Question 4
In the east, it has been stressed that one should stay with a person, one person, in a love relationship. in the west, now people float from one relationship to another. which are you in favor of?

 

I am in favor of love.

Let me explain it to you: be true to love, and don't bother about partners. Whether one partner or many partners is not the question. The question is whether you are true to love. If you live with a woman or with a man and you don't love him, you live in sin. If you are married to somebody and you don't love that person and you still go on living with him, making love to him or her, you are committing a sin against love... and love is God.

You are deciding against love for social comforts, conveniences, formalities. It is as wrong as if you go and rape a woman you don't love. You go and rape a woman; it is a crime - because you don't love the woman and the woman does not love you. But the same happens if you live with a woman and you don't love her. Then it is a rape - socially accepted, of course, but it is a rape - and you are going against the God of love.

So, like in the East, people have decided to live with one partner for their whole lives; nothing is wrong. If you remain true to love, it is one of the most beautiful things to remain with one person, because intimacy grows. But, ninety-nine per cent are the possibilities that there is no love; you only live together. And by living together a certain relationship grows which is only of living together, not of love. And don't mistake it for love. But if it is possible, if you love a person and live the whole life with him or with her, a great intimacy will grow and love will have deeper and deeper revelations to make to you. It is not possible if you go on changing partners very often. It is as if you go on changing a tree from one place to another, then another; then it never grows roots anywhere. To grow roots, a tree needs to remain in one place. Then it goes deeper; then it becomes stronger.

Intimacy is good, and to remain in one commitment is beautiful, but the basic necessity is love. If a tree is rooted in a place where there are only rocks and they are killing the tree, then it is better to remove it. Then don't insist that it should remain in the one place. Remain true to life - remove the tree, because now it is going against life.

In the West, people are changing - too many relationships. Love is killed in both ways. In the East it is killed because people are afraid to change; in the West it is killed because people are afraid to remain with one partner for a longer time - afraid because it becomes a commitment. So before it becomes a commitment, change. So you remain floating and free, so a certain licentiousness is growing. And in the name of freedom, love is almost crushed, starved to death. Love has suffered both ways: in the East people cling to security, comfort, formality; in the West they cling to their ego's freedom, non-commitment - but love is suffering both ways.

I am in favor of love. I am neither Eastern nor Western, and I don't bother to which society you belong. I belong to no society. I am in favor of love. Always remember: if it is a love relationship, good.

While love lasts remain in it, and remain in it as deeply committed as possible. Remain in it as totally as possible; be absorbed by the relationship. Then love will be able to transform you. But if there is no love, it is better to change. But then, don't become an addict of change. Don't make it a habit.

Don't let it become a mechanical habit that you have to change after each two or three years as one has to change one's car after each two or three years, or after each year. A new model comes, so what to do? - you have to change your car. Suddenly, you come across a new woman. It is not much different. A woman is a woman, as a man is a man. The differences are only secondary because it is a question of energy. The female energy is female energy. In each woman all women are represented, and in each man all men are represented. The differences are very superficial: the nose is a little longer, or it is not a little longer; the hair is blond or brunette - small differences, just on the surface. Deep down, the question is of female and male energy. So if love is there, stick to it.

Give it a chance to grow. But if it is not there, change before you become addicted to a relationship without love.

A young wife in the confessional box asked the priest about contraceptives. "You must not use them,"

said the priest. "They are against God's law. Take a glass of water."

"Before, or after?" asked the wife.

"Instead!" replied the priest.

You ask me whether to follow the Eastern way or the Western way. Neither; you follow the divine way. And what is the divine way? - remain true to love. If love is there, everything is permitted. If love is not there, nothing is permitted. If you don't love your wife don't touch her, because that is trespassing. If you don't love a woman, don't sleep with her; that is going against the law of love, and that is the ultimate law. Only when you love is everything permitted.

Somebody asked Augustine of Hippo, "I am a very uneducated man and I cannot read scriptures and great theology books. You just give me a small message. I'm very foolish and my memory is also not good, so you just give me a gist, so I can remember it and follow it." Augustine was a great philosopher, a great saint, and he had delivered great sermons, but nobody had asked for just a gist. He closed his eyes, he meditated for hours, it is said. And the man said, "Please, if you have found, just tell me so I can go, because I have been waiting for hours." Augustine said, "I cannot find anything else except this: love, and everything else is permitted to you. Just love."

Jesus says, "God is love." I would like to say to you, love is God. Forget all about God; love will do. Remain courageous enough to move with love; no other consideration should be made. If you consider love, everything will become possible to you.

First, don't move with a woman or man you don't love. Don't move just out of whim; don't move just out of lust. Find out whether the desire to be committed to a person has arisen in you. Are you ripe enough to make a deep contact? Because that contact is going to change your whole life. And when you make the contact, make it so truthfully. Don't hide from your beloved or your lover - be true. Drop all false faces that you have learned to wear.

Drop all masks. Be true. Reveal your whole heart; be nude. Between two lovers there should not be any secrets, otherwise love is not. Drop all secrecy. It is politics; secrecy is politics. It should not be in love. You should not hide anything. Whatsoever arises in your heart should remain transparent to your beloved, and whatsoever arises in her heart should remain transparent to you. You should become two transparent beings to each other. By and by, you will see that through each other you are growing to a higher unity.

By meeting the woman outside, by really meeting, loving her, committing yourself to her being, dissolving into her, melting into her, you will, by and by, start meeting the woman that is within you; you will start meeting the man that is within you. The outer woman is just a path to the inner woman; and the outer man is also just a path to the inner man. The real orgasm happens inside you when your inner man and woman meet. That is the meaning of the Hindu symbolism of ardhanarishwar.

You must have seen Shiva: half man, half woman. Each man is half man, half woman; each woman is half woman, half man. It has to be so, because half of your being comes from your father and half of your being comes from your mother. You are both. An inner orgasm, an inner meeting, an inner union is needed. But to reach to that inner union you will have to find a woman outside who responds to the inner woman, who vibrates your inner being, and your inner woman which is lying fast asleep, awakes. Through the outer woman, you have to meet the inner woman; and the same for the man.

So if the relationship continues for a long period, it-will be better, because that inner woman needs time to be awakened. As it is happening in the West - hit-and-run affairs - the inner woman has no time, the inner man has no time to rise and become awake. By the time there is a stirring, the woman is gone... another woman, with another vibration, with another vibe. And of course, if you go on changing your woman and your man you will become neurotic, because so many things, so many sounds will enter into your being, and so many different qualities of vibrations that you will be at a loss to find your inner woman. It will be difficult. And the possibility is that you may become an addict to change. You will just start enjoying change. Then you are lost.

The outer woman is just a way to the inner woman, and the outer man is the way to the inner man.

And the ultimate yoga, the ultimate unio mystica happens inside you. And when that happens, then you are free of all women and all men. Then you are free of man and womanhood. Then suddenly, you go beyond; then you are neither.

This is what transcendence is. This is what brahmacharya is. Then you attain again to your pure virginity; your original nature is again claimed. In Patanjali's terminology, it is kaivalya.

 

-Osho, "Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 10, #10, Q4"