Osho on Love

Love is the only miracle there is. Love is the ladder from hell to heaven. Love learned well, you have learned all. Love missed, you missed your whole life. People who ask about God are not in fact asking about God; rather than asking, they are declaring that they have not known what love is. One who knows love has known the Beloved: love is the insight into the Beloved. One who asks about light, simply says that he is blind. One who asks about God, simply says his heart has not bloomed into love. Never ask about God. If you cannot see him that simply shows you don’t have eyes to see.

If you cannot hear him that simply shows you are deaf. If you cannot touch him that simply shows you are without hands — that you don’t have any sensitivity.

God is not the problem, God cannot be the problem. God is not far away, God is herenow. All that is, is in God and is God — so how can God be the problem? God is not to be searched: where will you search him? He is everywhere — you just have to learn how to open your eyes of love. Once love has penetrated your heart, God is there. In the thrill of love is the Beloved: in the vision of love is the vision of God.

So God is the only real inner alchemy: it transforms your material life into the divine. It is the only alchemy, I say, because it changes the baser metal into gold. Without love, life is a dull affair, grey — with no colors, with no songs, with no celebrations. One can drag and one can hope only for death: death will come and relieve you of your dragging long affair. Love brings color: the grey suddenly becomes a rainbow, explodes into a thousand and one colors, and the drab and the dull become psychedelic.

Love changes the whole climate of your inner being — and with that change the whole existence is changed. Nothing is changed on the outside — but once you are full of love you have a totally different existence available to you. God and the world are not two things, it is the one existence. There is only one existence: seen without love, it looks material; seen without love, God looks like the world — SANSARA. Seen with love, the world is transformed, transfigured… and the very world becomes divine.

Yes, then in sight there is music. When love has dawned, then miracles happen — even in sight there is music; in sound, a luminous silence. Love is magical. And

Kabir’s whole teaching is that of love: he calls love “the divine melody.” The heart, pulsating in love, becomes a flute on the lips of God… and a song is born. That song is religion.

Religion has nothing to do with churches and temples and rituals: religion is born only when somebody pulsates with love. Each individual has to give birth to a religion — and unless you have given birth to a religion in you, you are not religious. You cannot join an organization and become religious, remember — religion is not an organization to belong to.

To be religious you have to give birth to religion in your innermost core, in your very core: when religion is born THERE, only then are you religious.

Not by becoming a Christian but by becoming a Christ, not by becoming a Buddhist but by becoming a Buddha, religion is born.

When you are born in love, religion is born in you — and then your whole life is a melody, a beautiful song. And then you will be surprised that nothing is wrong: all fits together. Right now, nothing fits together. Right now, you are a mess: right now, you are an anarchy. Right now, you are just traffic noise — rushing in all directions, falling apart, disintegrating. Right now, you are nothing but anguish, agony.

Once love is born, you have a center. Once love is born, you are centered — and everything falls in tune with the center. You become an orchestra, a beautiful harmony. It is hidden in you: you have brought it into the world, it is yet unmanifest. Kabir says: Manifest it — let your love be manifested. In that manifestation will be your prayer.

A few things, very basic and fundamental to understand, before we enter these beautiful sutras — the last of the series…

And what is love? — do not do unto others that which you would not like to be done to you. This is the criterion of love: do unto others that which you would like to be done to you. Whatsoever you ask for yourself, allow that to others too. Whatsoever you don’t want to happen to you, don’t do it to others. Think of yourself as the very center of existence. In fact, don’t think of the other as the other: only you are and in the other too, is the same life, the same song waiting to be uttered, the same urge to rise to the divine, the same seeking, the same inquiry, the same throbbing heart, the same agony, the same ecstasy. This love is waiting in you. There is no necessity; it can wait and you can die. Birth is beyond you. You are already born — nobody had asked, your permission was not taken at all, you were not even asked where you wanted to be born and what you wanted to become. You always find yourself in the middle of life; you are already here. Birth is no choice for you… nor is death. One day suddenly death will come, without even giving you any warning. And not for a single moment will death wait. Birth happens, death happens — they are beyond you; you cannot do anything about them. Between birth and death there is only one thing you can do something about, and that is love.

