RUMI - I belong to the Self of the Beloved

My home has no address;

my tracks leave no trace.

I am neither body nor soul

What can I say?

I belong to the Self of the Beloved

 Rumi

OSHO - Once you realize your inner being and the light, you are no more of this world; whatsoever happened in the past happened in a dream

For millions of lives, for ages together, you have been in darkness – but don’t feel depressed and don’t feel hopeless, because even if you have lived in darkness for millions of lives, this very moment you can attain to the light.

Just look: a house has remained closed for one hundred years, dark, and you go into it and you light a light. Will the darkness say, ”I am one hundred years old and this light is just a baby”? Will the darkness say, ”I am not going to disappear. You will have to burn light at least for one hundred years, only then...”? No, even a baby flame is enough for very very ancient darkness. Why? In one hundred years the darkness must have become engrained. But no, darkness cannot become engrained because it is NOT. It was simply waiting for the light – the moment the light comes in, the darkness disappears; it cannot resist because it has no positive existence.

People come to me and they say, ”You teach that sudden enlightenment is possible. Then what will happen of our past lives and our past karmas?” Nothing – they are of the nature of darkness. You may have murdered, you may have been a thief, a robber, you may have been a Hitler, a Genghis Khan, or somebody, the worst possible, but that doesn’t make any difference. Once you remember yourself, the light is there; the whole past disappears immediately; not for a single moment can it stay there. You murdered, but you cannot become a murderer; you murdered because you were not aware of yourself, you were not aware what you are doing.

Jesus is reported to have said on the cross, ”Father, forgive these people because they know not what they are doing.” He was saying simply, ”These people are not of the nature of light, they don’t remember themselves. They are doing in complete forgetfulness, in darkness they are moving and stumbling. Forgive them, they are not responsible for whatsoever they are doing.” How can a person be responsible who does not remember himself?

If a drunkard kills somebody, even the court forgives him if it can be proved that he acted when he was completely unconscious. Why? Because how can you make a person responsible? You can make him responsible for drinking, but you cannot make him responsible for murder. If a madman kills somebody, he has to be forgiven because he is not himself.

Responsibility means remembering.

Whatsoever you have done, I tell you, don’t be worried by it. It has happened to you because you were not aware. Alight your inner flame – find it, seek it, it is there – and suddenly the whole past disappears, as if it all happened in a dream. In fact, it has happened in a dream, because you were not conscious. All karmas have happened in a dream, they are made of the same stuff as dreams are made.

You need not wait for your karmas to be fulfilled – then you will have to wait for eternity. And even then you will not be out of the wheel because you cannot simply wait for eternity: you will be doing many things meanwhile; then the vicious circle cannot be completed ever. You will move on and on and on, and you will go on doing things, and new things will make you entangled in more future things – then where will the end be? No, there is no need. You simply become aware and suddenly all karmas drop. In a single moment of intense awareness, the whole past disappears, becomes rubbish.

This is one of the most fundamental things the East has discovered. 

Christians cannot understand it; they go on thinking of judgment, and the Last Day of Judgment, that everybody has to be judged by his acts. Then Christ is wrong when he says, ”Forgive these people because they know not what they are doing.” Jews cannot understand it, Mohammedans cannot understand it.

Hindus are really one of the most daring races, they have penetrated to the very core of the problem: the problem is not action, the problem is being. Once you realize your inner being and the light, you are no more of this world; whatsoever happened in the past happened in a dream.

 That’s why Hindus say this whole world is a dream – only you are not a dream, only the dreamer is not the dream; otherwise, everything is a dream.

Look at the beauty of this truth: only the dreamer is not a dream, because the dreamer cannot be a dream; otherwise the dream cannot exist. At least somebody, the dreamer, has to be a real phenomenon.

In the day you are awake; you do many things: you go to the shop, you go to the market, you work in a farm, or in a factory, and you do millions of things. By the night when you are asleep, you forget everything about it; it disappears – a new world starts, the world of the dream. And now scientists say that the same time has to be given to dream as you give to awakening. The same waking hours have to be given to dreaming. In sixty years’ time, if twenty years have been devoted to work in the waking state, twenty years have been devoted to dreaming; the SAME time, exactly the same time,has to be devoted to dreaming. So dreaming is not less real, it has the same quality.

