---
section: Library
booktitle: "The Hidden Splendor"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "SPLEND"
dategiven: "24 March 1987 am"
place: " in Chuang Tzu Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #23"
chaptertitle: "Love... not a relationship but a state of being"
acode: "8703240"
shorttitle: "SPLEND23"
audio: "Yes"
video: "Yes"
esttime: "109mins"
displaytitle: "The Hidden Splendor: Chapter #23"
---

```style
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  font-style: italic;
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}
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<p class="question">BELOVED OSHO,
I HEARD YOU SAY THE OTHER DAY THAT YOU WANT NO PART OF ANY RELATIONSHIP WE MIGHT IMAGINE WE HAVE WITH YOU -- CERTAINLY NOT OUR HATE, BUT NOT EVEN OUR LOVE. AND I CAN'T SAY I BLAME YOU. NEVERTHELESS, WHEN YOU STAND BEFORE US, DANCING, I FEEL LIKE A FOUNTAIN THAT LEAPS INTO LIFE AT THE SIGHT OF YOU, AND TUMBLES TO YOUR FEET AS IF IT KNOWS THAT IS WHERE IT BELONGS. I KNOW MY LOVE IS RIDDLED WITH ALL SORTS OF UNDESIRABLE THINGS; BUT IT RUSHES TOWARDS YOU WITHOUT EVEN STOPPING TO ASK MY PERMISSION. OSHO, PLEASE EXCUSE THE MESS, BUT I CAN'T HELP IT.</p>


Maneesha, the word "love" can have two absolutely different meanings -- not only different, but diametrically opposite. One meaning is love as relationship; the other meaning is love as a state of being.


When I said I don't want any relationship -- at least from my side, because I cannot interfere with you, so I cannot say anything from your side; that you have to understand yourself -- I was denying love as relationship.


The moment love becomes a relationship, it becomes a bondage, because there are expectations and there are demands and there are frustrations, and an effort from both sides to dominate. It becomes a struggle for power.


Relationship is not the right thing, at least for my people. But love as a state of being is a totally different word. It means you are simply loving; you are not creating a relationship out of it. Your love is just like the fragrance of a flower. It does not create a relationship; it does not ask you to be a certain way, to behave in a certain way, to act in a certain way. It demands nothing. It simply shares. And in sharing also there is no desire for any reward. The sharing itself is the reward.


When love becomes like a fragrance to you, then it has tremendous beauty. And something that is far above the so-called humanity -- it has something of the divine.


You are saying, "I cannot help...." Neither can I. When love is a state, you cannot do anything about it. It will radiate, but it will not create any imprisonments for anybody, nor will it allow you to be imprisoned by anybody else.


Your question is significant. I will go into it point by point. You say, "I heard you say...." This is to be remembered: whenever you state anything that I have said, never say, "You said it." Say it exactly the way Maneesha is doing. She has learned in many years' time that it is not necessarily the same, what I say and what you hear.


You hear according to your own prejudices, according to your own mind. You interpret and then you project that meaning, as if I have said it. The right way is, "I heard you say...." All the Buddhist scriptures start with the same sentence: "I have heard Gautam Buddha say...."


I asked one very respected Buddhist monk -- world famous because of his writings about Gautam Buddha -- why every scripture begins with, "I have heard Gautam Buddha say...."


He said, "You bring strange questions. I have been translating these scriptures my whole life but I never thought about it. Do you think it has any meaning?"


I said, "It has not only meaning, it has tremendous meaning. Whoever was writing it was absolutely aware that, at the most, he could say, 'I have heard... perhaps Buddha was saying something else. Perhaps he was saying what I have heard, but I cannot impose my meaning, my projection on him. I can be wrong.'"


And this is true, because as Gautam Buddha died.... He never wrote anything, and he never allowed in his life that anything he said be written, for a simple reason: If you are listening, there is no need to make any notes. And if you are making notes, you are not listening; your whole mind is concerned with writing the notes. You are behaving like the modern tourist, who is a cartoon character, rushing from one place to another place with a camera hanging on one shoulder, a telescope hanging on another shoulder, many kinds of lenses in a bag. Even standing before the Taj Mahal, he is not seeing it. He is photographing it. Back home when the album is ready, he will look at it with great joy from the golden memories of his tour. But he has never really seen -- his being was diverted by the camera.


