Osho on Excitement, True Love and Joy in Relationship

[A sannyasin, returning to the West, says that the joy and fun has gone out of his relationship with his girlfriend, though the love is still there.]

Osho – There is some misunderstanding in your mind. The joy is not gone, joy has never been there – it was something else. It is excitement that has gone but you were thinking that excitement was joy. Joy will come now; when the excitement subsides only their does joy come. Joy is a very silent phenomenon. It is not excitement at all, it is not feverish at all.

It is tranquil, calm and cool. But in the West that misunderstanding has become very prevalent. People think that excitement is joy It is a kind of intoxication one feels occupied, tremendously occupied. In that occupation one forgets one’s worries, problems, anxieties. So it is like alcohol: you forget your problems, you forget yourself; at least for the moment you are far, far away from yourself. That is the meaning of excitement: you are no more inside; you are outside yourself, you have escaped from yourself.

But because of this being outside yourself, sooner or later you become tired. You miss the nourishment that comes from your innermost core when you are close to it. So no excitement can be permanent; it can only be a moment’s phenomenon, a momentary thing. All honeymoons end, they have to end, otherwise you will be killed. If you remain excited you will go berserk. It has to subside, you have to be nourished there again.

It is just as one cannot remain awake for many nights. For one night, two nights, three nights, it is okay, but if you remain awake for too many nights you will start feeling tired, utterly tired, exhausted. And you will start feeling dull and dead too; you will need rest. After each excitement there is a need for rest. In rest you recapitulate, you recover; then you can move into excitement again.

But excitement is not joy, it is just an escape from misery. Try to understand it very clearly: excitement is just an escape from misery. It gives only a pseudo experience of joy. Because you are no more miserable you think you are joyous – not to be miserable is equivalent to being joyous. Joy is a positive phenomenon. Not to be miserable is just a forgetfulness. The misery is waiting back home for you: whenever you come back it will be there.

When excitement disappears, one starts thinking ’Now what is the point of this love?’ In the West love dies with excitement, and that is a calamity. In fact love had never been born. It was just love of excitement, it was not real love. It was just an effort to move away from oneself It was a search for sensation. You rightly use the word ’fun’; it was fun but it was not intimacy. When excitement disappears and you just start feeling loving, love can grow; now the feverish days are over. This is the true beginning.

To me, the true love begins when the honeymoon is over. But by that time the western mind thinks that all is over, finished: ’Search for another woman, search for another man. Now what is the point in continuing? – there is no more fun!’

If you go on loving now, love will take on a depth, it will become intimacy. A great grace will arise in it. It will have a subtlety now, it will not be superficial. It will not be fun, it will be meditation, it will be prayer. It will help you to know yourself. The other will become a mirror, and through her you will be able to know yourself. Now is the time, the right time for love to grow because all the energy that was being channelled into excitement will not be wasted: it will be poured into the very roots of love and the tree will be able to have great foliage.

If you can go on growing in this intimacy, which is no more excitement, then joy will arise: first excitement, then love, then joy. Joy is the ultimate product, the fulfilment. Excitement is just a beginning, a triggering; it is not the end. And those who finish at excitement will never know what love is, will never know the mystery of love, will never come to know the joy of love. They will know sensations, excitement, passionate fever, but they will never know the grace that is love. They will never know how beautiful it is to be with a person with no excitement but with silence, with no words, with no effort to do anything.

Just being together, sharing one space, one being, sharing each other, not thinking of what to do, what to say, where to go, how to enjoy; all those things are gone. The storm is over and there is silence. And it is not that you will not make love but it will not be a making really; it will be love happening. It will happen out of grace, out of silence, out of rhythm; it will arise from your depths, it will not be bodily really.

There is a sex which is spiritual, which has nothing to do with the body. Although the body partakes in it, participates in it, it is not the source of it. Then sex takes on the colour of Tantra, only then.

So my suggestion is: watch yourself. Now that you are coming closer to the temple don’t escape. Go into it. Forget excitement, it is just childish. And something beautiful is ahead. If you can wait for it, if you have patience and can trust in it, it will come. And to know love is to know God….