Osho on Love

It depends. There are as many loves as there are people. Love is a hierarchy, from the lowest rung to the highest, from sex to superconsciousness. There are many many layers, many planes of love. It all depends on you. If you are existing on the lowest rung, you will have a totally different idea of love than the person who is existing on the highest rung. Adolf Hitler will have one idea of love, Gautam Buddha another; and they will be
diametrically opposite, because they are at two extremes.

At the lowest, love is a kind of politics, power politics. Wherever love is contaminated by the idea of domination, it is politics. Whether you call it politics or not is not the question, it is political. And millions of people never know anything about love except this politics -- the politics that exists between husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends. It is politics, the whole thing is political: you want to dominate the other, you enjoy domination.
And love is nothing but politics sugar-coated, a bitter pill sugar-coated.

You talk about love but the deep desire is to exploit the other. And I am not saying that you are doing it deliberately or consciously. People are falling in love with horses, dogs, animals, machines, things. Why? Because to be in love with human beings has become an utter hell, a continuous conflict -- nagging, always at each other's throats. This is the lowest form of love. Nothing is wrong with it if you can use it as a steppingstone , if you can use it as a meditation.

If you can watch it, if you try to understand it, in that very understanding you will reach another rung, you will start moving upwards. Only at the highest peak, when love is not a relationship any more, when love becomes a state of your being, the lotus opens totally and great perfume is released -- but only at the highest peak. At its lowest, love is just a political relationship. At its highest, love is a religious state of consciousness. I love you too, Buddha loves, Jesus loves, but their love demands nothing in return.

Their love is given for the sheer joy of giving it; it is not a bargain. Hence the radiant beauty of it, hence the transcendental beauty of it. It surpasses all the joys that you have known. When I talk about love, I am talking about love as a state. It is unaddressed: you don't love this person or that person, you simply love. You are love. Rather than saying that you love somebody, it will be better to say you are love. So whosoever is capable of
partaking, can partake.

Whosoever is capable of drinking out of your infinite sources of being, you are available -- you are available unconditionally. That is possible only if love becomes more and more meditative. `Medicine' and `meditation' come from the same root. Love as you know it is a kind of disease: it needs the medicine of meditation. If it passes through meditation, it is purified. And the more purified it is, the more ecstatic.

Nancy was having coffee with Helen.
Nancy asked, "How do you know your husband loves you?"
"He takes out the garbage every morning."
"That's not love. That's good housekeeping."
"My husband gives me all the spending money I need."
"That's not love. That's generosity."
"My husband never looks at other women."
"That's not love. That's poor vision."
"John always opens the door for me."
"That's not love. That's good manners."
"John kisses me even when I've eaten garlic and I have curlers in my hair."
"Now, that's love."

Everybody has their own idea of love. And only when you come to the state where all ideas about love have disappeared, where love is no more an idea but simply your being, then only will you know its freedom. Then love is God. Then love is the ultimate truth. Let your love move through the process of meditation. Watch it: watch the cunning ways of your mind, watch your power-politics. And nothing else except continuous watching and observing is going to help.

When you say something to your woman or your man, look at it: what is the unconscious motive? Why are you saying it? Is there some motive? Then what is it? Be conscious of that motive, bring it to consciousness -- because this is one of the secret keys for transforming your life: anything that becomes conscious disappears. Your motives remain unconscious, that's why you remain in their grip. Make them conscious, bring them to light, and they will disappear.

It is as if you pull up a tree and bring the roots to the sunlight: they will die, they can exist only in the darkness of the soil. Your motives also exist only in the darkness of your unconsciousness. So the only way to transform your love is to bring all the motivations from the unconscious into the conscious. Slowly slowly, those motives will die. And when love is unmotivated, then love is the greatest thing that can ever happen to anybody. Then love is something of the ultimate, of the beyond.

That is the meaning when Jesus says, "God is love." I say to you: Love is God. God can be forgotten, but don't forget love -- because it is the purification of love that will bring you to God. If you forget about God completely, nothing is lost. But don't forget love, because love is the bridge. Love is the process of alchemical change in your consciousness.

Osho Quotes: be a fool, drop the ego.

A fool is one who goes on trusting; a fool is one who goes on trusting against all his experience. You deceive him, and he trusts you; and you deceive him again, and he trusts you; and you deceive him again, and he trusts you. Then you will say that he is a fool, he does not learn. His trust is tremendous; his trust is so pure that nobody can corrupt it. Be a fool in the Taoist sense, in the Zen sense. Don't try to create a wall of knowledge around you. Whatsoever experience comes to you, let it happen, and then go on dropping it. Go on cleaning your mind continuously; go on dying to the past so you remain in the present, herenow, as if just born, just a babe. In the beginning it is going to be very difficult. The world will start taking advantage of you...let them. They are poor fellows. Even if you are cheated and deceived and robbed, let it happen, because that which is really yours cannot be robbed from you, that which is really yours nobody can steal from you. And each time you don't allow situations to corrupt you, that opportunity will become an integration inside. Your soul will become more crystallized.

Osho Story on Attachment and Renunciation

Osho : Beware of that. There are people who are attached to wealth and there are people who are attached to poverty. But it is the same attachment.

I have heard: The story is told of a dervish who went to visit a great Sufi master. Seeing his affluence, the dervish thought to himself, ”How can Sufism and such prosperity go hand in hand?” After staying a few days with the master, he decided to leave. The master said, ”Let me accompany you on your journey!”

After they had gone a short distance, the dervish noticed that he had forgotten his KASHKUL, the begging-bowl. So he asked the master for permission to return and get it.

The master replied, ”I departed from all my possessions, but you can’t even leave behind your begging-bowl. Thus, we must part company from here.”

The Sufi is not attached to wealth or to poverty; he is simply not attached to anything. And when you are not attached to anything, you need not renounce. Renunciation is the other side of attachment. Those who understand the foolishness of attachment don’t renounce. They live in the world but yet they are not of the world.

To willfully insist upon being in poverty is still an attachment: remember it. And to willfully insist upon ANYTHING is again an ego trip. The Sufi lives simply, the Sufi lives without any will of his own. If it happens to be a palace, he is happy; if it happens to be a hut, he is happy.

If it happens to be that he is a king, it is okay; if it happens to be that he is a beggar, that too is perfectly okay. He has no preference. He simply lives in the moment, whatsoever God makes available to him. He does not change anything.

Source: from book” Unio Mystica, Volume 1” by Osho