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Osho on Why am I afraid to love if love has so much glory?

Why am I afraid to love if love has so much glory?

You fear love not because it lacks glory, but because it demands the courage to surrender your ego and dissolve into the vastness of existence.

— Osho
According to Osho, you fear love precisely because of its vast glory; your conditioning prefers smallness, renunciation and indifference, and your ego clings to its cage. Love asks for total surrender - losing the head, dissolving like a drop in the ocean - and it tests you through separation and pain. The 'sensible' mind avoids this risky, ecstatic madness, so you retreat to familiar safety.

We’re scared of love because it means leaving our comfy cage, letting go of our “me,” and facing some ache before the joy.

In His Own Words

From the Discourses

Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.

Nam Sumir Man Bavre · Discourse 8
1978-08-08 · Pune · Hindi · English translation

Osho, if love has so much glory, then why am I afraid to love?

Exactly for that reason—because it has so much glory. And your conditionings keep you from rising to such glory. Love is vast, and your conditioning has made you petty, small, mean. Love is celebration and your conditioning has taught you renunciation. Love is bliss and your conditioning says, “Become indifferent.” Love is nectar—rasa—and your conditioning is anti-rasa. That is why you are afraid. And you are afraid also because on the path of love the ego must be sacrificed. You have to cut off your head and offer it. You have to lose yourself. As a drop falls into the ocean, so must you fall into the ocean of love. Then fear arises: love is so immense, such a great sky! And you have become accustomed to living in a cage. Have you seen? Even if you open the door of a caged bird, it does not fly out. I…
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The Wisdom Of The Sands Vol 1 · Discourse 6
1978-02-26 · Buddha Hall · English

What is love? Why am I so afraid of love? Why does love feel like an unbearable pain?

Meditate on these lines of Raymond John Born. What is required of us in our time is that we go down into uncertainty, where what is new is as old as every morning, and what is well-known is not known as well. That we go down into the most human where living men have vanished and the music of their meaning has been trapped and sealed. What is asked of us in our time is that we break open our blocked caves and find each other. Nothing less will heal the anguished spirit, nor release the heart to act in love. You ask, "WHAT IS LOVE?" It is the deep urge to be one with the whole, the deep urge to dissolve I and thou into one unity. Love is that because we are separated from our own source, out of that separation the desire arises to fall back into…
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I Am That · Discourse 14
1980-10-24 · Buddha Hall · English

Osho, I would like to fall in love, but I am afraid of beautiful women, and so afraid of love, and I don't know why. Why is it so hard for me to fall in love?

Parivartan, that thing you are certainly saying with some intelligence. And when you are thinking and planning a well planned life, then fall in love with an ugly woman. It will be difficult in the beginning, but then it is sweet all the way! And always think of the future -- that's how calculating people do. What it is? Just a bitter pill in the beginning, it's okay, but then it is very health-giving. Ugly women are medicinal, but beautiful women are sweet in the beginning and very bitter in the end. And this is not my advice to you; Gautam Buddha also says the same thing -- in a different context, of course. He cannot be so truthful as I am. He says: The world is sweet in the beginning but very bitter in the end, and the other world is very bitter in the beginning but very sweet…
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The Guest · Discourse 12
1979-05-07 · Buddha Hall · English

Osho, why am I afraid of women?

That lean, thin woman was going to decide. This is the situation. Man tries in his ways, somehow, to possess the woman; the woman tries to possess the man. The woman is afraid because man can be physically violent. The man is afraid because the woman is psychologically very very clever, very very powerful. You ask me, Prabhudas, "WHY AM I AFRAID OF WOMEN?" You are afraid of love; you are afraid of losing your ego. You are asking a wrong question. And remember always: the mind tries many times to give you a wrong question. A little twist, a little turn, and the question becomes wrong. Now you ask, "WHY AM I AFRAID OF WOMEN?" The question seems to be perfectly right; it is not. You should have asked: why am I afraid of love? and then it would have been right. It is a wrong question. But many…
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Come Follow To You Vol 4 · Discourse 6
1975-12-26 · Buddha Hall · English

How is it possible? -- I'm afraid when I feel your love deep inside me.

She thinks it is a sort of contradiction: if she loves so much, then why this fear? And I tell you, the fear is there because she loves so much. There is no contradiction in it. It is an absolutely consistent thing -- whenever you love you are afraid. Moving towards love is moving towards an abyss. One starts wavering, one feels dizzy. Go to a height in the Himalayas and look down at the valley; that valley is no-thing. When you look down at the valley of love, a TREMENDOUS fear grips you. You are almost paralyzed: you cannot run away, you cannot take the jump. You simply tremble in infinite fear. What to do? Going back is not possible because love attracts: love calls your depth, love calls your future, love calls your potentiality; love gives you a glimpse of what you can be. You cannot run away…
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