Does love ever perish?

And about love—you have asked—does it ever perish or not?

At the level of the body it is unstable, because the body itself is impermanent. At the level of the mind it perishes, because the mind is momentary. But at the level of the soul it is eternal, because the soul is eternal. Love will be of the plane on which it happens: on the body’s plane, lust; on the mind’s plane, love; and on the soul’s plane, prayer. Prayer is eternal. The love you understand right now does not last. Is there anyone? No one at all. No wind, no color, no blossom, no fragrance. A feeling—only a feeling. As if even the sunlight has forgotten the way to my house. A teeming multitude, this hollow crowd; every moment frozen, every hour still; no morning, no evening, no day, no night— a feeling, only a feeling is pricking in my flesh: the strangeness in every gaze. Let someone give…

But Osho, the longing for your love does not diminish!

Whatever happens, love is not destroyed. Death has been defeated only before love. No one meets death in the world of love! The lover simply does not die. The lover has never died. The lover can never die. Why? Because in love, egolessness flowers by itself. And where there is no ego, there is no death. Only the ego dies. You never die. You are eternal, you are nectar. Amritasya putraḥ! O children of immortality! You have no death. But the ego you have constructed—the I-sense you have built—that will die. It is imagined. You have propped it up by force. It is false. It is like the fake man we stand in a field: a pot hoisted on a pole, a Gandhi cap set on top, an achkan draped, a sherwani thrown over, a mask fixed—and there stands the field’s sham man. At most, it will scare off a…

As a sannyasin you have to work hard to make that glimpse a reality to yourself, always available. And it is possible because love is our intrinsic nature. It is not something accidental, it is our very source. So if we work a little, if we dig inside our being we will find the eternal source. And once love is flowing in you for twenty-four hours a day, irrespective of situations, circumstances, you live in the world but you are no more part of it; you have become part of god, you have become part of eternity. All fear disappears. Then you know that birth and death don't make any difference. Only the body is born and the body dies, not you; you are never born and you never die.

OSHO: Love is the most intoxicating phenomenon. It is the wine that wells up within. It is not something chemical that comes from the outside, it is not even part of the body, not part of the mind either. It is the dance of the heart in tune with the whole. Love is your heart in deep harmony with the heart of the universe. Then there is great intoxication. And yet the intoxication does not make you unconscious; on the contrary it makes you more conscious than ever. That's the paradox of love: on one hand one is intoxicated, on the other hand one has never been so aware before. It is an intoxication that makes you wake up. 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.

Osho, whenever someone tells you that such-and-such is happening in meditation and you say, “Good, that is auspicious,” the ego grows even more. And at all other times the ego keeps raising its head. Even while writing this question the ego thought a lot about it, and still...?

And I tell you: only the shadow remains with you; you have lost the soul. Imagine what your plight must be! Losing a shadow caused such trouble; you have lost the soul and kept only the shadow. But perhaps you don’t notice much trouble because those among whom you live have also lost their souls. The truth is, if you gain your soul, the trouble begins—those without souls become your enemies. Otherwise, why would people stone Mahavira, insult Buddha, crucify Mansoor, poison Socrates, kill Jesus? The crowd is without soul. Whenever a soul-full person stands among them, they become very uneasy. What foolishness! They should learn from the soulful how to become soulful. But seeing a soulful person, they get anxious. They say, “His presence proves we failed to become what we should have become. We lost.” Anxiety arises: “Our life is wasted. Remove this man; his presence is a…