When I was a teacher in the university, I never allowed any student to take notes -- because the moment you start taking notes, you stop hearing. You know that later on you can read your notes, so there is no need to be in the present. That psychological truth is the reason why Buddha did not allow anybody to write down what he was saying. He said, "When I am dead you can write anything you want."


And the first thing that his disciples did was collect forty-two years' discourses, morning and evening, personal interviews given to emperors, to kings and to disciples. And you will be surprised to know that there were thirty-six schools immediately, saying that he has said this, not this. Their only difference was.... They were all devoted to Gautam Buddha, but they were saying that he has said this -- and there were thirty-six versions.


So there are thirty-six versions of Buddhist scriptures. They are not reporting Buddha, they are reporting what they have heard -- according to their consciousness, according to their intelligence, according to their presence.


So it is not just in beginning the question; it has to be a deep understanding in you: always remember to make it clear that you are reporting what you have heard. It is not necessarily synonymous with what I have said.


Maneesha is saying, "I heard You say" -- and I appreciate her understanding in using the words "I heard -- the other day that you want no part of any relationship we might imagine we have with you."


You have heard rightly, Maneesha. I don't want any part of any relationship, imagined or not imagined. It may be very real to you -- it may not be your imagination, it may be factual. You are accustomed to creating relationships, from your very childhood. A strange man, and you have to create a relationship with him as your father. You cannot ever be certain that he is your father....


I have heard about one palmist who used to read people's hands. An atheist, a young man who does not believe in God and does not believe in any kind of bullshit -- palmistry, astrology -- went to the palmist and said, "If your science is true, just read my hand and tell me where my father is right now."


The palmist looked at his hand and said, "Your father has gone fishing." The atheist laughed. He said, "That's what I say: it is all nonsense. My father has been dead for three years; how can he go fishing today?"


The palmist said, "That is not my business, but the truth is, the man who died was not your father. Your real father is fishing. You go to your mother and ask. If she is sincere and honest, she will tell you that the man who died was not your father -- although you had created a relationship because you were told that he is your father."


Your whole life is surrounded by many kinds of relationships. I don't want any kind of relationship. Relationship as such, real or imaginary, is a very subtle kind of psychological slavery. Either you enslave the other, or you become a slave yourself.


Another point to be noted is that you cannot enslave somebody without becoming a slave yourself. Slavery is a double-edged sword. One may be stronger, one may be weaker, but in every relationship you become the jailer and the other becomes the prisoner. From his side, he is the jailer and you are the prisoner. And this is one of the fundamental causes of humanity living in such sadness, in such a sorrowful state.


You have heard me rightly: I don't want any part of any relationship, "... certainly not our hate, but not even our love." From my side, I will not allow any relationship; I will not nourish any relationship. But you are free to suffer -- that is your birthright.


How can I prevent you, if you start having a relationship of hate with me? And hate is much stronger a relationship than your love, because your love is very superficial. Your hate is very deep. Your hate is your whole animal heritage. Your love is only a potential for the future; it is not an actuality, but only a seed.


But your hate is full-fledged, fully grown -- thousands of years of your past moving through different life forms. It has had time and space to grow. It is only in man that the change starts happening.


I cannot prevent anybody from hating me, so how can I prevent anybody from loving me? All that I can do is to explain that the moment hate or love or anything becomes a relationship, it loses its purity.


Let your love be your state of being. Not that you fall in love, but just that you are loving. It is simply your nature. Love, to you, is just the fragrance of your being. Even if you are alone you are surrounded by loving energy. Even if you touch a dead thing, like the chair, your hand is showering love -- it does not matter to whom.


The loving state is unaddressed. And I am not preventing you from being in the state of love, but you can be in the state of love only if you drop the old mind pattern of relationships. Love is not a relationship.


Two persons can be very loving together. The more loving they are, the less is the possibility of any relationship. The more loving they are, the more freedom exists between them. The more loving they are, the less is the possibility of any demand, any domination, any expectation. And naturally, there is no question of any frustration.