In the night you dream, you forget about your waking world. In the deep sleep you forget about your waking world, your dreaming world. In the morning again the waking world comes into existence,you forget about your dreaming and you sleep. But one thing continuously remains – you. Who remembers the dreams? In the morning who says, ”I dreamt last night”? In the morning who says,”Last night I had a very very deep sleep without any dreams”? Who?

There must be a witness to it who stands aside, who always stands aside and goes on looking.

Waking comes, dreaming comes, sleep comes – and somebody stands by the side and goes on looking. Only this is the real, because it exists in every state. Other states disappear, but it has to remain in every state, it is the only permanent thing in you.

Attain to this witness more and more. Become more and more alert, and become more and more a witness. Rather than being an actor in the world, you be a witness, a spectator. Everything else is a dream, only the dreamer is the truth. He has to be true, otherwise where will dreams happen? He’s,the base; illusions can happen only because... if he is there.

And once you remember, you start laughing. What type of life existed without remembering? You,were a drunkard, moving from one state to another, not knowing why, drifting with no direction.

But:

THE DARKNESS OF AGES – CANNOT SHROUD THE GLOWING SUN; – THE LONG KALPAS

OF SAMSARA...

many many ages, aeons of this world, kalpas,

 Osho - Tantra: The Supreme Understanding THE NATURE OF DARKNESS AND OF LIGHT

OSHO - If you can attain to one minute’s self-remembering, I promise you to make you a buddha. Even for one minute, sixty seconds, that will do. You will think, ”So cheap, so easy?” – it is not. You don’t know how deep is your forgetfulness

Those who have awakened, they have come to realize that... THE DARKNESS OF AGES CANNOT

SHROUD THE GLOWING SUN.

You may have been wandering in darkness for millions of lives, but it cannot destroy your inner light because darkness cannot be aggressive. It is not. Something which is not, how can it be aggressive? Darkness cannot destroy light – how can darkness destroy light? Even a small flame, darkness cannot destroy it, darkness cannot jump on it, cannot be in conflict with it – how can darkness destroy a flame? How can darkness shroud a flame? It is impossible, it has never happened because it cannot happen.

But people go on thinking in terms of conflict: they think darkness is against light. This is absurd!Darkness cannot be against light. How can the absence be against that of which it is the absence?Darkness cannot be against light: there is no fight in it; it is simply the absence, sheer absence,sheer impotency – how can it attack?You go on saying, ”What could I do? – I had an attack of anger” – it is impossible; ”I had an attack of greed” – it is impossible.

 Greed cannot attack, anger cannot attack: they are of the nature of darkness – and your being is light; the very possibility doesn’t exist.

 But anger comes; that shows only that your inner flame has been completely forgotten, you have become completely oblivious of it, you don’t know it is there. This forgetfulness can shroud it, but not darkness.So the real darkness is your forgetfulness, and your forgetfulness can invite anger, greed, lust, hate,jealousy – they don’t attack you.

 Remember, you send the invitations first and they accept it. Your invitation is there – they cannot attack, they come as invited guests. You may have forgotten that you ever invited them, you can forget because you have forgotten yourself, you can forget anything. Forgetfulness is the real darkness. And in forgetfulness everything happens. You are just like a drunkard: completely forgotten yourself, who you are, where you are going, for what you are going.

All direction is lost, the very sense of direction is not there. You are like a drunkard. That’s why all basic religious teachings insist on self-remembering. Forgetfulness is the disease, then selfremembering is going to be the antidote.

Try to remember yourself – and you will say, ”I know myself and I remember myself! What are you talking about?” Then try it: just keep your wristwatch before you, and look at the hand that shows seconds and remember only one thing: ”I am looking at this hand which is showing seconds.” You will not be able to remember for even three seconds together. You will forget many times – just a simple thing: ”I am looking and I will remember this, that I am looking.”

You will forget. Many things will come in your mind: you have made an appointment; just looking at the watch the association will come in the mind: ”I have to go at five o’clock to meet a friend.”

Suddenly the thought comes and you have forgotten that you are looking at it. Just by looking at the watch you may start thinking of Switzerland because it is Swissmade. Just by looking at the watch you may start thinking, ”How foolish I am. What am I doing here wasting time?” But you will not be able to remember, even for three consecutive seconds, that you are looking at the hand showing seconds moving.

