Osho – Love is not something to be obtained from the outside. Love is the music of your inner being. Nobody can give you love. Love can arise within you, but it cannot be obtained from the outside. There is no shop, no market, no salesman where you can buy love. Love cannot be bought at any cost. Love is an inner flowering. It arises from some dormant energy within, yet all of us search for love outside. All of us search for love in the beloved – which is an absolutely false and futile action.
Search for love within yourself. We cannot even imagine how love can be inside ourselves because love is always associated with an idea of a beloved. It gives us the idea of someone else outside. Because we don’t remember how love can arise within us, the energy of love remains dormant.
We don’t realize that we are always asking for something outside which is already within us. And because we ask for it outside we do not look inside – then that which could arise never does. Love is the essential treasure with which each individual is born. Man is not born with money – money is social accumulation – but man is born with love. It is man’s birthright, it is his individual wealth, it is in him. It is a companion which was given to him by birth and which can accompany him his whole life. But very few are fortunate enough to look within to see where love is – how it can be found and how it can be developed.
So we are born but our wealth remains unexplored; it is never explored at all. And we go on begging at others’ doors, holding out our hands because we want love. All over the world there is only one desire – ’We want love’; and all over the world there is only one complaint – ’We do not get love’. And when we do not get love, we accuse others of being at fault because we do not get love. A wife says to her husband, ”There is something wrong with you, that’s why I do not get love.” A husband says to his wife, ”There is some mistake inside you, hence I am not getting love.” And no one wonders if it ever is possible to get love from the outside.
Love is the inner treasure, and love itself is the music of the veena of the heart. The veena of the heart of man has become very disturbed. The music for which it was created does not arise. How can this music be created? What is the obstacle standing in the way of the creation of this music? What is the hindrance which does not let it happen? Have you ever thought about the hindrance? Have you ever thought what the hindrance could be?
An actor who was a good dramatist and a good poet, died. Many people gathered at the cremation ground for his funeral. The director of the film company in which he was working was also present and he said a few words of condolence.
The director said, ”I made this man an actor. It was me who took him out of the back roads and put him on the highways. It was me who gave him his first role in the cinema. It was me who published his first book. I am the reason he became famous all over the world.” He had said this much – I was present at the funeral and some of you may also have been there – the director had said this much when suddenly the corpse which was lying there, got up and said, ”Excuse me, sir, who is to be buried here – you or me? Who are you talking about?”
The director was saying, ”I am the one who made him famous, I am the one who published his book, I am the one who gave him his first role in the movies…. I am the one….”
Even the corpse could not tolerate this noise of ’I’. It got up and said, ”Forgive me, but please tell me one thing: who is to be buried in the grave, you or me? About whom are you talking?” Even corpses cannot tolerate this noise of ’I’ – and man goes on making this noise of ’I’ continually. How can alive people tolerate it? There can be only two voices inside man. There is no voice of love within the person who is filled with the voice of ’I’. And there is no voice of ’I’ within the person who is filled with the voice of love. The two of them can never be found together. It is impossible.
It is the same kind of impossibility as darkness and light existing together. Once darkness went to god and said, ”The sun keeps chasing after me. He is giving me much trouble. He follows me from morning till night and by the evening I am very tired. And when it is night, before I have completed my sleep and my rest, he starts to follow me again. I do not remember doing anything wrong to him; I don’t think that I have ever made him angry. So why is he following me? Why am I continually harassed? What wrong have I done?”
Then god called the sun and asked, ”Why are you chasing after that poor darkness? He is always moving, hiding, taking shelter here and there. Why do you follow him for twenty-four hours? What is the need?
The sun said, ”Who is this darkness? I have not yet met him. I don’t even know him. Who is darkness? What is darkness? I have not seen him yet, I have not met him yet, but if I have unknowingly committed some mistake then I am ready to ask for forgiveness. And once I recognize him, I will never follow him again.”
They say that millions and trillions of years have passed since this event. This case is pending in the files of god. Yet god has not been able to put darkness and the sun together and I tell you that never in the future will he be able to do so howsoever almighty he may be. Even the almighty does not have the ability to bring darkness in front of the sun, because darkness and light cannot exist together.
