Is the yearning for the permanency of love a foolish desire?

Osho, there is deep in myself a yearning for the permanency of love. Is that stupid?

And not two months have passed, and yesterday I received Aneeta's letter that "We want to separate." Just two months! She has forgotten that she has given in writing that "We will never separate," that "We will always live together." It happens to everybody. This is an illusion, a mirage. And you want to make a mirage permanent? How can you make a mirage permanent? How can you make a dream permanent? The morning will come and you will have to wake up. and once you wake up you can close your eyes again and go on trying to find the dream, where it has gone. You want to continue it, but you cannot continue the dream again. It is lost forever. Once you are awake it is broken forever; you cannot find the thread again. It is un-mendable, remember. You cannot mend a broken love -- a broken mirror,…

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…

When I came here I was tense. People looked unfriendly, not open. Now all that has changed; everyone is beautiful. I have had similar experiences before, but they have always faded away. I hope it is now wisdom and will not fade, but if ear it may be knowledge and I will lose it.

You tell me, " When I came here I was tense. People looked unfriendly, not open. Now all that has changed...." Nothing has changed; only you have changed. The people are the same -- you can ask them. They were tense because you were tense. They were unfriendly because you were not friendly. Nothing has changed. People have not changed; they have not suddenly become friendly. You have changed. You have opened, you have relaxed. You are no longer asking that they should be friendly; rather, you have started to be friendly yourself. And suddenly you see they are friendly. Whatsoever you are you will always find. And whatsoever you find, remember, it is you. It is nobody else. This happens to everybody who comes here. In the beginning he comes with great expectations, as if the whole ashram will dance because he has come, and they will celebrate and…

Osho, religions call worldly pleasures unstable and fleeting and thereby try to create dispassion in us. But isn’t it precisely their fleetingness that is also the reason for their attraction?

Certainly, it is so; transience itself is the cause of attraction. And religions do not create dispassion by merely declaring life transient. Religion says: wherever there is transience, suffering will follow like a shadow. Transience is not the cause of dispassion; the suffering that comes in its wake is. Transience attracts, it beckons. The faster life runs away, the more the mind says—Enjoy, quickly! Now it’s here, now it’s gone. Who knows when the curtain will fall? So enjoy as much as you can; live with the utmost urgency. Let not even a single moment go idle—suck it dry. Exhaust the full possibility of each moment. Transience is attraction. Death is approaching; that is precisely why we cling to life. If death did not come, who would cling to life? If pleasures came and never left, who would worry? The cause of attraction is transience. The faster a thing dissolves,…

I have done very many groups, and had many pertinent growth experiences in which I have really felt that I had changed and gained tremendous new insight. But I still make the same mistakes, and despite everything I have done, still repeat the past as if I have no choice. What to do? Can change be permanent? Or is the work we do on ourselves simply illusion, signifying nothing? Can sannyas be permanent change?

Don't stand in the way of God, that's all. And then He is in the flower, and in the bird on the wing; then He is in the breeze passing through the trees. When you are not there to distort, you will find Him everywhere -- because He is everything. It is a miracle how we go on missing Him. But you are asking for something permanent. The ego can never be permanent; it is a momentary thing. And out of the ego, whatsoever you gain will be lost. You are asking: Cannot a wave be made permanent? The wave cannot be made permanent. The only way is to freeze it so it becomes ice. But then it is not a wave, it is just a piece of ice. Then it is no more a wave because it cannot wave. The aliveness is gone, the dynamism is gone. You fall…