What happens when love is not accepted by society?

Osho, what if love is not accepted? I’ve never heard anyone say, “Love God—and it isn’t accepted.” So this must be about some other kind of love. You must have loved a woman and it wasn’t accepted. You are blessed. The real difficulty begins when it is accepted. Then you would be saying, “Osho, what if love is accepted?” Then you are in real trouble.

And I am not saying that if you have a wife or husband you should run away. Just understand this: the time has come to lift your eyes upward. You lift your eyes—and let your wife lift hers too. You have both loved each other and tormented each other enough. Now lift your eyes upward. Now both of you love That. And you will be amazed: if both of you become prayerful, if both of you fall in love with God, then between you a stream of love will begin to flow that never flowed before. It is an ancillary flowering of being connected to the Divine. On the wealth whose strength fueled your siege of love, today the bloom of that wealth has grown old. With the garment by which you veiled your edifice’s sores, the hand of mishap turned the garment inside out. In the palaces where you…

Osho, you tell us to love. I too loved; I was defeated, and the wounds have still not healed. Society did not like that love, and my beloved was weak; she bowed before society. I cannot even forgive her. And yet you still tell us to love?

I do not tell you to do love—I tell you to be love. Doing is a small, petty thing. There, only defeat and wounds will come to your hand. And it is good that society put an obstacle in your way; otherwise, as in the story I just told you, by now you would be celebrating your silver jubilee. Society showed you great kindness. Thank society. Take it as grace. And you cannot forgive that woman! What kind of love is this that cannot forgive! What kind of love is this that is full of revenge! And these wounds are not precious wounds. They do not go very deep. They are on the surface—like scratched skin. They are no deeper than the skin. All these heal. Time heals them. Do not sit clutching them. Friend, do not be disheartened! Affairs have often kept forming and breaking. Why those starry tears…

But Osho, since we live in society, we must live in certain relationships. What measures do you suggest so that we can live in society yet remain whole—as you recommend—in love, in the state of love?

Certainly, if we are to live in society, we will have to live in relationships. But let relationships not be there to fill some psychological lack or some spiritual absence in us. Let us be whole within ourselves first, and then let there be relationships. If we are complete within ourselves and then we relate, those relationships will never determine any spiritual slavery for ourselves or for the other; they will be flowers blossoming in freedom. Two flowers bloom side by side; they too are related. Each receives the fragrance of the other, yet neither depends on the other, neither is bound, and neither makes demands. In the sky so many stars shine at night. All the stars pour out light. Their lights meet and relate, but no star is bound by another’s light. Each has its own light. Becoming related in this way does not diminish their individuality. In…

Question: Second question: Osho, is love life itself? Is it aliveness? The child shrinks. Next time, when he reaches for the sari, his hand trembles. He will think twice, ten times—should I hold it or not? First read the mother’s face. Who knows—there may be refusal. Because the wound of rejection hurts terribly. There is no pain greater than when your love is refused. He came with great love to sit in his father’s lap. But the father is wearing expensive clothes today—he is going to a wedding. This child will spoil the creases. The child knows nothing of creases, nothing that one doesn’t go to a wedding with creases spoiled. The father snaps, “Go play; don’t come near now.” The child cannot make sense of it. When to come close, when not? When will a petition of love be accepted, when rejected? Nothing is certain.

Osho, as I understand your teaching, you want every individual to be aware and to understand life in its totality. But today’s society is very complicated. Our environment is so complicated that it does not allow us to live a free life, to love people, or to live in the state in which we could live a very clean and smooth life.

Society is as it is; only by accepting this truth can anything be done. Society is like this—but if a person can see that apart from a simple, loving, joyous, clean life there is no life at all; if he sees that without becoming loving he will remain deprived of life’s joy; if he sees that without becoming simple there is no path to reach truth—then he will drop worrying about what society is like. For what can society give him—what is it giving? Once he sees that in another direction—which society does not offer and in fact obstructs—there lies the doorway to his life’s bliss, he will begin to move toward it. Certainly the social order will create obstacles. But for such a person they will not be obstacles; they will turn into challenges, and he will try to make steps out of them. The stones thrown onto his…