Osho – Who is loved is immaterial; the loved one is just an excuse. The real objective is that because of a beloved, the river of love that has up to now been blocked within the lover may start flowing; the fountain that has for so long been covered over may spring up again; all the boulders that have obstructed the flow may be removed. The beloved acts just as an instrument to clear away these rocks. The fountain of love is within, and once it starts flowing you will clearly understand that it is not dependent on the beloved; it is your own nature, and it is you who have been preventing the flow of this fountain by blocking it with rocks. The presence of the beloved was a help; the rocks got cleared away and now the fountain of love flows without any limits.
If your path is love, then you must be prepared to be mad. Then who the love is for is not the question; the image of Krishna or the image of Jesus will do, or even an unsculptured piece of stone will do.
A man went to a fakir and said to him, ”I want to find God.”
The fakir replied, ”The search is very difficult. To find God you will have to make a great leap; so first you begin by practicing small jumps.”
The seeker asked, ”How do I take a small jump?”
”Love someone,” said the fakir. ”Practice this small jump, and eventually you will be able to take the ultimate leap into God, in which you will be utterly dissolved into the infinite void, with no trace of you remaining. Those who come to look for you will not find even your ashes. That is the final jump, but you will have to wait a while before you are ready for that one. It requires great courage, so start with shorter jumps.”
The seeker said, ”But I love nobody! All I have been thinking so far is how to get rid of my wife and children so that I can seek God in earnest. And I have always avoided giving anybody even so much as a loving glance, because I was afraid that love will lead me into bondage”.
Certainly, love becomes bondage – if there is ego within you then love becomes bondage. But if there is no ego within, then who is there to be bound? Love becomes our bondage because the one who can be bound is present within. So when love begins to encircle us from all sides, then we begin to get uneasy within. In fact, as long as the ”I” is there, love cannot be. All that we call love is only desire, longing, passion and attachment; as long as ego is there, all these bind one.
We have called passion pashvik – animalistic. You are probably not aware of the meaning of this word. It comes from the word pashu, which means that which is tied; pash means the binding rope and pashvik means to be tied. Pashu does not mean only animal, it means anyone who is tied. And the only one who can be tied is the one who is internally tied. Lovers cannot bind or be bound; hence those who have known love have called it ultimate freedom. They say that love is liberation, because in love you dissolve, so who is there to be bound? Even if bonds are there they will merely hang in the void. Who is there to be bound? And if you try to put the void in bondage, you will end up putting knots in the rope itself, as there is no one to be found within.
So this seeker said to the fakir, ”I have lived always in great fear of love, always avoiding it, because love is bondage. And what is this you are teaching me? To love? I have never loved anybody.”
The fakir replied, ”Think this over carefully, because to find anywhere a man who has never loved anybody is impossible – no matter how much he may have tried to avoid it. Love is our nature. So close your eyes and try to remember.”
The seeker thought long, and finally he said, ”Well, if you are really asking me, I have to confess that I have a cow for whom I feel a little affection!”
”That will do,” said the fakir. ”This cow of yours will become your first lesson in jumping. Go and love your cow whole-heartedly. Let her occupy all your attention, let your every pore be possessed by her. Cow when you stand up, cow when you sit down, cow when you walk, cow when you talk – let your whole being be filled with cow!”
”What madness are you teaching?” said the seeker. ”What will people say? This is just insanity!”
”Yes,” said the fakir, ”love is always insanity. And God in the form of love showers only on those who are ready to be insane and ecstatic. So go now, and try this.”
And it is said that through this cow alone this seeker found God. He never needed to return to the fakir to ask what jump to take next. Looking deep into the eyes of his cow, drowning in them again and again, he recognized the eye of God.
And certainly, cows have that eye. This is why Hindus have called the cow the mother. Eyes as innocent as those of the cow are hard to find anywhere else. Even human eyes are not so innocent. They are pure, they are as a cloudless sky. Try, some time, standing near a cow with your heart full of love, looking into her eyes, and immediately you will feel the love in the cow’s heart arising, because the cow is not conditioned by society, she has not been taught to be moral, she has no discrimination like ”mine” and ”not mine”; she has no calculating intellect weighing the pros and cons. The cow is pure heart, so if you have any heart within you she will immediately start transmitting waves of love towards you.
You will be surprised to know that there is great research going on now into the emotional life of plants. If you think the cow’s love is remarkable, then what to say about plants? Just stand beside a plant lovingly, say the scientists involved in this work, and the plant will begin to transmit love waves to you.
One of these researchers has invented instruments which, if connected to a plant, plot a graph of the plant’s palpitations, just as an electrocardiogram plots the beating of the heart. This scientist found that if a man who feels love for the plant stands nearby, touches and caresses it, feels happy to be near it, the plant’s graph changes, and it can be seen from the changes that the plant is feeling happy. The moment the gardener approaches with cutters in his hand, the graph changes at once.
Even though he has not actually used the cutters, and is only approaching, the plant’s palpitations change. As the gardener begins to cut the plant, it is not only that particular plant’s graph which changes, but the graphs of all the other plants nearby change too, because they too feel the trauma of the plant that is being cut.
This scientist was even more amazed to discover that the plants were disturbed not only by the cutting of other plants, their pain being reflected in the graph, but reacted also with pain when a chicken was killed close by. And he found that the matter went even further than this. If the man who cut the plant or killed the chicken approached again the next day, the graphs of the plants indicated their suffering; they are aware of the approach of a dangerous man. Even after months the graphs of these plants would express their anxiety at the approach of this man.
Plants are a far less developed life-form than animals, so you can imagine the love that you could share with a cow! Search deep into her eyes and she will become the door on the outside of which is written love, and on the inside, meditation.
If love is your path, if love is your thirst, your lifestyle, then love anybody. But go deeply and fully into it; only then is the transformation. If you seek to save yourself in any way from drowning deep into it, you will never be liberated.
If love holds no attraction for you – and there are such people – there is no need for you to feel discouraged. Then meditation is your path, and you should be alone and dive deep into yourself. If you cannot immerse yourself in the other, then sink into yourself. These are the only two possibilities; either you dissolve in yourself, or in the other.
source – osho book “Nowhere To Go But In”