If you can attain to one minute’s self-remembering, I promise you to make you a buddha. Even for one minute, sixty seconds, that will do. You will think, ”So cheap, so easy?” – it is not. You don’t know how deep is your forgetfulness. You will not be able to do it for one minute continuously, not a single thought comcoming in and disturbing your self-remembering. This is the real darkness. If you remember, you will become light. If you forget, you become dark. And in darkness, of course, all sorts of thieves come, all sorts of robbers attack you, all sorts of mishaps happen.

Self-remembrance is the key. Try to remember more and more, because whenever you try to remember more and more, you become centered, you are in yourself; your journeying mind falls back to one’s own self. Otherwise you are going somewhere: the mind continuously creating new desires, and you are following and chasing the mind simultaneously in many directions.

 That’s why you are split, you are not one, and your flame, inside flame, goes on wavering – a leaf in a strong wind.When the inner flame becomes unwavering, suddenly you are going through a mutation, a transformation, a new being is born. That being will be of the nature of light. Right now you are of the nature of darkness, you are simply an absence of something which is possible. In fact, you are not yet, you are not yet born. You have taken many births and many deaths, but you have not yet been born. Your real birth is still going to take place, and this will be the work: that you transform your inner nature from forgetfulness to self-remembering.

Do whatsoever you do. I don’t give you any discipline, and I don’t say to you, ”Do this and don’t do that.” My discipline is very easy. My discipline is: Do whatsoever you like – but do it with selfremembering; remember yourself that you are doing it. Walking, remember that you are walking.You need not verbalize this because verbalization will not help; that itself will become a distraction.You need not walk and say inside, ”I am walking,” because if you say, ”I am walking, I am walking,”this ”I am walking” will be the forgetfulness; then you will not be able to remember. Simply remember;there is no need to verbalize it.

I have to verbalize because I am talking to you, but when you are walking you simply remember the phenomenon, the walking; each step should be taken with full awareness. Eating, eat. I don’t say what to eat, and what not to eat. Whatsoever you like, eat, but with the self-remembrance that you are eating. And soon you will see many things have become impossible to do.

With self-remembering you cannot eat meat, impossible. It is impossible to be so violent if you remember. It is impossible to harm somebody when you remember, because when you remember yourself, suddenly you see that the same light, the same flame is burning everywhere, within each body, each unit. The more you know your inner nature, the more you penetrate the other. How can you kill for eating?

  Becomes simply impossible. Not that you practice it – if you practice it, it is false. If you practice not to be a thief it is false; you will be a thief, you will find subtle ways. If you,practice nonviolence, your nonviolence... there will be violence hidden behind it.No, religion cannot be practiced. Morality can be practiced; that’s why morality creates hypocrisy,morality creates false faces. Religion creates the authentic being, it cannot be practiced. How can you practice the being? You simply become more aware and things start changing. You simply become more of the nature of light, and darkness disappears.

THE DARKNESS OF AGES CANNOT SHROUD THE GLOWING SUN....

OSHO - Tantra: The Supreme Understanding  THE NATURE OF DARKNESS AND OF LIGHT

OSHO - What matter is what I’m now, right here

I don’t have any biography,

and whatsoever is thought to be biography

is utterly meaningless.

On what date I was born,

in what country I was born,

does not matter.

What matter is what I’m now,

right here 

Osho

.

OSHO - You can understand only as much as you have experienced

Put everything at stake. Be a gambler!

Risk everything, because the next moment is not certain,

so why bother?

Why be concerned?

Live dangerously,

live joyously.

Live without fear,

live without guilt.

Live without any fear of hell,

or any greed for heaven.

Just live. Osho 

OSHO - Empty yourself Pour yourself into love because God can enter only when there is space in you to contain Him

Empty yourself

in hugs

in kisses

in love

in embraces

empty yourself totally

Pour yourself into love

so that your inner-world space is created

because God can enter

only when there is space in you to contain Him.

OSHO

OSHO - Reality has no security and that is its beauty Life has no security and that is its beauty

Every moment you have to be ready to change and to move.

Reality has no security and that is its beauty.

Life has no security and that is its beauty.

Because there is no security, there is adventure.

Because the future is unknown,

nobody knows what is going to happen the next moment.

That’s why there is challenge, growth, adventure.

If you miss adventure, you miss all.

