Osho – Prem Urja, life is beautiful because it is paradoxical. It has salt because it is paradoxical — it is not just sweet, it has salt in it too. If it was just sweet, it would become too sugary, saccharin. Life has tremendous mystery in it because it is based on paradox. You are feeling confused because you have a certain fixed idea about how life should be — you don’t allow life to be as it is.
You want to impose a certain concept on it, a certain logic on it. The confusion is of your own creation. Try to impose some logical pattern on life and you will become very much confused, because life has no obligation to fulfill your logic. Life is as it is. You have to listen to it. It has all the colors, the whole spectrum — it is a rainbow. But you have a certain idea that it should be only blue or it should be only green or it should be only red — but it is all the seven colors.
Then what are you going to do about the six other colors which are not part of your conception? Either you have to ignore them, block them, so that you don’t become aware of them; repress them, simply deny them…. But whatsoever you do, life is not going to drop its colors; they will be there — denied, rejected, repressed, they will be there, waiting for the right moment to explode into your consciousness.
And whenever they explode you will be confused. The confusion is your responsibility. Life is not confusing at all. Life is mysterious but never confusing. Because you don’t want it to be mysterious, you want it to be mathematical, you want it very clear-cut so that you can calculate and measure — hence the difficulty. It is not created by life.
Drop your conceptions and then look…. Then you will find the storm that comes brings a silence with it — which is illogical! The silence that is felt after the storm is the deepest, the profoundest. If there is no storm, the silence remains superficial, the silence remains dull, it has no depth.
After the storm…the greater the storm, the deeper the silence. Now, it is paradoxical. It is paradoxical only because you want to impose a certain logic. The storm, and creating silence? It does not fit with your idea — that is true — then you become confused. But why should it fit with your idea?
Life has to be perceived — not conceived. See what is the case, don’t have ready-made answers. Don’t go through life with prejudices, with a prejudiced mind, don’t have any a priori conceptions. Go innocent, naked, go ignorant. Function from the state of not knowing. And then…then life is not confusing. It is a tremendous joy, it is ecstasy. Then what appears today as confusing, you will feel thankful for it, grateful for it, that it is so, that it is not logical.
Life would have been utterly boring if God had followed Aristotle. It is a great relief that he is not an Aristotelian; it is a great relief that God knows nothing of Aristotle, that he has not read his books, that he does not believe in logic, that he believes in dialectics. Hence these paradoxes.
One can be in deep love and yet be alone. In fact, one can be alone only when one is in deep love. The depth of love creates an ocean around you, a deep ocean, and you become an island, utterly alone. Yes, the ocean goes on throwing its waves on your shore, but the more the ocean crashes with its waves on your shore, the more integrated you are, the more rooted, the more centered you are.
Love has value only because it gives you aloneness. It gives you space enough to be on your own. But you have an idea of love; that idea is creating trouble — not love itself, but the idea. The idea is that, in love, lovers disappear into each other, dissolve into each other.
Yes, there are moments of dissolution — but this is the beauty of life and all that is existential: that when lovers dissolve into each other, the same are the moments when they become very conscious, very alert. That dissolution is not a kind of drunkenness, that dissolution is not unconscious. It brings great consciousness, it releases great awareness. On the one hand they are dissolved — on the other hand for the first time they see their utter beauty in being alone.
The other defines them, their aloneness; they define the other. And they are grateful to each other. It is because of the other that they have been able to see their own selves; the other has become a mirror in which they are reflected. Lovers are mirrors to each other. Love makes you aware of your original face.
Hence, it looks very contradictory, paradoxical, when stated in such a way: “Love brings aloneness.” You were thinking all along that love brings togetherness. I am not saying that it does not bring togetherness, but unless you are alone you cannot be together.
Who is going to be together? Two persons are needed to be together, two independent persons are needed to be together. A togetherness will be rich, infinitely rich, if both the persons are utterly independent. If they are dependent on each other, it is not a togetherness — it is a slavery, it is a bondage.
If they are dependent on each other, clinging, possessive, if they don’t allow each other to be alone, if they don’t allow each other space enough to grow, they are enemies, not lovers; they are destructive to each other, they are not helping each other to find their souls, their beings.