Chapter #22 Even Bein Gawd Ain T A Bed Of Roses #22
Discourse Overview
Love is described as the most intoxicating phenomenon — not chemical or mental but the dance of the heart in tune with the whole. It is the heart harmonizing with the heart of the universe, an inner wine that paradoxically awakens you to greater consciousness. Love is a fire that burns the false self; entering it is like a deeper death that dissolves personality and gives a new birth. Many avoid this risk through rationalizations or substitutes — sex, money, power — because only courage can pass through love's transforming flame. On love: it is not illusion or mere poetry but the deepest reality, a communion that awakens consciousness rather than blinding it. On courage: love demands the bravery of facing annihilation of the old self so that genuine resurrection can occur. On substitutes: sex, greed, and power are mind-made stand-ins that keep one safe from the danger of true surrender and transformation. On intoxication: the bliss of love intoxicates without clouding; it sharpens awareness and allows one to be more alive than before.
More languages:
Checking…
Osho's Commentary
HER SIX-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER: PREM GARIMA, GLORY OF LOVE.
NENE BECOMES MA PREM KUNDAN
OSHO: It is by passing through the fire of love that one becomes one's real self. Cowards are afraid of love as much as they are of death. It needs courage to go into love because it is a kind of death, in fact a deeper death than the ordinary death. Ordinary death only changes your body, your form, but not your substance. Ordinary death only changes your shadow, your personality, but not your essence.
Love changes your very being, it gives a new birth. Hence the fear; hence many decide not to move into love. They can find many excuses. They can say "Love is blind": that is a rationalization of the cowardly mind. They can say "Love is animal": that is again a rationalization of the so-called religious mind. They can even deny the reality of love; they can say it is all poetry, just a fiction created by some imaginative people.
Either the coward finds some rationalization, some excuse, or he finds some substitute. For example, sex can become a substitute for love, and by just going into sex one can think, "I am a great lover". Or people can find even more subtle substitutes for example, somebody is greedy for money -- money has become his love object. And he is not aware that he has fallen in love with something absolutely false. Or power can become his love affair. But these are strategies of the mind to avoid.
Beware of all these strategies and take a jump into love. It is fire. It will burn you, it will destroy you but it wil also give you a new birth, a resurrection.