You say, "And I can't say I blame You." You understand it rightly. I have allowed people to have their real or imaginary love relationship with me -- for the simple reason that unless they are with me, there is no possibility of transforming their relationship into a state of being -- knowing perfectly well that their relationship is not reliable. No relationship is reliable, and particularly with a man with whom the relationship is one-sided. It is like a bridge which is supported only by one bank of the river, and the other bank does not support it. It is hanging in the air; it is going to fall.


And I have burned my fingers thousands of times, because the people who thought they loved me... I have seen them change to hating me, for some trivial reason.
Love is beyond reason.


Relationship is part of the business world. Just a slight change in the situation, and it evaporates. It has no solidity.


I have showered my love without any conditions, and yet there have been many people who have taken advantage of it, in many ways. And because of their loving imagination, they were expecting something from me. Man is so blind, he cannot see it. When I don't expect anything from you, at least remember that you cannot expect anything from me either.


And when their expectations are not fulfilled -- and they are not going to be fulfilled -- then immediately love turns into hate. And it has left wounds in my heart, because I have simply given love, never expected anything from them, and they have turned into enemies because of their expectations -- in which I have no part. I have never promised them anything. Expectations are there, frustrations are there -- but first they were projecting expectations; now they are projecting frustrations. Neither could they see last time, nor are they able to see this time, that they are surrounded with their own unconscious ideas. And they are suffering.


And, just as when they were imagining love, they were appreciating me, not knowing me at all, now they are condemning me. And to condemn me they are creating lies -- and perhaps in absolute unawareness. Just as they believed their imagination before, the same game continues; still they go on believing in their lies. I have been asked to refute them. That is not possible. I have loved them; they have been my disciples. It is below me to criticize their lies or to expose their lies.


That's why I want you to remember: don't have any expectations. Love because love is your own inner growth. Being loving, you are calling your spring closer. Your love will help you to grow towards more light, towards more truth, towards more freedom. But don't create a relationship.


"Nevertheless, when you stand before us, dancing, I feel like a fountain that leaps into life at the sight of you, and tumbles to your feet as if it knows that is where it belongs."


I have not been prohibiting you. If love comes as a spontaneity, suddenly, like a fountain, asking nothing in return, then it is one of the greatest treasures.


"I know my love is riddled with all sorts of undesirable things, but it rushes towards you without even stopping to ask my permission."


Love is a fire. The more pure it is... all the riddles, all the problems will be burned. It is love as relationship which will go on creating more problems, "riddled with all sorts of undesirable things." But a spontaneous love is a totally different thing. We don't have another word, that is the difficulty.


"Osho, please excuse the mess. But I just can't help it."


There is no need to be worried about the mess. Just remember one thing: love is capable of destroying everything else, just don't let it become a relationship -- then love will disappear, and in the name of love, domination, politics will take place. Then problems will go on increasing.


I am against all kinds of relationships. For example, I don't like the word "friendship," but I love the word "friendliness." Friendliness is a quality in you, friendship again becomes a relationship.


Maneesha, there is nothing wrong with love. In fact, without love everything is wrong. But love is so valuable that it should be protected from any kind of pollution, contamination, any kind of poisoning. Relationship poisons it. I want the world to consist of individuals. Even to use the word "couple" hurts me. You have destroyed two individuals, and a couple is not a thing of beauty.


Let the world be only of individuals, and whenever love spontaneously blossoms, sing it, dance it, live it; don't create chains out of it. Neither try to hold somebody in bondage, nor allow anybody to hold you in bondage.


A world consisting only of free individuals will be a truly free world.


It is one of the greatest needs of man to be needed. Hence I cannot conceive of any time when love will not be in existence. As long as there are human beings, love will remain their most cherished experience. And it is something that is available on the earth, but does not belong to the earth. It gives you wings to fly like an eagle across the sun.
Without love you are without wings.


But because it is such a nourishment and such a need, all the problems have arisen around it. You want your lover or your beloved to be available to you tomorrow too. It has been beautiful today, and you are worried about tomorrow. Hence marriage came into existence. It is just the fear that perhaps tomorrow your lover or your beloved may leave you -- so make it a contract before society and before the law. But it is ugly -- it is absolutely ugly, disgusting. To make love a contract means you are putting law above love; it means you are putting the collective mass above your individuality and you are taking the support of the courts, of the armies, of the police, of the judges, to make your bondage absolutely certain and safe.


