Osho on Hurry and Real Love – What youth knows is not love

[A sannyasin says: “The distance between me and others, between me and you grows smaller so slowly.”]

Osho – No need to force it; everybody has to follow his own pace. Great patience is needed — don’t be in a hurry. These things are not like seasonal flowers; they are like cedars of Lebanon: they grow slowly, they take years. Because the roots have to go deep it takes time. Seasonal flowers come within weeks but within weeks they are gone too.

Never be in a hurry, because all that is beautiful and great takes time. The modern world has become very ugly for a single reason: everybody is in a hurry. Then nothing deep is possible. Everybody is so impatient. Love is not possible because love needs time. Intimacy grows very very slowly… years of being together. My own observation is that unless two persons have lived many many years together, love does not bloom. In fact, by the time people are getting old, love blooms. What youth knows is not love; what youth knows is only chemistry, physiology, sex, but not love. These are not bad things because love grows in these things, but love needs deep roots first. It takes years. But the modern love is finished by the time the honeymoon is over or even before.

Everybody in such a hurry! People want things immediately, and if they think it is not going to happen, then: Change the partner, find somebody else. Maybe it is not going to happen here; this is not the woman. this is not the man. They have to look somewhere else and they have no time to waste. And this will go on happening with everybody, because they don’t know that love will take time. You will have to go through many things — ups and downs, positives and negatives, dark nights of the soul and joyous dance. You will have to pass through all these things; then something seasons. Love is a seasoning.

If you want to learn music it will take years. Pop music won’t take years, that’s why it is not very musical; it is more or less making noise. If you really want to go deep into music then years and years of waiting, patience, work… then something starts happening. But those who are not patient will never know. This relationship that is growing between me and you cannot be hurried. All hurry will be disturbing. Let it grow in its own way. Move slowly. Those slow movements are very solid; they crystallize you, and before you take a new step, the old step has to become absolutely solid so that it can function as a jumping-board for the new. If the old is still not settled and you take a jump, you will have to go back because something will remain lingering in the past.

The modern mind needs psychoanalysis for the single reason that people have not lived their past; they have been in such a hurry. When they were children they didn’t live their childhood; they wanted to become grown-up and they were in a hurry. Now many things have remained incomplete in the childhood. Psychoanalysis will take you back to the childhood; even drastic methods may be needed, for example, Primal Scream. These are for nothing but to complete some experiences that you have left incomplete in the past.

Now many people come to me and they ask why I don’t give therapy groups to Indians. It is not their need. They have been moving very slowly, in fact, too slowly; their whole being is lazy. If they are missing, they are missing on the other extreme. They are not missing through haste: they are missing through laziness, indolence. They have become almost stagnant; that is their misery. And the Western man’s misery is speed, haste; everybody is chasing after shadows. People are not worried very much about where they are going; their whole worry is whether they are going with speed or not. They may land in hell — that is not the point. The real thing is that they are going with speed.

I have heard that an aeroplane was in danger. The pilot came on the ‘mike’ and told the passengers ‘Don’t be worried. There are two pieces of news for you; one is good news, the other is bad news. The good news is that we are moving with great speed. The bad news is that we are lost. We don’t know where we are moving to.’ This is the situation: we are moving with great speed but where we are moving to nobody knows… in fact, nobody cares. We go on improving upon the speed.

If the childhood is lived slowly there will be no need to go back through psychotherapy or Primal therapy. There will be no need to go back at all — it is finished! Remember one very fundamental thing, that any experience that is finished, completed, drops from the mind; it doesn’t hang around. It is not a cloud hanging around you any more. But if you are in a hurry then everything hangs around because nothing is ever complete. You are taking your breakfast but in such a hurry that you are simply stuffing. Mm? in your mind you are already moving — you may have reached the office. And when you are in the office you are not there — you may be already reaching home. You are always ahead of yourself. This is driving people crazy!

So they don’t enjoy the taste of the food, they don’t enjoy the beauty of their work or the creativity of their work; there is nobody to enjoy. They are always ahead, running faster than their present; they are always in the future. So everything remains incomplete and all that is incomplete demands completion; it gathers, it becomes accumulative. By and by you are so burdened that you don’t know what to do, how to sort it out, this whole mess. Either one goes mad — which is only a way to avoid this mess — or one commits suicide. But these things don’t help. You will be back again in the world in another womb, and you will continue the same nonsense again.

Use this time being with me. This opportunity has to be used. And the first thing I would like to tell you is: be very patient. You are moving, but you are growing like a cedar, not like a seasonal flower… and it is good. Enjoy this slow movement. Something beautiful is going to grow. But it is just like the child takes nine months in the mother’s womb, mm? If the mother is in a hurry there will be a miscarriage and the child will be born dead. Wait!

There is an ancient story about Lao Tzu, a beautiful story — utterly false but of immense significance — that he lived in his mother’s womb for sixty-two years. So slow! The mother must have been a woman of guts (laughter) obviously, otherwise she couldn’t give birth to a man like Lao Tzu. Sixty-two years — by the time he was born he was already old; all his hair was white. He was born wise, enlightened; nothing was left. He was born mature, absolutely mature. What I take from this parable is the beauty of patience.

Source – Osho Book “Hallelujah!”