Valentine Day

BELOVED OSHO,

TO FALL IN LOVE IS SO EASY. WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO FALL OUT OF LOVE? SO MANY DISCUSSIONS, TEARS, FIGHTS, FEARS…. I DON’T WANT TO HURT THE PERSON I’VE BEEN WITH, BECAUSE IT’S NOT THAT THERE IS NO FEELING. I’M SO CONFUSED. AND THE LOVE FOR YOU IS A DIFFERENT FEELING ALTOGETHER. CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING?

Is there something to say? All is finished!. Falling is always easy. You can fall in any ditch. Getting out is difficult. But you will have to get out. Once the love disappears the ditch becomes hell. Then there is quarreling, argument, nagging, and every kind of nastiness from both sides. Nobody wants to hurt; but because he is hurting, she is hurting, unknowingly they go on dumping their hurt feelings on the other. In the first place, when you start falling in love, when you are still not in the ditch, that is the time to ask me, because I have a totally different kind of love affair which is called rising in love. Then there is no problem. Rising in love is beautiful, and getting out of it is very easy, because that will be falling down. Falling down is easy, keep it for the next step; for the first step, always use rising. The easier step you have done, now you have to do the difficult one. And it will happen — all these tears and conflicts, but nothing can bring the love back.

A simple thing has to be understood: love — the love that you are talking about — is not in your hands. You have fallen into it. It was not in your power not to fall, so when it comes, it takes you with it. But it is like a breeze, it comes and goes. And it is good that it comes and goes, because if it stays it becomes stale. A little understanding is needed on both sides, that the love is no longer there. There is no need to hate each other, because nobody has destroyed it — nobody has created it. It had come like a breeze, you enjoyed those moments; be thankful to each other and help each other to come out of the ditch. In a ditch, that is the only way. The man, to be really manly, should give his shoulders for the woman to rise up and get out of the ditch. And the man can find his own gymnastics, how to do it.

But nobody asks me before falling. This is strange! For thirty-five years I have been waiting for somebody to ask me how to fall in love. Nobody asks that, because if you had asked that I would have suggested,

“Never fall in love. Try to rise.” And rising in love is a totally different matter. Rising in love means a learning, a changing, a maturity. Rising in love ultimately helps you to become grown-up. And two grown-up persons don’t quarrel; they try to understand, they try to solve any problem. Anybody who rises in love never falls from it, because rising is your effort, and the love that is grown through your effort is within your hands. But falling in love is not your effort. Falling in love — that love is going to be disrupted somewhere, and the sooner it is understood that it is gone, the better; otherwise you become too entangled in a thousand and one things. Those are the things which make it difficult to separate.

When you fall in love, no questions arise. You are clean, the other person is clean. But when you want to separate, the days, the nights, the years that you have lived together, loved together, experienced something which is one of the most beautiful gifts of nature — you go on becoming entangled.

You go on giving promises to each other… and it is not that you are lying or deceiving; in those beautiful moments those promises seem to be absolutely coming from your heart. But when those moments are gone — and they will be gone, because it has been a fall, and nobody can remain in a fallen state for eternity. Someday he has to rise again. And the moment you start separating, all those entanglements, your promises, the other’s promises, create the complexity. Rising in love is something spiritual. Falling in love is something biological. Biology is blind, that’s why love is called blind. But the love I am talking about is the only insight that is easily available to everyone. Just a little effort….

Love should come out of your silence, awareness, meditativeness. It is soft, it is unbinding — because how can love create fetters for the one who is loved? It is giving freedom to each other, more and more. As the love grows deeper, freedom becomes bigger. As the love grows deeper, you start accepting the person as he is. You stop trying to change the person. It is one of the miseries of the world that lovers are continuously trying to change the other person. They don’t know that if the person really changes, their love will disappear, because they had not fallen in love with this changed person in the first place. They had fallen in love with a person who was not touched by their ideas — “Change this and that.” Rising in love, you become aware that the other has his own territorial imperative, and you are not to encroach upon it. If love becomes freedom, then there is no need to separate. The idea of separation arises because you go on seeing that you are becoming more and more a slave, and nobody likes slavery.

But you always ask me when you are in the ditch and cannot get out. One thing is certain: I am not coming into the ditch to take you out! You two have to manage it. If I come in the ditch to help you out, you both will be out and I will be in the ditch! And I don’t know anybody whom I can ask, “How to get out of here?” I have never asked a single question of anybody about my life. It is my life, and I have to live it, I have to solve its problems. I have never taken any advice, I have never accepted anybody’s advice which was not asked for in the first place. I have told those people, “You have to understand that advice is the only thing everybody gives free of charge and nobody takes.” Why bother? Advice given by a person whom you have not asked cannot be very wise.

The wise man never imposes his idea on anyone. If somebody asks him, he simply gives his insight. It is not a commandment, that they have to do it; there is no “should” in it. I can say only one thing: you have given each other beautiful moments — be grateful, be thankful. The parting should not be ugly when the meeting was so beautiful. You owe it to existence that the parting should be made beautiful. Forget all your promises — they were right when they were given, but the time has changed, you have changed. You both are standing at a crossroads, ready to move in different directions; perhaps you may never meet again. Make it as graceful as possible. And once you understand that it has to happen, gracefully or ungracefully, then it is better to make it graceful. At least, your lover will live in your memory, you will live in the memory of the lover. In a certain way, those moments together will always enrich you. But part gracefully.

And it is not difficult when you have understood love — which is a very difficult phenomenon. You fell without a second thought; you can understand that very easily love has disappeared. Accept the truth of it, and don’t blame each other, because nobody is responsible.

Help each other gracefully; in deep friendship, part. Lovers when they separate become enemies. That is a strange kind of gratitude. They should become really friends. And if love can become friendship, there is no guilt, no grudge, no feeling that you have been cheated, exploited. Nobody has exploited anybody; it was just the biological energy which made you blind.

I teach a different kind of love. It does not end in friendship but begins in friendship.

It begins in silence, in awareness. It is a love which is your own creation, which is not blind. Such a love can last forever, can go on growing deeper and deeper. Such a love is immensely sensitive. In this kind of relationship one starts feeling the need of the other person even before the other person has spoken.

I have known a few couples, very few couples — my acquaintance with couples is big, but I have come across only two, three couples who had not fallen in love, who have risen in love. And the most miraculous thing about them was that they started feeling each other without words. If the man was feeling thirsty, the woman would bring water. Nothing has been said just a synchronicity. If the loved one is feeling thirsty, she must start feeling thirsty herself. A transfer is happening continuously, words are not needed. Energies can relate directly without language. Such a love needs nothing from the other. It is grateful that the other receives something when he offers, or she offers. It never feels in any kind of bondage, because there is none.

Source:

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

Discourse Series:

From Death to Deathlessness

Chapter #36
Chapter title: Rise in Love
10 September 1985 am in Rajneeshmandir

References:

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

The Beloved Vol 1
Dang Dang Doko Dang
The First Principle
Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2
The Secret of Secrets, Vol 2
Take It Easy, Vol 2
Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1
The Messiah, Vol 1, 2
Zarathustra: A God That Can Dance
Beyond Psychology
Bodhidharma: The Greatest Zen Master
The Transmission of the Lamp
Light on the Path