Question : YOU SAID THAT WHEN TWO BEINGS ARE IN LOVE THEY ARE IN COMMUNION WITH EACH OTHER. THEN WHY DOES THE WORLD CALL IT ’FALLING’ IN LOVE WHEN IT IS SUCH AN ECSTATIC HAPPENING AND NOT A FALL TO A LOWER PLANE?
Osho : The world calls it falling in love because the world is ruled by the head, and heart is lower than the head. When somebody falls in love he falls from the head towards the hear And heart is there in childhood, head grows later on. Head is a later growth. You are born with a heart, you are not born with a head. You are born only with the possibility of a head, not with the head. Reason has to be taught, love cannot be taught.
Reason has to be forced on you, your mind has to be conditioned. Schools, colleges,universities exist for reason, there exists no school, no college, no university for love – there is no need! One is born with a heart already functioning perfectly. The head is just a possibility. If it is taught, conditioned, it will function; if not, it won’t function at all. So when again in your youth you move into the relationship of love, you feel it also like a fall, because the mind feels that you are moving backwards, falling towards the childhood, moving towards the heart again.
And the head has a condemnation for the heart; that condemnation is also involved in that term ’falling. The head is saying: What foolish thing are you going to do? Are you mad? It is a fall! Avoid it! For the head, love is the greatest enemy; because once you are in love you become irrational. Look at two lovers – they talk foolishly, they behave foolishly, they are almost mad, and the head goes on condemning and judging: What are you doing?
You are falling back. That’s why the world calls love a ’falling’. But it is good to fall. In another sense also, not in a condemnatory sense, it is a fall, because it leads you towards depth. Reason is superficial. Heart is a deeper phenomenon within you, it leads towards depth, it is diving into your being.
Don’t condemn it. The society condemns because the society looks at love as an anarchic phenomenon. We teach a boy or a girl, and we waste so much money on him, and then suddenly one day he falls in love, and the whole structure is disturbed. It is said that the mother prepares the child for years to become wise; then he meets another woman and within minutes he is a fool again.
One woman prepares for years to help him become a little wise, and another woman comes in, and within a moment, he is a fool again. Don’t condemn it, because foolishness has its own beauty. In fact a man who cannot be a fool sometimes is not wise enough. To be constantly wise, to be wise twenty fours a day and seven days a week is FOOLISH. Sometimes you need to take a holiday from your wisdom and act like a fool.
Then only there is balance. The fool is also part of life.In old days every king in his court used to have a great fool. That was a balancing factor, because in the court there were too many wise men, and sometimes too many wise men prove to be too many cooks in the kitchen. They spoil. They are just ’reasons’, they don’t have the roots of heart.
A fool was needed – in every great court there was a fool. And he brought humour to the court, the sense of humour he brought; otherwise wise men bring long faces, sadness, seriousness. Of course seriousness is good, but only sometimes; it has its moments; and there are moments one should be a little foolish. To me, a really wise man is spontaneous – when wisdom is needed he is wise, when foolishness is needed he is a perfect fool.
If you cannot move to the polarities, you are a fixed and dead phenomenon. One should be capable of moving, flexible. You should be able to reason deeply and you should be able to fall into irrationalities also. Calculate and love. Arithmetic and poetry. Wise and old, foolish and young. When the child and the old man meet, when the wise man and the fool have become one unity, you attain to the greatest growth. Remember this. Always retain the capacity to fall in love, to be foolish, to behave foolishly.
To me the only fool is the man who is always wise. Life needs polarities and proportions. Foolishness is very refreshing. It cleanses your eyes, gives you perspective. It again brings the innocence of the child. It again gives you spontaneity. Then you are not fixed in a pattern, you are flowing. But don’t try to be a fool continuously – that too is foolish. And it is easy for the mind to cling to one extreme. The most difficult thing for the mind is to change polarities because it disturbs your style.
You would L;ke to be fixed in a pattern – that is the way of least resistance. You have learned a trick and then you remain fixed in it. You remain closed in the known. You don’t want to move to the unknown. You don’t want to learn, you don’t want to be open to the new facts. Mind always wants either to be a leftist or to be a rightist, either to be this or that – BUT TO BE SOMETHING. And life is in the flow – TO BE NOTHING; the capacity to be everything and to be nothing; the capacity to move in any role and not get fixed in it.
’No role’ should become your life style. You should be capable of moving, of dropping it, just as you drop your clothes. Roles are just to be used, and if you don’t get fixed and imprisoned in them, you retain the freedom and the flow and you retain the capacity to enjoy life in its totality. Wisdom is good, foolishness also. Arithmetic beautiful, poetry also. This is the paradox.
Use the head, use the heart, and if you can use both a tremendous revolution will happen. If you can use both you will become aware that you are the third force – neither; you are neither head nor heart; because if you can move so easily from one to another you cannot be either; you must be separate from both – then the witnessing arises; then the identification is broken. And that witnessing is what meditation is all about.