How to act in love?

Osho, you said: become a successful actor in the world. Then how is one to act in love?

In love it is the easiest. I understand your difficulty. You are thinking that if you act in love, then love will become false. You missed my point. You didn’t understand what I was saying. The matter is a little subtle—so missing it is understandable. It is not gross. You caught it in a very gross way. Now you ask: “How can there be acting in love?” Because if you act even in love, it will become false. Then what value would false love have? Look from the other side—look from my side. When I said: let life become pure acting, it applies most of all to love. Because in love there has never been a doer. That is why love is so close to the Divine, so close to prayer. Have you loved? Or did love happen?—reflect on this. Give it a little attention. Your bond of love with…

Osho, you say: live life as if it were acting. In that case, what more than acting would spiritual practice, religion, and the search for liberation be?

Someone laughs; you may also laugh. But you know there is nothing now truly to laugh at, and nothing now truly to weep about. The world goes on. For you it has become a dream, but that does not make it disappear. Trees will bloom, birds will sing, people will fall in love, deaths will occur, births will occur, bands will play, weddings will be celebrated, the shehnai will sound, someone will die and the chant “Ram naam satya hai” will be recited—this all will continue. For you it has ended. For you it ending means only this: you are no longer possessed by it. For you all has become acting. But everything continues. Where is there to run? What use is running? Because if you run, you again become the doer. That is why Krishna insists: do not run—otherwise running too is doership. And running also means that you…

There are lovers and no love. Parents pretend they love their children, children pretend they love their parents, husbands pretend, wives pretend -- pretensions and pretensions... And it is not that they are doing it knowingly, they may be completely unaware of the fact. But the root cause is... If everybody was told from the very beginning that love is the greatest art in life because it is the greatest magic, the most miraculous phenomenon.... You cannot take it for granted, you have to explore it, you have to go deeply into it, you have to learn its ways. It is an art. People learn painting for years; then too, only in thousands of painters does one become a Picasso. People learn music for years and then only once in a while is there a Yehudi Menuhin or Ravi Shankar.

Love is more like a fragrance Than like a flower or a seed. These three things have to be understood deeply: The seed, the flower. the fragrance. Sex is more like a seed -- very gross All is just potential. nothing is actual yet. And the flower, the ordinary love, Which is a little higher, Goes a little beyond sex. It has no sexual overtones any more. It can be just friendship It can exist between two friends. It can exist between husband and wife In fact unless it does there is no intimacy. Sex never makes you intimate. Animals are never intimate. Sexuality never brings you really together. It brings your bodies together but not you. You are far bigger than the body Far more than the body. When your psyche Starts coming into close intimacy That is the beginning of love, the ordinary love.

You even poison love the moment you begin to strain—demanding “it must be.” “You are my son; it is a son’s duty to love me.” But has anyone ever loved out of duty? And if one “tries” to love, that love is false. Better a true hatred than a false love. At least truth saves you; people go astray by falsity. A true enemy is better than a false friend. Augustine prays: “O Lord, I will manage my enemies—do you take care of my friends! I can deal with enemies; friends I cannot manage. You keep an eye on them.” The prayer is apt, for our friendships are also our contrivances. All our relationships are built on striving; wherever striving is, the mind operates. All relationships of the heart are non-doing. Love is an uncaused happening; it happens or it doesn’t. And if it happens, there is no why.