Question 2
Osho,
Through the last events there has been tremendous joy and pain. the joy is to see how you are the only reality that matters. and the pain is that my connection is so superficial that i didn't listen to you. and suddenly i came to realize that my love for you, however burning and intense, is meaningless, cheap and worthless. i never felt such a wound. is there any way to be close to you? as i can't refrain from loving you, please tell me it doesn't matter for you.
It matters to me -- not that I am in any need of somebody to love me but because you are in need of expanding your love, of giving your love as high a dimension as possible.
It is good that you understand that your love is not as much, not as pure as it should be. This very awareness is a good sign. It means you can make it deeper, higher, more unconditional.
I am just an excuse.
Let me repeat: I am just an excuse.
I want your love to expand, to grow, so that you are overwhelmed with loving energy. Then it will not be only directed towards me, then it will be just like breathing. Wherever you go, you will be breathing; wherever you go, you will be loving.
Loving will become your simple state of being. Then only is it not cheap. Love as a relationship is always superficial and cheap.
Love as a state of being is invaluable.
But one has to begin with the first. You are already in the first stage. And because you are aware that it is cheap, there is every possibility you can transform the love energy. Use me as an excuse.
It matters to me because I love you.
It matters to me, because I know when love flowers, how much ecstasy it brings. It is my experience, and I want it to be your experience also.
I have discarded God. Now only love remains.
Your lovingness is your religion.
But remember the difference: to love a person is only to have a relationship. It is as if, when you are with a certain person, you breathe, and then when you leave the person you stop breathing, because how can you breathe without the person for whom you live? But that means the next time you don't find the person again, you will be dead.
And that's what has happened about love. Everybody is insisting, "Love me" -- and is very suspicious of you, that you may be loving other people too. This jealousy, this suspicion has killed love. The wife wants the husband to love only her.
While I was a professor in the university, a woman professor fell in love with me. I have never fallen in love with anybody. I only rise in love, I don't fall. So she was harassing me. It became difficult for me to sit in my university's common room because she was always waiting there. And she was a real woman: yakkety-yak, yakkety-yak.... And she asked me hundreds of times, "Do you love me?"
I said, "I have told you before -- yes!"
"But do you love me, only me?"
I said, "I have told you I love only you -- but this I tell to many women. Every woman wants to hear it -- what to do?" Since that day she disappeared.
The very question, "Love only me".... Then what are you going to do when you are out in the world meeting other people, on your job? You have to be alert not to show any love to anybody.
What to say of persons? Even if you are a very great lover of books, that's enough for your wife to create trouble for you, that when she is present you are still reading! When she is present you cannot read. When she is present, your reading means you love the book more than her. Women are known to take away books, throw them away. This type of behavior on the part of men and women has killed love.
In fact, if you really want to love your woman or your man, you have to be loving towards everybody you meet. You have to keep the flame burning. You have to keep breathing love. You have to keep radiating love; otherwise, when you meet your beloved, you only have just words to say: "I love you."
You know it is false, she knows it is false. You know she knows it is false; she knows you know it is false. Both know the reality, and both are trying not to see it. But what has happened? Why has the love disappeared? Because you made love a relationship.
Love cannot be made a relationship, love is a state of being. You are just a loving person. You love your friends, you love your books, you love paintings, you love the sunrise. You love many things. In all those things your love grows, expands; and the woman is benefited because now she has a man who is so full of love. The man is benefited if the woman also is in a state of love.
In my commune you have to learn loving -- not love relationships, but love as a state of your being, love as breathing. Just what breathing does to the body, love does to your soul.
Love is the breathing of your soul. The more you love, the more soul you have.
So don't be jealous. Don't prevent anybody, and don't try to monopolize love. There are a few things which cannot be monopolized.
You see a bird on the wing in the air, so beautiful -- the freedom, the joy. You can catch the bird, you can put it in a beautiful golden cage. Do you think it is the same bird? Apparently it is the same bird, but in reality it is not the same bird.
Where is the freedom? Where are those beautiful wings, balancing in the air? Where is that vast sky, the unlimited freedom? You have taken everything from the poor bird, and you think you have given him a great, precious cage, made of twenty-four karat gold! You have killed him.
That has been happening to love. The bird on the wing, free in the sky, is a beauty. The bird in a cage is dead, his spirit is dead. He still breathes; but he must be dreaming of the freedom of those beautiful moments rising higher and higher into the sky... of those beautiful mornings... the sunrise, the sunset. You have taken everything from the bird.
Love is a bird. Keep it free, don't try to monopolize it. It dies when you monopolize it. And that's why in the whole world everybody is saying, "I love you," and there seems to be no love at all anywhere.
The basic reason is, we have not allowed love freedom. We have tried to keep it in bondage -- and it is not possible. Then you can have only a hypocritical kind of love. It says, "I love you," because it has to be said; otherwise there is trouble. To avoid the trouble, the husband says, "I love you," the wife says, "I love you." But you can't see the shine, the gleam in their eyes, the aura on their faces. You cannot hear their hearts beating faster, you cannot smell the aroma of love around them. Everything is dead.
Love is the breathing of your soul.
Never allow your love to be dead, at any cost: you are killing your own spirit. And never do this harm to anybody else either.
Love gives freedom. And the more freedom love gives, the more loving the person becomes. This has to be the approach in my commune.
-Osho, "From Bondage to Freedom, #14"