Osho on LoveWHAT IS LOVE? WHY AM I SO AFRAID OF LOVE? WHY DOES LOVE FEEL LIKE AN UNBEARABLE PAIN?Meditate on these lines of Raymond John Born, “What is required of us in our time is that we go down into uncertainty, where what is new is as old as every morning, and what is well-known is not known as well. That we go down into the most human where living men have vanished and the music of their meaning has been trapped and sealed. What is asked of us in our time is that we break open our blocked caves and find each other. Nothing less will heal the anguished spirit, nor release the heart to act in love.”You ask, “WHAT IS LOVE?”<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow not-prose">It is the deep urge to be one with the whole, the deep urge to dissolve I and thou into one unity. Love is that because we are separated from our own source, out of that separation the desire arises to fall back into the whole, to become one with it. If you pull a tree out of its soil, if you uproot it, then the tree will feel a great desire to be rooted back into the soil, because that was its real life. Now it is dying. Separate, the tree cannot exist. It has to exist in the earth, with the earth, through the earth. That’s what love is.</blockquote>Your ego has become a barrier between you and your earth — the whole. Man is suffocated, he cannot breathe, he has lost his roots. He is no more nourished.<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow not-prose">Love is a desire for nourishment. Love is getting roots in existence.</blockquote>And the phenomenon is easier if you fall in the polar opposite — that’s why man is attracted towards woman, the woman is attracted towards man. Man can find his earth through the woman, he can become earthed again through the woman, and the woman can become earthed through the man. They are complementary. Man alone is half, in a desperate need to be whole. Woman alone is half. When these two halves meet and mingle and merge, for the first time one feels rooted, grounded. Great joy arises in the being.<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow not-prose">It is not only the woman that you get rooted in, it is through the woman that you get rooted in God. The woman is just a door, the man is just a door. Man and woman are may understand it, you may not understand it, but the desire for love really proves the existence of God. There is no other proof. Because man loves, God is. Because man cannot live without love, God is. The urge to love simply says that alone we suffer and die. Together we grow, are nourished, fulfilled, contented.</blockquote>You ask, “WHAT IS LOVE? WHY AM I SO AFRAID OF LOVE?”And that’s why one is afraid of love too — because the moment you enter into the woman you lose your ego. The woman enters into the man and loses her ego. Now this has to be understood: you can be rooted in the whole only if you lose yourself; there is no other way. You are attracted towards the whole because you are feeling unnourished, and then when the moment comes to disappear into the whole you start feeling very much afraid. A great fear arises because you are losing yourself. You shrink back. This is the dilemma. Every human being has to face it, encounter it, go through it, understand it, and transcend it. You have to understand that both things are arising out of the SAME thing. You feel it would be beautiful to disappear — no worry, no anxiety, no responsibility. You will become part of the whole as trees are and the stars are. Just the idea is fantastic! It opens doors, mysterious doors into your being, it gives birth to poetry. It is romantic. But when you actually go into it then the fear arises, that “I am going to disappear, and who knows what will happen next?”Remember the river listening to the whisper of the desert… hesitant, wants to go beyond it, wants to go in search of the ocean, feels that there is a desire and there is a subtle feeling and certainty and conviction that “My destiny is to go beyond?” No visible reason can be supplied, but there is an inner conviction that “I am not to end here. I have to go searching for something bigger.” Something deep down says, “Try, try hard! And transcend this desert.” And then the desert says, “Listen to me: the only way is to evaporate into the winds. They will take you, they will take you beyond the desert.” The river wants to go beyond the desert, but the question is very natural: “Then what is the proof and guarantee that the winds will allow me to become a river again? Once I have disappeared I will not be in control in any way. Then what is the guarantee that I will become again the same river, the same form, the same name, the same body? And who knows? And how should I trust that once I have surrendered to the winds they will allow me to become separate again?” That is the fear of love.You know, you are convinced that without love there is no joy, without love there is no life, without love you are hungry for something unknown, unfulfilled, empty. You are hollow, you don’t have anything. You are just a container without the content. You feel the hollowness, the emptiness and the misery of it. And you are convinced that there are ways which can fulfill you. But when you come close to love a great fear arises, doubt arises: if you relax, if you really go into it, will you ever be able to come back again? Will you be able to protect your identity, your personality? It is worth taking such a risk? And the mind decides not to take such a risk, because at least you ARE — under-nourished, unfed, hungry, miserable — but at least you ARE. Disappearing into some love, who knows? You will disappear, and then what is the guarantee that there will be joy, there will be bliss, there will be God? It is the same fear that a seed feels when it starts dying into the soil. It is death, and the seed cannot conceive that there will be life arising out of death.<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow not-prose">Love is death. And the lovers cannot comprehend that this death is only death on THIS side. On the other side this is the real birth.</blockquote>That’s why I said yesterday to Vidya’s mother, who had asked what a guru can do to you, I said, “He can undo you and he can re-do you.”<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow not-prose">To be with a Master is a great love-affair. You will have to allow him to undo you. That is painful. And fear will arise and doubt will arise, and you will escape many times, and you will say, “This is not the thing to do.” The mind will say, “What are you getting into? For what? Save yourself and escape.” And the mind will give a thousand and one reasons why to escape, and the mind is very clever in inventing reasons. It is a rationalizer: where no reason exists, it creates. And those will appeal to you because they will appeal to the ego. This is the misery, the dilemma, the anguish: man wants to love and man is afraid to love. Unless you understand it and you go in spite of the fear, you will not be able to love. That’s what trust is. In spite of the fear, going into a thing is trust.</blockquote>Source:Listen to complete discourse at mentioned below link.Discourse Series: The Wisdom of the Sands, Vol 1 – Chapter #6Chapter title: Be Total, Then You Are26 February 1978 am in Buddha Hall<style>.footer-ad{display: none !important;}</style><link rel="stylesheet" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Quicksand:wght@300..700&amp;display=swap">