:: OSHO SPEAKS ::

Love is enough unto itself

To be in love is a great art. To fall in love is very easy but to remain in love is very arduous. Osho says only a few artists of life are capable of remaining in love. Love is entirely a different phenomenon and it does not require the bondage of a marriage to be in love. Love is enough unto itself. Marriage came into being because man was incapable of love and friendship. Sharing His insight Osho says marriage is a legal contract and a legal contract certainly cannot force a person to love another. Love happens when it happens.

Osho says while answering to a related query that "…there is no need of marriage, friendship is enough. Marriage came into existence only because man was incapable of love and friendship; it was a poor substitute. If you love somebody there is no need to make it a legal contract. And the legal contract cannot make it a certainty that you will love the person always. The legal contract has no power over love. Marriage is a legal contract; it is ownership, private ownership. It is a license to own the woman.

Just as you have dog licenses, it is a license -- you are the owner.
This simply shows that there is no love. Law comes in only when there is no love; otherwise, love is enough unto itself.

Love should be the primary phenomenon, and then you can be together. The togetherness should be a friendship and a responsibility. When two persons love each other they are responsible, they care for each other. No law is needed to create that caring and that responsibility; no law is capable of creating it, either. At the most, it can impose a certain formal structure on you which will destroy your love, your friendship.
As the society becomes more and more alert and more and more conscious, as it is becoming every day, marriage is going to disappear. Instead of marriage there will be friendship. Just as in the past 'husband' and 'wife' were beautiful words, in the future 'girlfriend' and 'boyfriend' will take a very respectable place.
Meanwhile, because you have to live in a society, you can go into marriage, but marriage should remain secondary. It should be only because you have loved each other; it should come out of your love, not vice versa. In the past it has been tried: first get married and then love each other. That is impossible; nobody can manage love, it is in nobody's power to create love. It happens when it happens.
You can put two persons together. And that's what has been done, down the ages. Marry two persons: they HAVE to be together. And when two persons are together they start liking each other, just as brothers like their sisters, and sisters like their brothers. It is a forced arrangement. And when two persons are together, a liking, a certain kind of liking arises, and they depend on each other, they use each other. But love -- that's a totally different affair.
If marriage comes first, there is almost no possibility of love ever happening. In fact, marriage was invented to prevent love, because love is dangerous. It takes you to such high peaks of joy, ecstasy, romance and poetry that it is dangerous for the society to allow people to soar so high, to see something of that height and depth. Because if a person has known love, nothing will ever satisfy him. Then you cannot satisfy him by just giving him a big bank allowance, no. A big bank balance will not help; now he knows something about real richness.
If a man has loved and lived those ecstatic moments, you will not be able to attract him towards power politics. Who cares? You will not be able to force him into ugly inhuman jobs. He would like to remain a poor man, but his love flowing. Once you kill love -- and marriage is an effort to kill it -- once you kill love, then the energy of the person that is no longer moving into love is available for the society to exploit."

Unio Mystica, Vol-1,
#10, Something to be remembered
Q-4