There is a reason why they cannot exist together. The reason is that darkness has no being of its own, so it cannot exist in front of the sun. Darkness is only the absence of sun – so how can the absence and the presence of the same thing exist together? Darkness is only the absence of sun. Darkness is nothing in itself. It is just the absence of sun, it is just the absence of light. So how can the absence of light appear? How can both the things exist together? God will not be able to arrange it.
In the same way ego and love also cannot exist together. Ego is like darkness. It is the absence of love, it is not the presence of love. Within us love is absent so within us the voice of ’I’ goes on resounding. And with this voice of ’I’ we say that ’I’ want to love, ’I’ want to give love; ’I’ want to receive love. Have you gone mad! There has never been any relation between ’I’ and love. And this ’I’ goes on speaking for love – ’I’ want to pray, ’I’ want to attain god, ’I’ want to be liberated.”
This is the same thing as darkness saying, ”I want to hug the sun. I want to love the sun. I want to be a guest in the house of the sun.” It is inconceivable. ’I’ is the absence of love itself. ’I’ is the lack of love, and the more we go on strengthening this voice of ’I’, the less possibility there will be of love within us. The more the ego is there, the more love will be absent; when there is total ego, love will die totally.
There can be no love within us, because if we search inside we will find that the voice of ’I’ is resounding there for twenty-four hours continuously. We breathe with this ’I’, we drink water with this ’I’, we enter a temple with this ’I’. What else is there in our lives except this ’I’?
Our clothes are the clothes of our ’I’. Our positions are the positions of our ’I’. Our knowledge is the knowledge of our ’I’. Our spiritual practice, our helping others, is the helping of our ’I’. Our everything, even our sannyas, is also the sannyas of our ’I’. A strong feeling arises inside that ’I’ am a sannyasin; ’I’ am not a household man; ’I’ am not an ordinary person; ’I’ am a sannyasin; ”I” am a helper; ”I” am a knowledgeable person; ’I’ am rich; ’I’ am this; ’I’ am that….
The house that has been built around this ’I’, will not be acquainted with love. And then that music which could bring the heart to the innermost core, which could make it acquainted with the truth of life, will not arise from the veena of the heart. That door will not open, it will always remain closed.
It has to be very basically understood how strong your ’I’ is, how deep it is! And you have to clearly see if you are giving it more strength, if you are making it deeper, making it stronger and stronger every day. If you are making it stronger yourself, then drop the hope that love can arise within you or that the closed knot of love can open or that the treasure of love can be attained. Drop the very idea. There is no way it can happen.
So I do not tell you to start loving because the ego can also say that ’I’ am a lover and ’I’ love. The love which comes from the ego is absolutely false hence I said that all our love is false – because it comes out of ego, it is the shadow of ego. And remember that the love which comes out of ego is more dangerous than the hate, because hate is clear, direct and simple but love comes with a changed face and it will be difficult to recognize it.
If you are loved with a love that comes out of ego you will feel after a while that you are being held with iron chains instead of loving hands. After a while you will come to know that the love which makes beautiful speeches and sings beautiful songs to you is just tempting you in the beginning. There is much poison in those sweet songs. And if a love which comes in the form of flowers is a shadow of the ego, then, when you touch the flowers, you will find thorns inside which will pierce you.
When people go to catch fish they put some bait on a hook. The ego wants to become a master of others, it wants to possess them, so it pierces them deeply with the bait of love on a hook. So many people end up in pain and suffering because of their illusions about love; not even in hell do so many people suffer so much. Because of this illusion of love the whole earth, the whole humanity is suffering. But still we do not understand that the love from the ego is false…. This is why this hell has been created.
The love to which ego is attached is a form of jealousy – this is why nobody is as jealous as lovers are. The love which is attached to the ego is a conspiracy and a trick to possess the other. It is a conspiracy – that is why nobody suffocates so many people as those who talk of love. This situation is created because of the ’love’ which comes from the ego – there can never be any relation between love and the ego.
Source – Osho Book “The Inner Journey”