If your life is not that of an adventure, of a search into the unknown,

then you are living in vain.

Osho

OSHO - If you become too exact about life, you start losing contact with life

Life is so mysterious that

you cannot reduce it to exact formulas.

If you reduce the mystery to a formula,

you are being violent to reality and

that will be unjust and unfair to life.

If you become too exact about life,

you start losing contact with life.

How can you be exact about the innocent eyes of a child?

How can you be exact about the beautiful form of a woman?

How can you be exact about the clouds in the sky,

and the rivers and the mountains and the star ?

You have to be as inexact as life is.

You have to be as volatile as life is.

You have to be continuously on the move!

Life is not a noun – -it is a verb.

You have to be as much of a verb as life is

Life is such a flux;

it is elusive, and mysterious.

Osho

OSHO - You simply are in a let-go. I will not create obstructions; I am no more. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. Take possession of me, overwhelm me, flood me

Prayer is the greatest miracle in the world,

because prayer means trust, love, surrender.

Prayer is not just repeating a formula,

it is a pouring out of the heart.

To pray means to trust in miracles.

To pray means that things are possible

without your doing anything at all.

To pray means that you need not go anywhere

and all can come to you, wherever you are.

To pray means that the existence has not abandoned you;

you can still call it forth.

Prayer opens the door,

makes you receptive, feminine, a womb which can contain all.

Prayer means that you are ready to

allow god to do whatsoever he wants to do with you.

You simply are in a let-go.

You say:

I will not hinder,

I will not create obstructions;

I am no more.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.

Take possession of me, overwhelm me, flood me.

Prayer means

” I am ready to accept you in the deepest core of my being,

I am open to you to my very heart.”

OSHO

OSHO - Surrender is the door leading to Him

Let yourself go completely just like

a boat floating on the river;

you do not have to row the boat,

just let it go loose;

you are not to swim,

just to float,

then the river itself takes you to the ocean.

The ocean is very near –

but only for those who float but do not swim.

Do not be afraid of drowning

because that fear makes you swim –

and the truth is that he who drowns

himself in God is saved for ever;

and do not have a goal,

for he who has a goal begins to swim.

Remember always –

wherever one reaches, that is the destination,

he who makes God his goal goes astray.

Wherever the mind is free from all goals,

there alone is God.

OSHO - Seven centers of your being

Chakras means a wheel.

The wheel needs energy;

once the energy comes in,

the wheel starts moving.

Then a great revolution happens in your being:

Energy is needed and always beautiful.

If you don’t know how to use it,

it will go on running astray.

The energy has to go higher.

The first three chakras belong to the body.

The next three chakras belong to the mind.

And the seventh chakra is beyond both.

Those first three chakras:

Muladhar , Swadhistan and Manipura

are earth-bound.

They are earthly chakras,

they are attracted by gravitation,

they are pulled downwards.

Without them, life will become impossible.

They are survival measures,

so nature has not given you a choice between them.

From the moment you are born,

those three chakras start functioning.

They go on functioning until you die.

Sex, money, power, prestige,

respectability, name, fame –

they all belong to those three chakras.

The centre of all those chakras is sex.

People seek money in order to seek sex.

People seek fame and power

and prestige in order to seek sex.

Sex remains the center of the lower three chakras.

Sex remains the center of the extrovert personality.

His whole mind revolves around sex.

The next three chakras:

Anahata , Visuddha and Ajna

are sky-bound.

These three consist of the mind.

Gravitation does not affect them.

They are under another law called levitation;

they are pulled upwards.

The people who repress the first three chakras

start living in the second three chakras.

They create a dream-world.

The anahata, heart chakars, is just in the middle.

The heart functions as a door; it is a bridge.

Just as sex is the center of the extrovert mind,

prayer — or call it meditation –

is the center of the introvert mind.

When a person is just in the middle,

on the fourth chakra, at the door –

love happens.

Love is between sex and prayer.

As you move more and more into the present,

inside you will come across seven lights –

what Hindu yoga calls seven Chakras,

Buddhist yoga calls seven lights, seven lamps.

As you become more and more

detached from the body,

detached from possessions,

uninterested in desires,

your energy starts moving upwards.

As the energy moves upwards,

if you know the key how to release it upwards,

as it moves from one center to another,

you feel so many transformations.

When the energy comes to the heart chakra,

to the center of the heart,

you become so full of love you become love.

