Question – Beloved Osho, What is Love?
Osho – Swami Anand Tallis,LOVE is the radiance, the fragrance of knowing oneself, of being oneself. Anand Tallis is very young – he is only nine – but he is far ahead of his age. His mental age must be almost double that, nearabout eighteen, hence the question.
Love is overflowing joy. Love is when you have seen who you are; then there is nothing left except to share your being with others. Love is when you have seen that you are not separate from existence. Love is when you have felt an organic, orgasmic unity with all that is.
Love is not a relationship, Tallis. Love is a state of being; it has nothing to do with anybody else. One is not in love, one is love. And of course when one is love, one is in love – but that is an outcome, a by-product, that is not the source. The source is that one is love.
And who can be love? Certainly, if you are not aware of who you are, you cannot be love. You will be fear. Fear is just the opposite of love. Remember, hate is not the opposite of love, as people think; hate is love standing upside down, it is not the opposite of love.
The real opposite of love is fear. In love one expands, in fear one shrinks. In fear one becomes closed, in love one opens. In fear one doubts, in love one trusts. In fear one is left lonely, in love one disappears; hence there is no question of loneliness at all.
When one is not, how can one be lonely? Then these trees and the birds and the clouds and the sun and the stars are still within you. Love is when you have known your inner sky. And Tallis, this is the right moment, the right age, to enter into the world of love.
This is the time when parents, the society, the state and the church go on poisoning children and making them afraid. This is the time when fear is created by the exploiters. This is the time when society reduces small children to slaves; and one can be reduced to a slave only if great fear is created.
This is the time also – if the society is sane and is not dominated by stupid politicians and priests, if the society is not pathological – when the society will help the children to become more and more loving, will help the children to know more about beauty, about music, about poetry, about dance, about meditation. This is the time when the child can simply take a plunge without any difficulties.
Later on it will become more and more difficult, because as you grow old, fears also grow older and stronger. As you grow old the ego becomes more strengthened. As you grow old your capacity to learn decreases.
As you grow old you become more and more cowardly, afraid of the unknown. The young child is free of fear; children are born without any fear. If the society can help and support them to remain without fear, can help them to climb the trees and the mountains, and swim the oceans and the rivers, if the society can help them in every possible way to become adventurers, adventurers of the unknown, and if the society can create a great enquiry instead of giving them dead beliefs, then the children will turn into great lovers, lovers of life – and that is true religion.
There is no higher religion than love. Tallis, meditate, dance, sing, and go deeper and deeper into yourself. Listen to the birds more attentively. Look at the flowers with awe, wonder. Don’t become knowledgeable, don’t go on labelling things. That’s what knowledgeability is – the great art of labelling everything, categorizing everything.
From this age, start playing guitar or learn to play the flute. Meet people, mix with people, with as many people as possible, because each person expresses a different facet of God. Learn from people. Don’t be afraid, this existence is not your enemy. This existence mothers you, this existence is ready to support you in every possible way.
Trust, and you will start feeling a new upsurge of energy in you; that energy is love. That energy wants to bless the whole existence, because in that energy one feels blessed. And when you feel blessed what else can you do except bless the whole existence? Love is a deep desire to bless the whole existence.
Source : from Osho Book “The Guest”