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<...> I tell you that love is not focused on the outside: even if there is no one on the outside love can still happen within you. Love is intrinsic, friendliness is intrinsic. Hostility needs the other, it is related to the other. Hatred is triggered by the outside, love wells up inside. The spring of love flows from within, the reaction of hatred is provoked from without. Impure emotions are created on the outside, pure emotions flow from within.
Love is like the light of a lamp: if no one were here the light would still continue to fall on emptiness, and if someone were to pass it would fall on them. But passion and desire are not like light: when they are triggered by someone, these energies move towards them. That’s why passion is a tension. Love is not a tension. There is no tension in love, love is a state of absolute calmness.
<...> When a child is born his first experience is not an experience of love. What a child experiences when he is born is fear. This is natural. The small child was very comfortable in his mother’s womb where he had no problems, no worries about earning his living, eating – no worries. He was resting in a very blissful sleep. When he comes out of the mother’s womb the small child, weak in every way, his first experience is of fear. And if he gets a shock of fear he will not feel love towards the first person he sees, he will be afraid of that person. And if he is afraid of someone he will start to hate them.
Take this as a basic principle: fear never creates love. If someone says that there can be no love without fear, their statement is completely wrong. If there is fear, there is no possibility of love. There can never be love with fear. Even if love is shown superficially there is no love inside.
Most of the love that we see in this world is based on fear. And a love that is based on fear is false. That’s why on the surface there is love but hatred keeps slipping out from inside. You also hate the person you love. Love is on the surface and hatred is below because you are afraid of people. Remember this: a person who intimidates others is missing the opportunity to receive love. If the father is intimidating his son he will not be able to get his love. If a husband is intimidating his wife he will not be able to get her love. He will get a pretense of love but he won’t get love because love grows only in fearlessness, it doesn’t grow in fear.
As soon as a child is born he experiences fear – and that’s where the source of hatred is activated. The energy source of love is not activated. Most people die without this source ever becoming activated because life doesn’t give it a chance. You think you love someone: that is also not love, it is only lust. Even that is only lust, even that is not love. Love can grow only through meditation.
This is why the source of love and friendliness within you has to be developed. It has to be developed in spite of all the primitive instincts which don’t give it a chance to develop. The life that you lead doesn’t allow it to grow, only hatred is developed. And what you call friendliness is only hypocrisy and politeness. Your friendliness is only an arrangement to escape from hatred, to avoid it – but it is not friendliness.
Friendliness is a completely different thing. How can you develop that source? How can feelings of friendliness begin to happen within you? You have to constantly create a milieu of friendliness around yourself. A message of friendliness has to be conveyed to all the people who are around you. Waves of friendliness have to be sent. And inside yourself you have to give it energy, you have to activate that space of friendliness.
When you are sitting on the bank of a river, give love to the river. I am talking about the river because to give love to a person could be a little difficult. Give love to a tree – I am talking about a tree because it may be hard to give love to a person. First of all, send love to nature. The anahat chakra, the heart center can flow more easily towards nature because nature is not wounding you.
In the ancient days people were amazing: they would send messages of love to the whole world! When the sun rose in the morning they would greet it with folded hands saying, “Glory to you! In your infinite compassion you give us light and radiance.” And this worship was not pagan, it was not out of ignorance; it had meaning, it had great meaning. It would be impossible for someone who was filled with love for the sun, who just by calling the river his mother becomes filled with love, who calls the earth his mother and by remembering this is filled with love, to harbor a dislike for people for very long. It is not possible.
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| Photo from Ojas archive | |
These were amazing people who gave messages of love to all of nature. They cultivated prayer, love and devotion everywhere. This is needed. If you want the seed of love inside you to sprout, the very first thing is to send a message of love to nature. But you are such strange people: the moon will be in the sky the whole night and you will be sitting and playing cards, and you will be calculating how much you have won or lost. The moon will be up there and a beautiful opportunity for love will be lost for nothing. The moon could have awakened that center of love within you. If you could sit with the moon for a few enchanted moments and convey a message of love, its rays could move something inside you, some essence, and you would be filled with love.
There are opportunities everywhere; there are opportunities everywhere. Existence is full of amazing things – give love to them. Whenever you get any opportunity to love, don’t let it pass, use it. For example, you are walking along the road and there is a stone on the road – move it aside. This is an opportunity that comes completely free of charge, and it will transform your whole life. This work is very inexpensive! What could be a more inexpensive meditation than this? – you are walking on the road and you see a stone; you pick it up and put it on the side of the road. Who knows who might be passing by, and who knows who might be injured by the stone? You have carried out an act of love. I am telling you this because very small things in life cultivate the seed of love within you, very small, small things..
* excerpt from OSHO. The Path of Meditation.
Updated on 27-08-2015 |