When the energy comes to the third-eye center

you become consciousness, awareness.

When the energy comes to the last chakra, sahasrar,

you bloom, you flower,

your tree of life has come to a fulfillment:

you become a Buddha.

But the energy is the same.

Don’t condemn; don’t suppress.

Transform.

Be more understanding, alert;

only then will you be able to enter in totality.

Osho

OSHO -- The real means your experience, your own. Buddhas are of no help. They can just show the way, but you have to travel by your own feet and Insist on your own knowledge, your own experience

The real means your experience, your own. Buddhas are of no help. They can just show the way, but you have to travel by your own feet and Insist on your own knowledge, your own experience. Never be contented before that.

Those that desire to read shall read.

If you are very insistent on reading the ultimate laws, they will be opened unto you. The real Bible is not in the Bible, the real Koran is not in the Koran, the real Gita is not in the Gita. The real Bible or the Koran or the Gita is written in existence, in life itself. If you don’t believe in the scriptures, the real scriptures will be opened unto you.

Insist that ”I want to read in existence,” and the moment will be given to you. If you remain with your scriptures, you are living in a false world, you are living in words. Open the book of existence. Throw all scriptures so that the real scripture can be encountered.

Learning is difficult because learning means yielding, learning means surrendering, learning means becoming like a womb, becoming feminine, allowing the existence to enter in you.

Those that desire to read shall read

We also desire, but not to learn. We desire to collect more information. That’s not learning.You can carry words. Then you are carrying a dead weight. You will be burdened by it; you will not be freed. Words cannot free you. They may even imprison you, they may become fetters for you.

Whatsoever I am saying is not to be remembered.

It is to be experienced. If you experience it, it becomes your own. Then those words don’t belong to me anymore. Now that experience has become your own. Now you know something through your own eyes, now you feel something through your own heart. This is knowledge. And this gives certainty and this gives faith.

Osho

OSHO - Never belong to a crowd; never belong to a nation; never belong to a religion; never belong to a race. Belong to the whole existence

I am nobody.

I don’t belong to any nation,

I don’t belong to any religion,

I don’t belong to any political party.

I am simply an individual,

the way existence created me.

I have kept myself absolutely uninfluenced by

any idiotic ideology -

religious, political, social, financial.

And the miracle is that

because I am not burdened with

all these glasses on my eyes,

and curtains before me,

I can see clearly.

~ Osho

OSHO - My sexual ethics is not a law, it is love.It is strange that all the religions are the cause of prostitution in the world, but nobody stands up and says that prostitution exists because you have replaced love with law

What are your views on sexual ethics?

Osho: My views on sexual ethics are against all the views that have been held up to now. They were all repressive of sex; they were condemnatory and created a split in the human mind. The whole schizophrenia and all the perversions of man are rooted in those wrong sexual ethics.

I conceive of sex as a natural phenomenon. There is nothing profane in it and there is nothing sacred in it. It is purely natural life energy of tremendous importance. If you cannot sublimate it, it can destroy you; and it has destroyed humanity.

It is the energy man is born out of; everything is born out of it. Naturally there is no higher energy than sexual energy, but biological reproduction is not its only function. The same energy can have different creative dimensions. The same energy, joined with meditative practices, can be sublimated to the highest peak of consciousness — what I call enlightenment.

My sexual ethics is not a law, it is love.

Two persons can be sexually related only if love allows. When there is no love, and only law remains as a binding force, it is sheer prostitution. And I am against prostitution.

It is strange that all the religions are the cause of prostitution in the world, but nobody stands up and says that prostitution exists because you have replaced love with law.

Law is not love. Marriage is valid only if there is love. The moment love disappears, the marriage is invalid. It means millions of people are living unlovingly, unethically, unnaturally, because of the religions that have forced the arbitrary bondage of marriage and have tried to make it permanent.

Life is continuously changing; nothing is permanent. Love also is not permanent. Only plastic flowers are permanent, real flowers cannot be permanent. If you are too addicted to permanence then you will end up with plastic flowers; that’s how people have ended up with plastic marriages, plastic relationships — phony, hypocritical. And it gives no pleasure to anybody.

