LOVE -- NEVER AN IMPOSSIBILITY

And love is never an impossibility: it is very simple: it is present in everyone. It has to be developed and widened, Though its seeds have been sown in every one it is the fortunate alone who live to enjoy the flowers of love. Why? We never allow the seeds of love to germinate and grow. We seek love but we don't show it. Love grows when offered, not obtained, for remember that love is an unconditional offer. He who is capable of offering such a love does get it in plenty. Moreover, love offered freely creates the capacity to receive it too. It qualifies the receiver to receive it. The measure of love offered is commensurate with the amount of love received. Only in this manner is further depth achieved and gradually the very vital breaths are transformed into love, into nothing but love wholesome and furl. The beginning of the perfection of love must always be traced to the readiness to offer, not to the eagerness to demand. Peremptory demand will never enable them to make a beginning. Love's state is imperial, not that of a beggar. Those who demand it never get it, and this failure, so dispiriting to them, gradually renders them incapable of offering it too. As the failure increases, the difficulty to secure it increases as well. Please remember therefore that love implies offering without any desire to obtain, to get back in return, to demand. Let us free it from the expectation of obtaining something in return. There can never be a commercial transaction in the affairs of love. Its pleasure, its bliss, its fullness lie in giving away and not in securing anything in return. The giving up is so satisfying and blissful that even the question of gaining anything in return does not arise. That is why the person who gives love is ever obliged to the person who accepts it. Only in the act of giving love abundantly -- an entire, unbounded gift, do the vital breaths develop the wings that take them unto God. 

Friends, let us spread out the wings of love and soar up in the vast firmament of the Supreme Soul. With our wings of love full-fledged, our consciousness of things belonging to us and of those belonging to others -- our awareness of what is mine and what is yours -- disappears, and what is left is the consciousness -- nay, the very being of God. It is in the absence of love that man has of necessity to be on the hard ground of egotism full of thorny shrubs of hatred, violence and anger. Where is the necessity of being stuck in this rocky ground, once the wings of love are grown? Then the flight to the wonderful world of beauty -- limitless, inexhaustible and immaculate beauty -- becomes easy. So let us be filled with love -- towards all love unconditional, love selfless. Standing or sitting, sleeping or waking, let us be submerged in love, love which is the very breath of our existence, love with its waves ever surging in our hearts. You have now reached the precincts of the sacred temple of the most divine. Visiting ordinary temples is not obligatory. Those temples with idols of stone cannot claim perfection and reality. Would it be surprising if the hearts of those who frequent these stone temples become adamantine and hard? No doubt, discussions and discourses on Divine Love do take place in these temples, but what is disseminated from there is nothing but hatred. Hatred and violence disguise themselves in the gaudy clothes of false love. Verily I say that to no other temple should recognition be accorded than to the temple of love, the only temple of our Lord. I am afraid that these other temples have been designed and devised to prevent men from reaching the temple of love. Satan is definitely engaged in this! Love is itself a temple and a sacred scripture. "The man who has had a smattering of love's language," says Kabir, "is a scholar." Certainly nothing remains to be learnt if one has learnt all about love. Mastery of love implies mastery of all learning. He who hasn't learnt the art of loving is ignorant of everything. No knowledge, no sensation, no experience is superior to love. Love's eye scans what is written on leaves, carved on stones or, hidden waves. Friends, the Lord's autograph can be seen everywhere. Of what real use are the works of mortals? What can we gain from the words of ordinary mortals?

Where will they lead us? Indeed man's words cannot take us above and beyond man. To be able to go beyond man we have to leave him behind. In fact, man's words, scriptures and principles are obstacles in the pathway to God. We have to read, learn and comprehend what is God's to reach God. That can be read in love. We have to learn human languages to read what man has written, his shastras. Similarly, the Lord's language is to be learnt to read the Lord's Book. And his language is love. Learn the art of love which is so necessary if you wish to attain the Lord. The whole creation of the Lord is all around you. Behold it, for your eyes will not fail you, but in the absence of love it can neither be seen nor known. A mysterious miracle takes place when love's eye begins to scan. What was being seen vanishes and what had escaped our notice comes into view. Then nothing remains save the divine form.

I affirm that where the scholar loses, the lover wins; what learning misses, love lights upon. In the case of the scholar having a smattering of love's language, the matter is different. Entry into the depths of life is impossible without love. Mere knowledge loses itself in its peregrinations round the border, and it is incorrect to say that knowledge annihilates distance. Only through love can distance disappear. Knowledge does not go deeper than the physical body, but love does not stop before it reaches the soul. Hence all knowledge divorced from love is unreal and incomplete: Knowledge contained in love is the only real knowledge. What is the importance of love? How is it to be realized? Shall one incessantly repeat the word 'love' as some zealots repeat the names of Ram and Krishna. Will such loud repetitions of the word 'love' help us realize love. Never. Mere repetitions of names does not achieve anything. Love should be lived; it should be part and parcel of our very being. Life will be purposeful, meaningful, when there is liveliness of love in it. Let the energy of love be vigilant and vibrant and awake in the self. Let no occasion for ardent, sincere love find it slumbering there. Let no challenge offered to love be left unanswered. For every challenge, for every call, let your love give a befitting reply. Even when there is no challenge from any quarter, let love continue to flow as light flows from the lamp or as sweet fragrance flows from the flower. A calm unbroken current of love should always be present. When the heat is continuously kept moving by means of love-currents, all the obstacles on its way are kept at bay. We find the gentle hill-stream eroding off the hardest rock from its path by means of its constant flow. Can anyone deny the presence of huge stumbling blocks in the path of love? There are, no doubt, hard rocks, but the power of love is equally boundless. Let us make this boundless energy function effectively and be ever active. Utterly slow and silent are its activities, but in that quiet briskness, huge rocks are worn off into fine particles of sand. Much fuss and ado indicates weakness.

Powerful forces function silently. How quiet, silent and free from fuss is the creative activity of God!

Friends, let us give love an opportunity to transform you from the very root. Love's potion can instil a new life in you a life which will never perish. For that reason alone is love free from fear even in the presence of death, because love knows no death.

Osho_Wings of Love and Random Thought