Osho on Love – Love grows only in deep intimacy and trust.

[The first sannyasin Osho addressed had sent him a letter earlier saying that she was in a deep
loving relationship with her husband, but at the same time she felt attracted to someone else.]

Osho – Two things to remember. The first: love grows only in deep intimacy and trust. If you change persons, from A to B, from B to C, it is as if you are transplanting your being from one place to another. You will never grow roots. And the tree will grow fragile and weak.

To gain strength, deep roots are needed; and to gain roots, time is needed. And for love even eternity is not enough. Even eternity is not enough, remember, because love can grow and grow and grow – and there is no end to it. There is a beginning, but there is no end.

So don’t take love as a superficial thing. It is not just a relationship. Through love, your whole being has to be discovered. It is sacred, but in the West it has become very profane; it has almost lost the meaning. It has become more and more sexual and bodily, very superficial and casual.

In fact I am afraid that the West may lose the very dimension of love. People may completely forget that there was a possibility of inner endless growth in it. If it is a question of excitement, then it is good to change partners. Then you are more excited and your partner is something to discover. With an old partner everything is known and settled; the whole territory is known. One starts feeling a little fed up, a little bored. This is natural.

But if you love the person, you love even the boredom. If you love the person, you also love even his old habits, the old ways, the old territory. Old things have a charm of their own, mm? Just the old armchair you sit on – it has something that no other chair can give, it fits perfectly. Not only that you know it, it also knows you.

There is a familiarity in the old room in which you have lived, the old house. there is a certain affinity, a certain tuning, so that by and by you are not two separate things. You have melted into each other and have become one, and the boundaries have become blurred. With new things, boundaries are very shy and the separation is very clear.

Old things have their charm, but one has to discover it. Only children are interested in new things. The more grown up you are, the more interested you are in the old things, and the less one is bored. Then you go on finding that these are just levels, layers; that when you love a person one layer has been known – but don’t conclude that that is all.

A deeper layer is waiting to be provoked and challenged – and there is no end to it. In fact the person himself is not aware how many layers of being he has. If a lover challenges his being, not only the lover will know, the person himself will come to know his being – and only through love. we come to know each other when we challenge each other, and go on provoking each other.

So try to find out new was with the old person – and you will never be at a loss. Once you know the key of how to always discover a new layer, then the old person is never old. Or, he is old and yet new. then you are not bored or fed up. then by and by roots grow. A point comes in deep love where the lover and the beloved almost become one. I say almost, because the bodies remain separate; but they come to feel a harmony.

Now even new research shows that if two persons have loved each other very long, they need not say anything to each other. If a thought arises in one person, it is immediately transferred to the other. Old lovers don’t say much but they understand. By and by lovers become twins, mm?

So love is a great adventure, it is not a casual thing. It is a life commitment – and if you can understand, it is a commitment for lives, not only for one life. Because of Christianity and Judaism and Mohammedanism – and these three religions have become very important in the West – the concept of rebirth has been lost. But if you love a person very deeply in this life, you will find him in the next life again. There are recorded phenomena about the same couple being born again and again for many lives, going on discovering each other.

So let love be your meditation. Make it a sacred thing, not a casual phenomenon. Let it be a challenge. Each challenge is painful because each growth is painful. So for six months you have to make love your meditation. Forget that anybody else exists except your lover. And see what happens in these six months.

If someday some idea arises about somebody – because mind goes on thinking; it is a betrayal of the inner spirit, it is a renegade, a Judas – don’t repress it, because repression is not going to help. Each night, whenever you have any desire, any erotic desire arising, for half an hour close the eyes and let that desire have full play in fantasy. Whatsoever you want to do, do in fantasy.

Don’t condemn it; it is natural, just human. Devote that half hour completely to it so that it is finished with. Soon you will start seeing the whole game of the mind, and within six months all ideas of other persons will disappear from the mind. And when that happens, for the first time you will know what love is. Up to now you have only heard the word, mm? So six months. And then every month you go on reporting how things are going. Good, Anupama.

Source: from Osho Book “Hammer on the Rock”