Beloved Master,

So often a feeling that I can’t describe fills my heart and my whole being. During the other morning’s discourse, it felt like overwhelming love for you and the whole. But now I realize that the same feeling or a very, very similar feeling also comes up in fear, anguish, throbbing pain, helplessness and frustration. I am trembling and confused. Beloved master, can you say something?

Dhyan Raga, there is certainly something very similar in very different emotions: the overwhelmingness. It may be love, it may be hate, it may be anger – it can be anything. If it is too much then it gives you a sense of being overwhelmed by something. Even pain and suffering can create the same experience; but overwhelmingness has no value in itself. It simply shows you are an emotional being.

This is typically the indication of an emotional personality. When it is anger, it is all anger. And when it is love, it is all love. It almost becomes drunk with the emotion, blind. And whatever action comes out of it is wrong. Even if it is overwhelming love, the action that will come out of it is not going to be right.

Reduced to its base, whenever you are overwhelmed by any emotion you lose all reason, you lose all sensitivity, you lose your heart in it. It becomes almost like a dark cloud in which you are lost. Then whatever you do is going to be wrong.

Love is not to be a part of your emotions. Ordinarily that’s what people think and experience, but anything overwhelming is very unstable. It comes like a wind and passes by, leaving you behind, empty, shattered, in sadness and in sorrow. According to those who know man’s whole being – his mind, his heart and his being – love has to be an expression of your being, not an emotion. Emotion is very fragile, very changing. One moment it seems that is all. Another moment you are simply empty. So the first thing to do, is to take love out of this crowd of overwhelming emotions.

Love is not overwhelming. On the contrary, love is a tremendous insight, clarity, sensitivity, awareness. But that kind of love rarely exists, because very few people ever reach to their Being.

There are people who love their cars… Niskriya loves his camera…! That love is of the mind. And then you love your wife, your husband and your children – that love is of the heart. But because it needs change to remain alive, and you cannot allow it its changeability, it becomes stale. The same husband every day – it is such a boring experience. It dulls your sensitivity; it dulls every possibility of joy. You slowly start forgetting the language of laughter. Life becomes simply work without any joy… …

Raga, you have to take your love out from the emotional grip where it has been since your birth, and you have to find a route to your Being. Unless your love becomes part of your Being, it is not much different from pain, suffering, sadness.

Emotions are not going to help you become an integrated individuality. They are not going to give you a granite soul. You will remain just like a piece of dead wood moving in the stream here and there, not knowing why. Emotions blind man exactly as alcohol does.

Source:

This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Gautam Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune, India.

Discourse series:

Om Shantih Shantih Shantih

Chapter #17
Chapter title: Almost drunk with emotion
8 March 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

References:

Osho has spoken on the phenomena of ‘emotions, love, hate, anger, heart, mind, soul, being, individuality, integration’ in His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

1. Vigyan Bhairav Tantra
2. The Discipline of Transcendence
3. The Path of Love
4. The Secret of Secrets
5. Tao: The Three Treasures
6. Be Realistic: Plan for a Miracle