Tomorrow morning... one never knows. Love comes like a breeze -- it may come again, it may not come. And when it does not come, then just because of law, because of marriage, because of social respectability, almost all the couples in the world are reduced to prostitution.


Living with a woman that you don't love, living with a man that you don't love, living for safety, living for security, living for financial support, living for any reason except love, makes it nothing but prostitution.


I would like prostitution to disappear completely from the world. All the religions have been wanting that -- that there should be no prostitution. But this is how human stupidity is: these same religions that want there to be no prostitution are the causes of prostitution, because on the one hand they support marriage, and on the other hand they are against prostitution.


Marriage itself is a prostitution. If I trust my love, why should I get married? The very idea of getting married is a distrust. And something that is coming out of distrust is not going to help your love grow deeper and higher. It is going to destroy it.


Maneesha, I am not preventing you from being loving. In fact, that's my whole religion: to love, but not to destroy love by something fake -- marriage or any other kind of relationship.


Love is authentic only when it gives freedom. Let this be the criterion.


Love is true only when it does not interfere in the privacy of the other person. It respects his individuality, his privacy. But the lovers that you see around the world, their whole effort is that nothing should be private; all secrets should be told to them. They are afraid of individuality; they destroy each other's individuality, and they hope that by destroying each other, their lives will become a contentment, a fulfillment. They simply become more and more miserable.


Be loving, and remember: anything real is always changing. You have been given wrong notions that a true love remains forever. A true roseflower does not remain forever. A living being himself has to die one day.


Existence is a constant change. But the notion, the idea that love should be permanent if it is true... and if love disappears one day, then the natural corollary is that it was not true.


I want you to know; love came suddenly; it was not because of any effort on your part. It came as a gift of nature. At that time you would not have accepted it if you had been worried about its going suddenly one day. The way it comes, it goes.


But there is no need to be worried, because if one flower has faded, other flowers will be coming. Flowers are going to come forever, but don't cling to one flower. Otherwise soon you will be clinging to a dead flower, and that's what the reality is: people are clinging to a dead love that once was alive. Now it is only a memory and a pain and you are stuck because of respectability, because of law.


Karl Marx had the idea, the right idea, that in communism there would be no marriages. And when revolution happened in Russia, in the first four, five years, they tried to make love a freedom. But then they became aware of practical difficulties of which Marx was not aware -- he was only thinking -- and the greatest difficulty was that if there is no marriage, family disappears, and family is the backbone, the very spine of the society, of the nation. If the family disappears, then the nation cannot last long.


And after just five years of revolution the Communist party of Russia changed the whole idea. Marriage was again supported; divorce was allowed, but very reluctantly -- every obstacle was created for divorce, so that the family unit remains, because now they were interested in having the nation. Without the nation there would be no politicians, there would be no government.


And since then they have never talked about it -- that one of Marx's fundamental ideas was that marriage came into existence because of private property, so when private property disappears, marriage has to disappear. Nobody talks about it. I have been talking to communists, but they have fallen into the same trap as all religions. Karl Marx' DAS KAPITAL has become their HOLY BIBLE, holy KORAN;: you cannot change anything in it.


I said, "That's true, I am not saying to change anything in it -- but follow it!" They are not following it either. They have started worshiping it. That is the whole strategy of man to avoid any authentic revolution in the world: worship.


I don't want the family to exist, I don't want the nations to exist -- I don't want the world to be divided into parts. I want one world consisting of free individuals living in spontaneous love, living in silence, playfulness, without any condemnation of pleasure, without any fear of hell and without any desire for reward in heaven -- because we can create the paradise here. We have every potential to create it, but we are not using it. On the contrary, we are creating every hindrance: the earth should not become a paradise.


I am not against love. I am so much in favor of love; that's why I am against relationships, against marriages. It is possible that two persons may live their whole lives together. Nobody is saying that you have to separate, but this living together will be only out of love, without interfering and trespassing into each other's individuality, into each other's private soul. That is his dignity.


