What is platonic love?

Question: BELOVED MASTER, WHAT IS PLATONIC LOVE? Krishna Deva, love is simply love. It can't be Platonic or Hegelian or Kantian -- love is simply love! Platonic love is another name for homosexuality. Plato seems to be the first person who believed in homosexuality. Many must have practiced it before him, but he is the first proponent of it. The Greek idea of beauty was not that of feminine beauty -- but male beauty. You must have seen in the museums Greek painting, sculpture, and you must have observed: you never come across the paintings of a nude woman or statues of nude women. No, it is always man. Platonic love is just a good name for homosexuality. It is better to call it what it actually is rather than giving it a beautiful label. But love is neither homosexual nor heterosexual. Love is simply love!

Beloved Osho, in plato's 'the symposium' socrates says that, "a man who practises the mysteries of love will be in contact not with a reflection, but with truth itself. To know this blessing of human nature, one can find no better helper than love."

Milarepa, I have been commenting my whole life on love, in thousands of different ways. But the message is the same. Just one most fundamental thing has to be remembered, that is: it is not the love that you think is love. Neither Socrates is speaking about it, nor I am speaking about it. The love you know is nothing but a biological urge, it depends on your chemistry and your hormones. It can be changed very easily, by a small change in your chemistry -- and the love that you thought is the ultimate truth will simply disappear. You have been calling lust, love. This distinction should be remembered. Socrates says, "a man who practises the mysteries of love...." Lust has no mysteries, it is a plain biological game. Every animal, every bird, every tree knows about it. Certainly, the love which has mysteries is going to be totally…

Osho, what is the definition of God?

Words are very small. If you say God is light, then what of darkness? The scriptures have said that God is light. Suppose we accept this as a definition—then what about darkness? Where will darkness go? Darkness is too; in fact it is far more than light. Light sometimes is and sometimes is not; darkness is always, eternal. Where will you place darkness? If you say God is light, darkness is left out. If you say God is darkness, then light is left out. If you say God is both darkness and light, a contradiction arises: they cannot be together. Try to have both darkness and light in the same room. If you bring in light, darkness disappears; if you preserve darkness, you cannot have light. Then how can both be together? That becomes an impossibility. So you cannot say “both” either. Then the fourth device is to say: it…

What is love?

It depends. There are as many loves as there are people. Love is a hierarchy, from the lowest rung to the highest, from sex to superconsciousness. There are many many layers, many planes of love. It all depends on you. If you are existing on the lowest rung, you will have a totally different idea of love than the person who is existing on the highest rung. Adolf Hitler will have one idea of love, Gautam Buddha another; and they will be diametrically opposite, because they are at two extremes. At the lowest, love is a kind of politics, power politics. Wherever love is contaminated by the idea of domination, it is politics. Whether you call it politics or not is not the question, it is political. And millions of people never know anything about love except this politics -- the politics that exists between husbands and wives, boyfriends and…

Beloved Osho, there is the love between man and woman -- active, sensual and playful; and the love between master and disciple -- passive, cool and silent; and there is the possibility of simply being love every moment. Is love something that is always changing, coming and going, taking on different flavors and colors, or is love simply everything that is and every moment that is?

From your so-called love affairs, learn only one thing: that there must be something authentic and real and eternal which is reflected in the mirrors of your relationships. Unless you know that love, you will suffer much, and you will gain nothing. And it can be known because it is your intrinsic capacity; you are born with the seed. You just have to take a little care with it, and it will start growing. Soon you will be full of flowers -- the spring has come. And once it comes, it never goes. To the very last moment it remains there. A very beautiful story is told about Gautam Buddha. He informed his disciples that on a particular day, the coming full moon night, he was going to die. As the full moon disappeared, he would also disappear. It is a rare coincidence that Gautam Buddha was born on a…