Osho – If love cannot bring tears to your eyes, then that love is dead

Question : BELOVED OSHO, WHY DO I ALWAYS HAVE TO CRY WHEN I AM TOUCHED BY LOVE?

Osho : Anand Mumuksha, you are fortunate. If love cannot bring tears to your eyes, then that love is dead. It is a great misfortune that tears have become associated with sadness, with sorrow; that is only one dimension of their being. But their more significant manifestation is in love, in gratitude, in prayer, in silence, in peace. When you are feeling so full, tears are just the overflow of your contentment, of your joy.

Tears have to be given a new meaning, a new poetry and a totally new dimension – which they have lost because humanity has lived in misery and tears have become part of that misery. Secondly, because humanity has been dominated by man he has made it a point of his ego and pride that he will not cry. It is feminine to cry, it is womanish to have tears. It is not true. It is an ugly, male chauvinist idea – not only ugly, but unnatural and untrue, because man’s eyes have as many tear glands as women’s eyes have. Nature has not made any difference in tear glands.

It is obvious that the intention of nature is not to discriminate between man and woman, but man for centuries has been very egoistic and he feels that tears are a kind of weakness. He has stopped his tears, but he is not aware what the consequence of it has been. He has also stopped his love – and he has created situations for himself which are dangerous.

More men go mad than women, for the simple reason that man goes on controlling. A moment comes that the repression becomes too much and there is a breakdown. The woman does not control; when she feels like crying, she cries. She is more natural than man. That has given her a few more experiences that man has missed. The woman is healthier; she lives longer, five years more than man. She is more calm and quiet.

Less women go crazy, less women commit suicide, although they talk about it. Sometimes they even try it, but very half-heartedly. But man goes on accumulating, and a point comes where he is no more in control. Either he commits suicide or he commits murder or he goes mad. Just here is sitting one of my attorneys in America, Swami Prem Niren. He came into deeper and deeper contact with me when I was for those twelve days in American jails.

He followed me from jail to jail, and he was the only person who was seeing me all those days, almost every day. His eyes were always full of tears, and I could see how much he loves me and how helpless he felts. He was doing everything that it was possible to do. All the other attorneys were paid; naturally they were simply doing their job. He was the only attorney who was not a servant, who was a lover; who was not being paid.

He was one of my sannyasins; my life was at risk, and it was natural for him to fight with totality and intensity. The last day, when I was released from the jail, we were sitting in the hotel. We had our own hotel, our own disco, our own restaurant in Portland, in Oregon, America. In our own hotel, he was sitting by my side with another of my sannyasins, Isabel, and he was crying like a child.

And just the other day he was sitting on this side of me and then I again saw tears. Two years before I had left him in America with tears, and yesterday I found him again with tears. But perhaps he is not even aware about his tears. When he came here just few days ago, he talked to one of my secretaries, Anando: ”Why does Osho go on saying this, that ‘my attorneys had tears in their eyes’?”

When I heard this, I could not believe it – and just yesterday he was sitting here with tears…. Perhaps thousands of years of conditioning have blocked his awareness of his own tears, of his own love, of his own feminineness. A better world, a better humanity, and more people will enjoy tears. They are such a blessing.

You are asking, ”Why do I always have to cry when I am touched by love?”

What do you want? What more do you want? Certainly you are thinking that those tears are something wrong. Crying when touched by love is something wrong? – you are carrying a wrong conditioning. It is absolutely right. When touched by love, what can you do? Words won’t help; only tears can convey what is happening deep down in your heart.

Tears are the most valuable treasure that you have. But man has been distorted everywhere, man’s nature has been pruned according to the ideas of the vested interests. Nations need armies and they do not want man to be at all touched by love. Their tears have to be dried up and their love has to be blocked; otherwise they will not be able to kill and murder and massacre people – people who are just like you, and people who have not done anything wrong to you, and people whose wives, whose children, whose old parents may be waiting for them just as your parents, your wife, your children are waiting for you.

But to create the soldier, man has to be destroyed completely. He has to be made into a robot – and robots don’t cry, robots are not touched by love. Because armies were needed, man was distorted. Because women were not needed in the armies, they were left by the side. It was good for women because they have remained more natural.

Never be ashamed of your tears. Be proud that you are still natural. Be proud that you can express the inexpressible through your tears. Those tears are your songs, unuttered. Those tears are your heart which cannot use words. Never feel ashamed of your tears. Eyes which have lost their tears have lost their most beautiful, their most glorious treasure.

I would like my people particularly to be absolutely natural, to be utterly innocent, uninhibited. And when tears are flowing, rejoice: you are still alive… because don’t you know dead people cannot cry, dead people cannot have tears? And the people who think they are alive and cannot cry and cannot have tears, are living in a fallacy. They have died long before. The day their tears died, they also died, because their love died. Except love you don’t have any soul.

Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Osho.