You can be loving, you can be love, so don't feel worried about it. But if you are simply loving, if you are simply love, then there is no possibility of you turning into hate. Because there is no expectation, you cannot be frustrated.


But I am talking about love as a spiritual phenomenon, not as biology. Biology is not love, it is lust. Biology is interested in continuing all the species; the idea of love is just a biological bribe. The moment you have made love to a woman or to a man, suddenly you find you are no longer interested, at least for twenty-four hours. And it depends on your age -- as you become older, forty-eight hours, seventy-two hours....


There is a new commander of a base of the French Foreign Legion, and the captain is showing him around all the buildings. After he has made the rounds, the commander looks at the captain and says, "Wait a minute. You haven't shown me that small blue building over there. What's that used for?"


The captain says, "Well, sir, you see, that is where we keep the camel. Whenever the men feel the need for a woman...."
"Enough!" says the commander in disgust.


Well, two weeks later, the commander himself starts to feel in need of a woman. He goes to the captain and says, "Tell me something, captain." Lowering his voice and glancing furtively around, he asks, "Is the camel free anytime soon?"


The captain says, "Well, let me see." He opens up his book. "Why, yes, sir, the camel is free tomorrow afternoon at two o'clock."
The commander says, "Put me down."


So the next day at two o'clock the commander goes to the little blue building and opens the door. Inside he finds the cutest camel he has ever seen. He closes the door.


The captain hears a great roaring and screaming, so he runs up and bursts into the hut. He finds the commander naked, covered in camel hair and mud.


"Ahem, begging your pardon, sir," says the captain, "but wouldn't it be wiser to do as all the other men do -- ride the camel into town and find a woman?"
<p class="question">BELOVED OSHO,
DOES JOY ARISE OUT OF THE HEART OR OUT OF THE BEING? IF IT COMES OUT OF THE HEART, DOES IT DROP AWAY WHEN ONE REACHES THE BEING? IF SO, HOW COME YOU ARE RADIATING SO MUCH JOY? OSHO, I AM SO ATTACHED TO JOY AND GRACE. DO I EVEN NEED TO DROP THEM?</p>


Satyam Prema, it is a beautiful question. "Does joy arise out of the heart or out of the being?" Joy arises out of the being, but passes through the heart.


The heart is the first to receive the joy of the being. And the heart is the vehicle to express the joy to the outside world; hence the misunderstanding can be there, that perhaps joy arises out of the heart. It only comes through the heart; it arises out of being. But being is deeper inside. Heart is only an instrument, a medium, a vehicle.


So you need not be worried, as your question shows. "If it comes out of the heart, does it drop away when one reaches the being?" The expression of joy from the heart becomes fuller as one reaches the being, it does not drop. In reaching the being, the passage of the heart becomes cleaner, wider, more expressive. You need not be afraid that you will have to drop joy also.


We are in search of joy, and the greatest joy is when you have reached the being. Then the heart will be expressing it at the maximum; right now once in a while a ray of joy passes the heart.


"If so, how come You are radiating so much with joy?" I am not radiating with joy. Once you are centered in your being, you are joy, you are love, you are blissfulness, you are ecstasy. These are no longer happening to you; these are your natural qualities.


"Osho, I am so attached to joy and grace: Do I even need to drop them?" If you are attached, you will not get them in the first place; dropping is out of the question. You have to drop attachment. The moment you drop attachment, you will have joy and you will have grace.


But such questions go on in everybody's mind. They are simple, but our understanding is not deep enough to see that which is very clear. I am talking against attachment; it is attachment that is destroying your capacity to express joy and grace. But rather than dropping attachment, you are becoming attached to joy and grace.


How can you be attached to something that you don't have? You don't have joy, you don't have grace -- just ideas, empty containers with no content. Because once you know joy, you know there is no need to be attached; it is impossible to be without joy. Once you know grace, there is no question of attachment or dropping the attachment; grace becomes your natural expression in every gesture -- from your eyes, from your face, from your hands. Whatever you do, there will be grace and there will be joy.


Your attachment to joy and grace makes me wonder: perhaps you have seen people like me who are joyous... even if I try to remember, I cannot remember what misery used to be. The very language is almost forgotten. Seeing joyous people you want to imitate them. You want to grab joy and cling to it. But remember, all great values are killed the moment you cling to them. And no great value can be imitated.