These are the three great things of life: life, love, death. Life has already happened. Death is going to happen — it is a certainty. In a way, it has already happened with birth: you have already taken one step into the grave. The day you are born, half the journey is complete; the remaining half will take a little time… or a little more. With life, death has also penetrated you: now only one thing remains to be done that YOU can do, something that depends on you, and that is love. And because it depends on you, there is every possibility that you may miss it. That is the agony of love: you can miss it. If you don’t do something, if you don’t become alert, if you don’t move towards it consciously, deliberately, you may miss it. There is every possibility that you may not be able to unfold it — hence the fear, the trembling, the anguish, the anxiety: will I be able to make it? will I be able to move into love? will I be able to flow into love? But side by side with this agony there is an ecstasy — that one is free. It is because of freedom that the fear exists. If love was also predestined, as life and death are, then there would have been no fear, but then there would have been no ecstasy either — because ecstasy is possible only when you achieve something, when consciously you choose something, when deliberately you arrive somewhere, when it is YOUR journey and you are not being dragged. That’s the beauty of love and that’s the danger too…

Unless you have known what love is, you have not known what melody is. It is the meeting, orgasmic meeting, of death and life. Unless love is known, you have missed. You were born, you lived, and you died — but you missed. You missed tremendously, you missed utterly, you missed absolutely — you missed the interval in between. That interval is the highest pinnacle, the peak experience. Kabir calls it the divine melody.

To attain it, there are four steps to be remembered. The first step: be herenow — because love is possible only in the herenow. You cannot love in the past. Many people do that, but you cannot really love in the past. Many people simply live in the memory — they loved in the past. And there are others who love in the future — that too cannot be done. These are ways to avoid love: the past and the future are the ways to avoid love.

So either you love in the past, or you love in the future — and love is possible only in the present, because only in this moment death and life are meeting… in the dark interval that is within you. That dark interval is always present, always present, always present. It is never past and it is never future. If you think too much — and thinking is always of the past or of the future — your energies will be distracted from feeling. Feeling is herenow. If your energies are moving into the pattern of thinking then you will not have enough energies to move into feelings — and love will not be possible. So the first step is: be herenow. Future and past bring thinking; thinking destroys feeling. And a person too much obsessed with thinking, by and by completely forgets that he has a heart too. A man who is too much into thinking, by and by starts moving in such a way, starts living in such a way, where feeling has no say. Not listening to the feeling, by and by feeling starts falling away from him. There are millions of people in this state, who don’t know what heart means. They think heart is just a pump. Their whole concentration is in the head. Head is an extremity; it is needed, it is a good instrument, but it has to be used as a slave. It should not be the master. Once the head becomes the master and the heart is left behind, you will live, you will die, but you will not know what God is because you will not know what love is. The same dark interval, first contacted looks like love… and when you are lost into it totally, it becomes God.

Love is the beginning of God — or God, the ultimate peak of love.

The second step towards love, and towards the divine melody, is:

learn to transform your poisons into honey. Because many people love, but then their love is very much contaminated by poisons — with hate, with jealousy, with anger, with possessiveness… a thousand and one poisons surround your love. Love is a delicate thing.

Just think of anger, hatred, possession, jealousy: how can love survive? First, people move into the head and forget the heart — they are in the majority. Then a minority still lives a little in the heart, but then that minority does another wrong: the small light of love is surrounded by jealousy, hatred, anger, a thousand and one poisons. Then the whole journey becomes bitter. I told you, love is the ladder between heaven and hell, but the ladder is always a two-way thing: you can go up, you can come down. If there are poisons, the ladder will bring you down — you will be entering into hell and not into heaven. And instead of attaining to a melody, your life will become a nauseous noise — conflicting, traffic noise; just a maddening noise — a crowd of many noises with no harmony. You will remain on the verge of madness.

So the second thing to remember is: learn to transform your poisons into honey. How are they transformed? There is a very simple process. In fact, to call it transformation is not right, because you don’t do anything; you only need patience. This is one of the greatest secrets I am telling you. Try it: when anger comes you are not to do anything; just sit silently and watch it. Don’t be against it, don’t be for it. Don’t cooperate with it, don’t repress it. Just watch it, be patient, just see what happens… let it rise. Remember one thing: don’t do anything in the moment of anger — wait. Just give it a little time and wait… and you will be surprised. And one day you will understand that if you can wait enough, anger itself becomes compassion. It is a wheel; it is moving on its own — YOU are in a hurry. Just as night becomes day if you can wait a little, in the same way, anger becomes compassion if you can wait a little. The same energy — just patience has to be added to it, nothing else. You try it.

Remember one thing: never do anything in the mood when the poison is possessing you; just wait. When the poison has started changing into its other…. This is one of the basic laws of life: that everything continuously changes into its other. Just as I told you that man changes into woman, woman changes into man, there are periodical changes in you — the good man becomes the bad, the bad man becomes the good; the saint has sinner’s moments and the sinner has saintly moments… one has just to wait. Act when the saint is uppermost — that’s all.

