Osho on love

[PsilocybeLarvae]

LOVE IS THE ONLY FREEDOM FROM ATTACHMENT. WHEN YOU LOVE EVERYTHING YOU ARE ATTACHED TO NOTHING.
In fact one has to understand the very phenomenon of attachment. Why do you cling to something? Because you are afraid you will lose it. Perhaps somebody may steal it. Your fear is that what is available to you today may not be available to you tomorrow.

Who knows about what is going to happen tomorrow? The woman you love or the man you love -- either movement is possible: you may come closer, you may become distant. You may become again strangers or you may become so one with each other that even to say that you are two will not be right; of course there are two bodies but the heart is one, and the song of the heart is one, and the ecstasy surrounds you both like a cloud. You disappear in that ecstasy: you are not you, I am not I. Love becomes so total, love is so great and overwhelming, that you cannot remain yourself; you have to drown yourself and disappear.

In that disappearance who is going to be attached, and with whom? Everything is. When love blossoms in its totality, everything simply is. The fear of tomorrow does not arise; hence there is no question of attachment, clinging, marriage, of any kind of contract, bondage.

What are your marriages except business contracts? "We commit to each other before a magistrate" -- you are insulting love! You are following law, which is the lowest thing in existence and the ugliest. When you bring love to the court you are committing a crime that cannot be forgiven. You make a commitment before a magistrate in a court that "We want to be married and we will remain married. It is our promise, given to the law: we will not separate and we will not deceive each other." Do you think this is not a great insult of love? Are not you putting law above love?

I am a lawless man; that's why two dozen countries are against me, although I have never committed any crime. But I don't believe in any law either.
I love -- there is no need for any law.
Law is for those who do not know how to love.
Law is for the blind, not for those who have eyes. Law is for those who have forgotten the language of the heart and only know the language of the mind.

Mirdad's statement is of such great value that it should be deeply understood -- not only intellectually, not only emotionally, but in your totality. Your whole being should drink it:
LOVE IS THE ONLY FREEDOM FROM ATTACHMENT.

... Because when you love you cannot even think of anything else.
WHEN YOU LOVE EVERYTHING YOU ARE ATTACHED TO NOTHING. Each moment comes with new splendor, new glory, new songs; each moment brings new dances to dance. Perhaps partners may change, but love remains.
Attachment is the desire that the partner should never change. For that you have to commit to the court, to the society -- all stupid formalities. And if you go against those formalities you will lose all respect and honor in the eyes of the people amongst whom you have to live.

Love knows nothing of attachment because love knows no possibility of falling from dignity. It is the very honor itself, the very respectability itself; you cannot do anything against it. I am not saying that partners cannot change, but that it does not matter: if partners change but love remains like a river, flowing, then in fact the world will have much more love than it has today.

Today it is just like a tap -- drip, drip, drip. It is not able to quench anybody's thirst. Love needs to be oceanic, not the drip, drip of a public tap. And all marriages are public.
Love is universal. Love does not invite only a few people to celebrate, love invites the stars and the suns and the flowers and the birds; the whole existence is welcome to celebrate.
Love does not need anything else -- a night full of stars, what more can you ask for? Just a few friends... and the whole universe is friendly. I have never come across a tree who was against me. I have been to many mountains, but I have never found any mountain antagonistic. The whole existence is very friendly.
Once your own understanding of love blossoms there is no question of attachment at all. You can go on changing your partners, that does not mean you are deserting anybody. You may come back again to the same partner, there is no question of any prejudice.... And later on Mirdad says:
MAN MADE PRISONER BY THE LOVE OF A WOMAN AND WOMAN MADE PRISONER BY THE LOVE OF A MAN ARE EQUALLY UNFIT FOR FREEDOM'S PRECIOUS CROWN.

The moment love becomes attachment, love becomes a relationship... the moment love becomes demanding, it is a prison. It has destroyed the freedom; you cannot fly in the sky, you are encaged.

excerpt from: Osho, Yaa Hoo! The Mystic Rose

[Red Stone]

Thank you PsilocybeLarvae!

This is so... sorry I can't find words!

[Helen]

Honestly, I don`t like Osho, except his short stories from "Taro of transformation" ( though he just collected them, not created by himself)

[W_z_rd]

He could have told it in fewer words . But what he says is true.

[Dorothy]

the moment love becomes demanding, it is a prison. It has destroyed the freedom; you cannot fly in the sky, you are encaged.

Well, lots of people enjoy this feeling of being encaged, otherwise they wouldn't marry. And by the way, what's so bad about marriage being public? All sorts of human relationships are to certain extent public, so what?

[Red Stone]

Originally Posted by Dorothy

Well, lots of people enjoy this feeling of being encaged, otherwise they wouldn't marry. And by the way, what's so bad about marriage being public? All sorts of human relationships are to certain extent public, so what?