There is a vast prostitution all over the world. Ordinarily when you go to a prostitute, you purchase her for one night. At least it is straightforward. But when you marry a woman, promising her that you will love her always, even beyond death — and even before the honeymoon ends, the love disappears — then you live in deception. Now you are using a human being as a thing, as a sexual object. I condemn it.

According to me love should be the only law, the only deciding factor.

And the energy of sex should not remain confined to reproduction only. It is simple to see the fact that animals are not sexual all the year round, they just have their seasons. In those few months or few weeks they are sexual; otherwise sex disappears. Why has man the capacity to be sexual all the year round? There must be a purpose behind it. Existence never does anything meaninglessly.

My understanding is that reproduction could have been managed within a few weeks, just as it is being managed in all the animals. But man has been given so much sexual energy… it is a clear indication that existence wants you to transform this energy into higher levels of consciousness — and it can be transformed. Just as it can give birth to children, it can give birth to you. It can make you reborn, with a new vision, new bliss, new light, and a totally new being. All that is needed is that the sexual energy should be joined with meditation. And that has been my whole work.

That is my sexual ethics: sex energy plus meditation.

And it is the easiest thing to join them, because while making love, the moment you come to an orgasmic explosion your thoughts disappear, time stops. Suddenly you have melted into the other, you are no longer an ego. And these are the qualities of meditation: no ego, no time, no thinking. Just pure awareness and a melting into the whole.

Where sexual orgasm ends, meditation begins. They can be joined very easily. The easiest thing to do is to join them, they are so close.

My own insight is that people came to discover meditation through sexual orgasm because of these qualities. They could see that when thoughts stop, time stops, ego disappears and you are in a tremendously beautiful space. Although it lasts only for seconds, it has given you the taste of something that is not of this world, something of the beyond.

We don’t know who discovered meditation, perhaps thousands of years ago. In the East we have books at least ten thousand years old describing methods of meditation. But any method brings the same qualities.

This is my feeling, that without sexual orgasm nobody could have been able to discover these three qualities. Once they discovered these three qualities, people of intelligence must have tried to experience them without going into sexual orgasm. Is it possible to attain to such a consciousness? Somebody must have succeeded, and since then millions of people have succeeded.

The whole of humanity lives in misery for the simple reason that they have the wrong kind of sexual ethics, a kind which teaches them to repress it. And the more you repress your sexuality, the farther away you are from meditation. The more you repress it, the closer you are to madness, not to meditation.

And now it is a fact established by psychoanalysis — by the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud — that repressed sex is the basic cause of human misery, of all kinds of perversions, of all kinds of mind sicknesses. But the religions still go on preaching the same thing.

Sigmund Freud should be remembered as one of the milestones in the history of man. But his work is only half. He simply fought against repression; his work is negative. In itself it takes you nowhere; it is fighting against darkness.

My sexual ethics are a completion. Repression has to be dropped. And a deep acceptance, a deep friendliness towards your own energies, a loving intimacy with your own energies so those energies can reveal all their secrets to you… And joining them with meditation, orgasm becomes the door to the temple of the divine.

To me, if sex is the creative force in the world, it must be nearest to the creative center of the world — whatever name you give to it. Creative energy must be closest to creation, to the creative source of it all.

People should be taught the art of converting sexual energy into spiritual enlightenment.

~ Osho

 

OSHO - The greatest poverty of all is the absence of love.Everything divine is rooted in love.

I am not a way.

A way leads you somewhere,

it connects you with the ” there “,

and my whole effort is to bring you ” here “.

A way is there-oriented,

and I am here-oriented.

Always go with the river of life.

Never try to go against the current,

and never try to go faster than the river.

Just move in absolute relaxation,

so that each moment you are at home,

at ease, at peace with existence.

I can only say to you

that if you at any moment come to your inner flame,

don’t stop; share it unconditionally,

even to those who will not understand.

Perhaps today they may not understand, tomorrow they will;

perhaps not in this life, but in some other life the understanding is going to blossom.

Trust Existence.

As your silence grows;

your friendliness, your love grows;

your life becomes a moment-to-moment dance, a joy,

a celebration.

The greatest poverty of all

is the absence of love.

The man who has not developed the capacity to love

lives in a private hell of his own.

Make love more and more unconditional.

Love functions as earth functions for trees.

Everything divine is rooted in love.

Osho

OSHO - Love is the process of alchemical change in your consciousness

Osho, What is Love?

Osho: 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