IS YOUR MARRIED LIFE BECOMES A NIGHTMARE? THEN FIRST KNOW WHAT IS LOVE?

IF YOU REALLY LOVE A PERSON you will never encroach on his or her freedom. That is the ONLY indication of your love. Your love can be proved only by one thing: how much freedom you are giving to the other -- even the freedom to love others. That is the ONLY indication of your love.

THE MORE LOVE YOU GIVE, THE MORE YOU WILL HAVE -- because by giving, your love starts flowing. It may have been dormant, stagnant; by sharing, it starts flowing. It is like drawing water from a well: the moment you start to draw water, from hidden springs more water starts coming to fill the space. If you don't draw the water from the well, the water will become dirty; it may even become poisonous. And the springs will not be used; they will become blocked. If you go on drawing water every day, more and more water will be flowing in the well, and the springs will become bigger because they will be used more.

But people live in the outside economics even in their inner life. THE WIFE BECOMES VERY ANGRY if she finds her husband just being friendly with another woman. The husband becomes aggressive, jealous, if he finds that his wife was having a good time with somebody else, just enjoying, laughing. This is sheer stupidity! It is not understanding the inner world and the inner meta-economics. He is still thinking in terms of money -- that if his wife has laughed with somebody else that means she will not be able to laugh with him any more; so much laughter is lost! Now he is a loser, and of course that creates anger.

In fact, IF THE WIFE DOES NOT LAUGH WITH MANY PEOPLE, does not enjoy friendship, is not loving to many people, her love sources will die; she will not be able to love her husband either. She will forget how to love, her springs will go dry.

That's why you see husbands and wives looking so sad and bored with each other, it is bound to happen. They are going against a natural inner law: YOU HAVE MORE, THE MORE YOU GIVE. Giving does not destroy anything in you; in fact it is creative. The person who loves many people will be able to love his wife or her husband more totally.

BUT HUMANITY HAS NOT UNDERSTOOD this simple phenomenon even yet. We are still behaving in a very childish and stupid way. It is as if your wife says, "You breathe only when I am there, and when I am not there stop breathing -- because so much breath will be lost, so much life will be lost. And when you come home and you have been breathing in every place, everywhere, you will be almost dead! So when I am not with you, stop breathing!" And the husband insists also that, "When I am not at home, you stop breathing -- so that when we are together great breathing happens!" But both will die!

THAT'S HOW WE HAVE KILLED LOVE IN THE WORLD. We have killed everything valuable, because our whole logic is stupid. It is good that the husband goes for a morning walk and breathes in the fresh air, jogs and runs on the beach, and enjoys the sun. And the wife also goes and enjoys the flowers and the trees and the grass. And when they come together, they will be able to be more alive with each other, more loving to each other. They will be at their peak; they will be full of life-juices to share. But this has not happened yet.

JEALOUSY KILLS LOVE, POSSESSIVENESS KILLS LOVE. Be non-jealous if you want great love to happen; if you want your life to grow multidimensionally, it needs freedom. You need freedom, and the person you love needs freedom. In freedom only there is expansion, growth.

Albert Einstein discovered that the universe is continuously growing and expanding. Five thousand years before Albert Einstein, the Upanishads were saying the same thing. The name they gave to the universe, "brahmand", means that which goes on expanding, which is continuously growing. There is no end to that growth, no limit to that growth. A meditator has to live his life in such a way that everything goes on growing, expanding, without any limit. Your love, your joy, your silence, your life -- EVERYTHING SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO GROW. And it can happen only if you allow the same to others.

But what we have been doing for thousands of years is just the opposite: we encroach on each other's territory, WE DESTROY EVERYBODY'S SPACE IN THE NAME OF LOVE, in the name of friendship. We use beautiful words to hide ugly realities.

IF YOU REALLY LOVE A PERSON, you will allow all the space possible to the person; you will never encroach on his or her freedom. That is the ONLY indication of your love. And the miracle is, the more we allow each other to love as many people as possible, you will find the person infinitely loving towards you -- because love is not money, love is not a commodity. It is an inner energy which grows by sharing, which dies by not sharing.

How do you know if someone really loves you?

There are three layers of the human individual: his physiology, the body; his psychology, the mind; and his being, his eternal self. Love can exist on all the three planes, but its qualities will be different. On the plane of physiology, body, it is simply sexuality. You can call it love, because the word ‘love’ seems to be poetic, beautiful. But ninety-nine percent of people are calling their sex, love. Sex is biological, physiological. Your chemistry, your hormones — everything material is involved in it.

You fall in love with a woman or a man. Can you exactly describe why this woman attracted you? Certainly you cannot see her self, you have not seen your own self yet. You cannot see her psychology either, because to read somebody’s mind is not an easy job. So what have you found in the woman? Something in your physiology, in your chemistry, in your hormones, is attracted to the woman’s hormones, her physiology, her chemistry. This is not a love affair; this is a chemical affair.

Just think: the woman you have fallen in love with goes to our doctor, gets her sex changed, starts growing a beard and mustache. Will you be still loving her? Nothing has changed, only chemistry, hormones. Where has your love gone?

Only one percent of people know a little bit deeper. Poets, painters, musicians, dancers, singers have a sensitivity that they can feel beyond the body. They can feel the beauties of the mind, the sensitivities of the heart, because they live on that plane themselves.

Remember it as a ground rule: Wherever you live, you cannot see beyond that. If you live in your body, if you think you are only your body, you can be attracted only to somebody’s body. This is the physiological stage of love. But a musician, a painter, a poet, lives on a different plane. He does not think, he feels. And because he lives in his heart, he can feel the other person’s heart. That is ordinarily called love. It is rare. I am saying only one percent perhaps, once in a while.