My dear Dorothy!

I've never heard about Osho, in the first place. But whether or not you agree with what is written above, I've understood that the author didn't speak about marriage being public or not. He just said that the law (I would add any religion, which is a kind of law system) shouldn't be mixed with love as he sees it.

I've missed you here!

[Dorothy]

Originally Posted by Red Stone

My dear Dorothy!

I've never heard about Osho, in the first place. But whether or not you agree with what is written above, I've understood that the author didn't speak about marriage being public or not. He just said that the law (I would add any religion, which is a kind of law system) shouldn't be mixed with love as he sees it.

I've missed you here!

Dear Red Stone,
As far as I understood, the author meant to say that official marriage is nothing but a mere bureaucratic procedure, which has nothing to do with feelings. As a matter of fact, I believe people have mixed love with the law system in order to simplify their lives in future - it's easier to set up a household and bring up children when the relationships between two partners have been legalized, so it just helps to avoid possible problems (in terms of property or family name, for instance), in other words this is just a social product
The only thing I disagreed with was the statement regarding "being encaged" after getting married. Perhaps marriage (I mean a marriage of love) is no bed of roses, but it's not a cage either (at least I'd like to think so) . To me it's just a manifestation of mutual love, devotion and affection, which should only foster these feelings and not destroy them

I've missed you too, by the way!

[PsilocybeLarvae]

Red Stone, the link is for you
http://www.oshoworld.com/onlinebooks/index.asp

[PsilocybeLarvae]

The freedom from something is not true freedom.
The freedom to do anything you want to do is also not the freedom I am talking about.
My vision of freedom is to be yourself.
It is not a question of getting freedom from something. That freedom will not be freedom, because it is still given to you; there is a cause to it. The thing that you were feeling dependent on is still there in your freedom. You are obliged to it. Without it you would not have been free.
The freedom to do anything you want is not freedom either, because wanting, desiring to do something, arises out of the mind -- and mind is your bondage.
The true freedom certainly comes after choiceless awareness, but after choiceless awareness the freedom is neither dependent on things nor dependent on doing something. The freedom that follows choiceless awareness is the freedom just to be yourself. And you are yourself already, you are born with it; hence it is not dependent on anything else. Nobody can give it to you and nobody can take it from you. A sword can cut your head but it cannot cut your freedom, your being.
It is another way of saying that you are centered, rooted in your natural, existential self. It has nothing to do with outside.
Freedom from things is dependent on the outside. Freedom to do something is also dependent on the outside. Freedom to be ultimately pure has not to be dependent on anything outside you.
You are born as freedom.
...
Freedom from is ordinary, mundane. Man has always tried to be free from things. It is not creative. It is the negative aspect of freedom.
Freedom for is creativity. You have a certain vision that you would like to materialize and you want freedom for it.
Freedom from is always from the past, and freedom for is always for the future.
Freedom for is a spiritual dimension because you are moving into the unknown and perhaps, one day, into the unknowable. It will give you wings.
Freedom from, at the most, can take away your handcuffs. It is not necessarily beneficial -- and the whole of history is a proof of it. People have never thought of the second freedom that I am insisting on; they have only thought of the first -- because they don't have the insight to see the second. The first is visible: chains on their feet, handcuffs on their hands. They want to be free from them, but then what? What are you going to do with your hands? You may even repent that you asked for freedom from.
...
Basically you are totally free to choose, but once you choose, your very choice brings a limitation.
If you want to remain totally free, then don't choose. That's where the teaching of choiceless awareness comes in. Why the insistence of the great masters just to be aware and not to choose? Because the moment you choose, you have lost your total freedom, you are left with only a part. But if you remain choiceless, your freedom remains total.
So there is only one thing which is totally free and that is choiceless awareness. Everything else is limited.

from Osho, "Freedom The Courage to be Yourself"

[Red Stone]

Hi!

First of all, thanks for the link, PsilocybeLarvae!

Second, I didn't like the theory about freedom, neither the way it is written. It looks like the author wants to deliberately confuse the readers. For me freedom (in general) is a concrete feeling that can only be really understood by someone who experienced the lack of it. And I suspect that - in spite of the references to handcuffs - Osho knows nothing about not being free!

To the younger who didn't taste the lack of freedom, fight daily for your freedom! It's not a gift! It's something you must fight for!

Cheers!
------------------

Sorry I've failed stating something that is very important ( in my opinion, of course). Freedom, generally speaking, is the capacity that any individual has for not doing what he(she) doesn't want to do. The other way round would lead to a benediction of all sorts of crimes! And this "crimes" has no legal connection.

Cheers again!

[JennyWren]

I recently read two of his books "Courage" and "Intuition" .They both are interesting and contain some interesting stories too