Don’t act when the sinner is uppermost, don’t act when anger is uppermost, otherwise you will repent and you will create a chain of reactions and you will get into karma. That’s the whole meaning of getting into karma. Do anything when you are in a negative moment and you will be in a chain, and there is no end to it. When you are negative you do something, the other becomes negative, the other is ready to do something — negativity creates more negativity. Negativity provokes more negativity, anger brings more anger, hostility brings more hostility, and things go on and on and on… and people have been entangled with each other for LIVES together. And they continue!…

Always wait for the positive. And what I am saying is not repression. I am not saying to repress the negative, I am saying watch the negative. Remember the difference, tremendous difference is there. I am not saying sit on top of the negative, forget the negative, do something against it — no. I am not saying that. I am not saying when you are angry, smile — no; that smile is false, ugly, phoney. Don’t smile when you are angry. Then close the room, keep a mirror in front of you, see your angry face yourself. There is no need to show it to anybody else. It is your business, it is your energy, it is your life, and you have to wait for the right moment. Go on looking in the mirror: see the red face, the red eyes, the murderer there…Don’t repress and don’t act according to the anger, and soon you will see that the face is becoming softer, eyes are becoming calmer, the energy is changing — the male turning into female… and soon you will be full of radiance. The same redness that was anger, now is a certain radiance — a beauty on your face, in your eyes. Now go out: the time has come to act. Act when you are positive. Don’t force positivity, wait for the positivity to come on its own. This is the secret — when I say “learn to transform your poisons into honey” this is what I mean.

And third: share. Whenever it is negative, keep it to yourself. Whenever it is positive, share. Ordinarily, people share their negativities; they don’t share their positivities. Humanity is simply stupid. When they are happy they don’t share, they are very miserly. When they are unhappy they are very very spendthrift — then they are very much ready to share. When people smile they smile very economically — just so, so far. But when they are angry they are totally angry. The third step is to share the positivity. That will bring your love flowing riverlike, arising from your heart. Your dilemma of the heart will start moving when you share…Gurdjieff used to say, “All that I hoarded was lost, and all that I gave is mine. All that I gave is still with me, and all that I hoarded is lost, gone.” True:

you have only that which you have shared. You have only as much love as you have shared. Love is not a property to be hoarded, it is a radiance, a fragrance to be shared. The more you share, the more you have; the less you share, the less you have. The more you share, the more will be arising from your innermost core — it is infinite: more will be welling up. Draw water from a well, and more water comes running fresh into the well. Don’t draw the water, close the well, become a miser, and no more springs will function. By and by, spring will become dead, blocked; and the water that is in the well will die, will become stale, dirty. The flowing water is fresh… the flowing love is fresh.

So the third step towards love is: share your positivities, share your life, share all that you have. Whatsoever beautiful is with you, never hoard it. Your wisdom, share; your prayer, share; your love, your happiness, your delight, share. Yes, if you cannot find anybody, share it with dogs — but share. Share it with rocks — but share. When you have pearls, throw them — don’t bother whether they are swine or saints, just throw them. THE THING THAT MATTERETH IS GIVING. Hoarding poisons the heart. All hoarding is poisonous. If you share, your system will be free of poisons. And when you give, don’t bother whether it is responded to or not. Don’t even wait for a thank-you. Feel grateful to the person who allowed you to share something with him. Not otherwise — don’t wait, saying deep in your heart that he should be thankful because you shared something with him. No — feel thankful yourself that he was ready to listen to you, to share some energy with you… that he was ready to listen to your song… that he was ready to see your dance… that when you had come to give to him he didn’t reject — he could have rejected.

Sharing is one of the most spiritual virtues, one of the greatest spiritual virtues.

And the fourth:

be nothing. Once you start thinking that you are somebody, you stop; then love does not flow. Love flows only out of somebody who is a nobody. Love abides only in nothingness. When you are empty, there is love. When you are full of the ego, love disappears. Love and ego cannot exist together. Love can exist with God but cannot exist with the ego, because love and God are synonymous. Love and ego are impossible to be together. So be nothing. That is the meaning of being humble, meek. Says Jesus: Blessed are the meek, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.

Source:

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

Discourse Series: The Divine Melody

Chapter #9

Chapter title: : The pause between two notes

9 January 1977 am in Buddha Hall

References:

Osho has spoken on ‘love, sharing, heart, religion’ in many of His discourses. More on the subject can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

Ecstasy – The Forgotten Language
The Beloved, Vol 1, 2
From Death to Deathlessness
The Golden Future
The Path of Love
The Messiah, Vol 1, 2
Sermons in Stones
Zarathustra: A God That Can Dance
The Book of Wisdom
The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 6, 7
Satyam Shivam Sundram
Beyond Psychology
From Ignorance to Innocence
The Path of the Mystic
Sufis: The People of the Path, Vol 1, 2