You see beautiful people, joyous people, loving people, silent and serene people, and a greed arises in you: "These are the qualities I must have." That is the fear that has come into your question. You don't have them, so the question of dropping them does not arise. First have them and then try to drop them! Nobody has ever succeeded. You will be a unique person if you find enlightenment and can drop it.


A French couple, an Irish couple, and a Polish couple are having dinner together. The Frenchman says to his wife, "Pass me the sugar, Sugar."


Not to be outdone, the Irishman says, "Could you pass me the honey, Honey?"


Most impressed by these clever endearments, the Pole leans over to his wife and says, "Pass me the pork, Pig."


Avoid copying; otherwise you will do something stupid. But everybody is imitating everybody else in the world.


It is very strange to see why people imitate. Can't they find their own individuality? And can't they enjoy being themselves?


Any kind of stupid fashion and people will imitate, thinking that "perhaps if all these intelligent people are doing it and I am not doing it, I will be thought unintelligent." But imitation is unintelligent.


It is perfectly good to be in search of your being, which is the source of joy and bliss and truth and love and all that is valuable in existence. Of course it needs the heart for a few values to be expressed, and mind for other values to be expressed. Your being is utterly intelligent, but intelligence can be expressed only through the mind. And your being is immensely loving, but love can be expressed only through the heart.


Right now you have forgotten about the being and you are only carrying instruments with nothing to express. It is just like carrying a guitar, and you don't know why you are carrying this thing and what it is all about.


An ancient story is.... In India there are very refined instruments of music; nowhere else in the world has such refinement happened. Just one single man -- who lives in the Himalayas and comes once in a while to the plains -- plays a special veena which used to exist in the past. And many musicians used to play it, but now only one person knows how to play it. It is called rudra veena. Rudra is another name of Shiva; Shiva used to play it. To play it needs such a long discipline, four or five hours' practice every day for years; then only can you bring those subtle notes out of it.


The ancient story is that in one house there was a strange musical instrument which had been there for generations. Nobody knew what to do with it, and it was a nuisance. It had to be cleaned, dust would gather on it, and it was taking up space in the room. And sometimes in the middle of the night a rat would jump on it and create noise.


Finally they decided, "It is useless for us; it is better to get rid of it." So they went out and threw it on the garbage pile by the side of the road.


They had not even reached back home and they heard such sweet music... they had never even imagined. So they turned back -- a beggar was playing the instrument, and a crowd had gathered.


The beggar knew, he was a musician, but a musician of such old and ancient instruments that even to find people who could understand it was difficult, so there was no possibility for him to earn anything. He had become a beggar so that he could continue discovering old, ancient instruments about which we have completely forgotten. And as he saw this instrument he could not believe it, because he had been in search of this instrument for years.


There was utter silence in the crowd -- everybody who was passing on the road stopped. The people of the house came back, and when he stopped playing they said, "That instrument belongs to us."


The beggar said, "Remember one thing: a musical instrument belongs to one who knows how to play it, there is no other kind of ownership. You have thrown it in the garbage. You have insulted an immensely valuable thing.


"And what will you do with it? Again it will gather dust and you will have to clean it. Again rats will make noise in the night and disturb your sleep. This instrument can be played only if one knows how to play a few other instruments. They are the steps, and this is the end, and I have been searching for it. All other instruments I have found, but this, the final instrument, was missing. You cannot claim ownership of it.


"If you can play it here, before the crowd, it is yours. Otherwise, it belongs to me."


Music is not property; it is art, it is love. It is devotion, it is prayer. You cannot possess it.
The same is my feeling about your being.


You have it, but you don't possess it because you don't know how to play the instrument of your being. All that you know is the mind, which is only a vehicle; the heart, which is only a vehicle. But they are empty. Your thinking leads nowhere. Your heart remains at the point of lust, and never gets to know love.


Search for your being and everything else will follow it on its own accord. You don't have to drop anything -- you cannot drop anything. They are your innermost qualities; they will radiate on their own. Your heart will be full of love; your mind will be full of intelligence.

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.
			

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> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
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