailities. The first difficulty is that people are loveless, so nobody knows how to love. The second difficulty is that people have been brought up on romantic ideas of love – fairy love, airy fairy, abstract, dreamy – not real, not authentic, not actual.

If you have that idea, then even if you find a lover you will be frustrated sooner or later. So drop all romantic ideas – they are barriers in love. Romantic ideas are very poisonous; they are part of the same neurotic society. A loveless society creates romantic ideas about love. That is part
of the same game, it comes in the same package. First, make people loveless, and then give them such ideals that they cannot fulfil them so they remain always hung up, just in limbo. Without love, they suffer; with love, they suffer – suffering is certain.

A man of understanding, without love, enjoys his aloneness – in love, enjoys relationships; he enjoys all the time! A foolish person alone feels lonely, is frustrated – together, is never happy because the other is imperfect. So don’t be foolish – just be intelligent! Your problem will be solved only by creating a little intelligence… and it is there! So from tomorrow morning you start taking initiative, mm? Good!

Source: from Osho Book “This Is It”