Question : Beloved Osho, since falling in love, even though having little to do with him, it seems entirely my own journey. Feeling nourished and much power in my being.
Osho : The question is from Anand Amrita. Love is nourishment. Love is exactly like food to the soul. Food is nourishment for the body, love is nourishment for the soul. Without for you will die physically, without love you will die spiritually — in fact you will not even be horn. The body needs food, the soul needs love.
And Jesus is right when he says, ‘Man cannot live by bread alone.’ Because the bread is bread only for the body. You will have to seek and search something which nourishes your soul. So, Amrita, be always in love. And remember one thing: Lovers don’t matter, love matters. If one lover disappears from your life, don’t become sour and bitter. If one lover has moved away from you, don’t go on clinging to the past and the memory and the nostalgia of it. That is sacrilegious, that is insulting to love. The lover is good, but the lover is good because of love. You need not sacrifice love for the lover. Lovers come and go, love remains.
When one lover has gone out of your life, don’t become poisoned by it, don’t start closing your heart. You have to live, you have to still be in love. One should always be in love — with whom is immaterial. If love goes on flowing, you will be nourished in your soul.
But there are people who make this condition too. They become too much attached to the lover. It is as if a flute-player has become too much attached to his flute and he cannot play on another flute. And this flute has been stolen, is broken, now he will never sing. Now he will never sing — because that flute is no more with him, how can he sing? It will be a betrayal to that flute. This is foolish but this is how humanity has been taught. If that flute is gone, search and seek for another flute. Because your devotion should be towards the song, not towards the flute. The flute is just a vehicle, a passage.
So are all lovers. If one love is no more there, start searching, exploring, for another. Remain always in love, and your soul will grow, will be nourished.
But people become obsessed. Obsession is pathological. Because of obsession the world suffers too much. A few people suffer because they cannot love, and a few people suffer because they have loved, but all suffer all the same. Nothing is, and can be, eternal here; all is momentary. Our meeting is momentary, all meetings are momentary. It is a miracle that they happen — that you fall in love with a man or a woman or with a friend. It is a miracle that it has happened — be grateful to God, but don’t take it for granted. Nothing can be taken for granted. It will disappear one day, as it has appeared.
It is like a rose flower. In the morning it was there, by the evening it is gone. And the rose flower is far more beautiful because it will disappear. If it was going to be there for ever and ever like a plastic flower, there would not have been any beauty. The very possibility of its disappearance makes it immensely valuable. So if you are in love with a person, remember the rose flower. Love is a rose flower — it is there, but it is not like a thing. It is very fragile. It is more like a fragrance — it has come to you on the wings of the wind, the wind may take it away again. It is a gift out of the blue. You cannot cling to it, you cannot possess it. If you try to possess it, you will kill it immediately.
So a few people start possessing and kill. And a few people don’t possess, but when the lover has gone or has moved away, has taken his path separate from your path. then you are full of tears for ever. Just crying for the spilt milk. Don’t cry for the spilt milk. Go ahead, search and seek again, God will come in some other form. Somewhere else another bush may have bloomed. And who knows ‘ A bigger rose flower may be waiting for you.
Remain always in love, never betray love. Lovers come and go. Trust love that it will happen again, that again you will be dancing and singing. Trust life, trust love. And it IS nourishment, it is alchemy. It is love that one is born through, it is through love that one becomes again and again fresh, is rejuvenated. Again and again feels enthusiasm for life, again and again feels celebration of life, again and again feels grateful to God.
People whose loves have disappeared, whose hearts have become without love, are like wasteland, are like deserts. They can pray but their prayer will not have any beat to it. They can pray but their prayer will lose all meaning. They can pray but their prayer will not have any juice to it. It will be dry, it will be dust — it cannot relate to God.
The day you stop relating with people, you stop relating with existence. People are the closest existence to you. Relate to people, relate to trees, relate to birds and animals and rocks, and only then will you be able to relate to God. Love is the way.
Source : Osho Book “This Very Body the Buddha”