Why are many people not moving to the second plane because it is tremendously beautiful? But there is a problem: anything very beautiful is also very delicate. It is not hardware, it is made of very fragile glass. And once a mirror has fallen and broken, then there is no way to put it together. People are afraid to get so much involved that they reach to the delicate layers of love, because at that stage love is tremendously beautiful but also tremendously changing.

Sentiments are not stones, they are like roseflowers. It is better to have a plastic roseflower, because it will be there always, and every day you can give it a shower and it will be fresh. You can put some French perfume on it. If its color fades you can paint it again. Plastic is one of the most indestructible things in the world. It is stable, permanent; hence people stop at the physiological. It is superficial, but it is stable.

Poets are known, artists are known to fall in love almost every day. Their love is like a roseflower. While it is there it is so fragrant, so alive, dancing in the wind, in the rain, in the sun, asserting its beauty. But by the evening it may be gone, and you cannot do anything to prevent it. The deeper love of the heart is just like a breeze that comes into your room, brings its freshness, coolness, and then it is gone. You cannot catch hold of the wind in your fist.

Very few people are so courageous as to live with a moment-to-moment, changing life. Hence, they have decided to fall into a love on which they can depend. I don’t know which kind of love you know — most probably the first kind, perhaps, the second kind. And you are afraid that if you reach your being, what will happen to your love? Certainly it will be gone — but you will not be a loser. A new kind of love will arise which arises only perhaps to one person in millions. That love can only be called lovingness.

The first love should be called sex. The second love should be called love. The third should be called lovingness — a quality, unaddressed — not possessive and not allowing anybody else to possess you. That loving quality is such a radical revolution that even to conceive it is very difficult.

Journalists have been asking me, “Why are there so many women here?” Obviously, the question is relevant, and they are shocked when I answer them. They were not expecting the answer. I have said to them, “I am a man.” They looked at me, unbelieving. I said, “It is natural that many more women will be here, for the simple reason that whatsoever they have known in their life before was either sex, or in rare cases, perhaps a few moments of love. But they have never come to know the taste of lovingness.” I have told these journalists, “Even the men you see here have grown many feminine qualities in them which have been repressed in the outside society.”

From the very beginning a boy is told, “You are a boy, not a girl. Behave like a boy! Tears are okay for a girl, but not for you. Be manly.” So every boy goes on cutting his feminine qualities. And all that is beautiful is feminine. So finally what is left is just a barbarous animal. His whole function is to reproduce children. The girl is not allowed to have anything with manly qualities. If she wants to climb a tree she will be stopped immediately, “This is for boys, not for girls!” Strange! If the girl has the desire to climb the tree, that is enough proof that she should be allowed.

All old societies have created different clothes for men and for women. This is not right; because each man is also a woman. He has come from two sources: his father and his mother. Both have contributed to his being. And each woman is also a man. We have destroyed both. The woman has lost all courage, adventure, reasoning, logic, because those are thought to be the qualities of a man. And the man has lost grace, sensitivity, compassion, kindness. Both have become half. This is one of the greatest problems we have to solve — at least for our people.

My sannyasins have to be both: half man, half woman. That will make them richer. They will have all the qualities that are available to human beings, not only half. At the point of being, you simply have a fragrance of lovingness. The journalists have asked me, “Do you love Sheela?” I said, “Of course. But I love so many women that I don’t know even their names. And not only women — I love so many men, because they are also half woman.” In one million sannyasins around the world, I cannot point to a single person and say, “This is the person I love.” I can simply say, “I love.” Whoever is ready to receive my love...it is available. So don’t be afraid. Your fear is right: what you think of as love will be gone, but what will come in its place is immense, infinite. You will be able to love without being attached. You will be able to love many people because to love one person is to keep yourself poor. That one person can give a certain experience of love, but to love many people....

You will be amazed that every person gives you a new feeling, a new song, a new ecstasy. Hence, I am against marriage. In my vision, marriages in the commune should be dissolved. People can live together their whole life if they want, but that is not a legal necessity. People should be moving, having as many experiences of love as possible. They should not be possessive. Possessiveness destroys love. And they should not be possessed, because that again destroys your love.

All human beings are worthy of being loved. There is no need to be tethered to one person for your whole life. That is one of the reasons why all the people around the world look so bored. Why can’t they laugh like you? Why can’t they dance like you? They are chained with invisible chains: marriage, family, husband, wife, children. They are burdened with all kinds of duties, responsibilities, sacrifices. And you want them to smile and laugh and dance and rejoice? You are asking the impossible. Make people’s love free, make people non-possessive. But this can happen only if in your meditation you discover your being. It is nothing to practice.

I am not saying to you, “Tonight you go to some other woman just as a practice.” You will not get anything, and you may lose your wife. And in the morning you will look silly. It is not a question of practicing, it is a question of discovering your being. With the discovery of being follows the quality of impersonal lovingness. Then you simply love. And it goes on spreading. First, it is human beings, then soon animals, birds, trees, mountains, stars. A day comes when this whole existence is your beloved. That is our potential. And anybody who is not achieving it is wasting his life.

Yes, you will have to lose a few things, but they are worthless. You will be gaining so much that you will never think again of what you have lost. A pure impersonal lovingness which can penetrate into anybody’s being — that is the outcome of meditativeness, of silence, of diving deep within your own being. I am simply trying to persuade you. Don’t be afraid of losing what you have.

~beloved osho~