According to Osho, love and death are two sides of the same coin: genuine love is a kind of death—the melting and burning away of the ego, boundaries, and separateness. Our fear of death becomes fear of love, so we create safe arrangements to avoid surrender. When we allow this inner dying, love flowers; birth, love, and death happen through the Divine, not personal control.
Real love asks you to let go of your small ‘me,’ which feels scary like dying, but that letting go is what makes love bloom.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
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…
What is the relationship between meditation and the unlearning process?
In the East just the totally different thing has happened. We cannot conceive of Buddha going mad. That would be the most impossible thing in the world: Buddha going mad. Nietzsche goes mad because Nietzsche is a thinker, Buddha CANNOT go mad because he is a NO-thinker; he drops thinking, how can he go mad? One day the whole crowd is gone and he is sitting alone, nobody to even disturb, so much alone that he is not even one, because who is there to say that you are one? If somebody is there to say that you are one, the other is still present. Meditation is unlearning. Peel your onion. It is difficult, because you have become identified with the onion, you think these layers are YOU so to peel them is difficult, it is painful also, because it is not like just throwing your clothes, rather it is…
One becomes unconscious of one's self: one becomes conscious of the supreme Self. One becomes unconscious as an ego: one becomes conscious as a universal consciousness. One loses boundaries, one starts melting; definitions disappear. One is simply there, unlimited, unbounded, infinite: neither limited by time nor limited by space. Love gives you the first glimpses of eternity, of deathlessness, of timelessness. And once love has stirred the heart, one lives a totally different quality of life. One lives without anguish, one lives without fear. One lives dangerously and one lives creatively. Love releases a thousand and one qualities. It makes you authentic, it makes you sincere, it makes you creative. It makes you a celebrant. It brings unknown songs to you. It introduces you to new planes of being, to new plenitudes.
Question: THE DARKNESS OF NIGHT IS COMING ALONG FAST, AND THE SHADOWS OF LOVE CLOSE IN THE BODY AND THE MIND. OPEN THE WINDOW TO THE WEST, AND DISAPPEAR INTO THE AIR INSIDE YOU. NEAR YOUR BREASTBONE THERE IS AN OPEN FLOWER. DRINK THE HONEY THAT IS ALL AROUND THAT FLOWER. WAVES ARE COMING IN: THERE IS SO MUCH MAGNIFICENCE NEAR THE OCEAN. LISTEN: SOUND OF IMMENSE SEASHELLS! SOUND OF BELLS KABIR SAYS, 'FRIEND, LISTEN, THIS IS WHAT I HAVE TO SAY: THE GUEST I LOVE IS INSIDE ME!' FRIEND, HOPE FOR THE GUEST WHILE YOU ARE ALIVE. JUMP INTO EXPERIENCE WHILE YOU ARE ALIVE. THINK AND THINK WHILE YOU ARE ALIVE. WHAT YOU CALL 'SALVATION' BELONGS TO THE TIME BEFORE DEATH. IF YOU DON'T BREAK YOUR ROPES WHILE YOU'RE ALIVE, DO YOU THINK GHOSTS WILL DO IT AFTER?
Why does it feel like you are dying when you are in love? Is falling in love a suicidal desire? Or just a self-destructive instinct like the lemmings' march to the sea or a moth's flight into a flame? It's weird.
LOVE is DEATH, but the one who dies in love has never existed really. It is the unreal self, the idea of an ego, that dies. So love is death, it is suicide, it is dangerous. That's why millions of people have decided against love. They live a loveless life. They have decided in favour of the ego -- but ego is false. And you can go on clinging to the false and the false will never become real. So the life of an egoist always remains in insecurity. How can you make something unreal real? It is always disappearing. You have to cling to it, you have to constantly create it again and again. It is a self-deception. And it creates misery. Misery is the function of the unreal. The real is blissful -- SATCHITANAND. The truth is blissful, and the truth is awareness. SAT means truth, CHIT means…