Why does love feel more illusory than hate?

Why does love feel more illusory than hate?

Yes it feels so. Love feels more illusory than hate because in love you have to drop the ego, and in hate the ego is strengthened. That's why people love less and hate more. Even the person they love -- they find something to hate in him. You hate ninety-nine per cent, and one per cent you love. And even that one per cent looks dreamlike because when the ego disappears in certain moments, you are not there. When the ego comes back the ego cannot remember exactly what happened, because it was not there; it looks like a dream, as if it never happened, you simply dreamed about it. Ego has no memory of love experience. If you are really in love, for that single moment an ecstasy happens; the ego is not there. Boundaries merge, mingle, meet, disappear into each other. After the experience when the ego is…

Osho, you say that love and hate are one; but I see more hate in the world than love. At the same time, you say that enlightenment is neither love nor hate. Are you speaking of two different qualities of love? How does this fit with your message of love?

And it is only you who can find what is right for you and what is wrong for you. Then keep the thread of awareness running through all your actions, and in your life you will not find any hate, any anger, any jealousy. Not that you have dropped them, not that you have repressed them, not that you have somehow got rid of them, not that you have practiced doing something against them. No, you have not done anything, you have not even touched them. This is the beauty of awareness: it never represses anything; but there are things which simply melt in the light of awareness and change. And there are things which become more solid, more integrated, more profound, more strong: love, compassion, kindness, friendliness, understanding. All the religions up to date have been focusing people's minds on actions; and labeling -- this is bad, this is…

In the same way ego and love also cannot exist together. Ego is like darkness. It is the absence of love, it is not the presence of love. Within us love is absent so within us the voice of 'I' goes on resounding. And with this voice of 'I' we say that 'I' want to love, 'I' want to give love; 'I' want to receive love. Have you gone mad! There has never been any relation between 'I' and love. And this 'I' goes on speaking for love -- 'I' want to pray, 'I' want to attain god, 'I' want to be liberated." This is the same thing as darkness saying, "I want to hug the sun. I want to love the sun. I want to be a guest in the house of the sun." It is inconceivable. 'I' is the absence of love itself.

Beloved master, you have always pointed out that most things and states are two extremes of one state, polar opposites. Then hate is the other end of love. Does this mean it is as easy to hate as it is to love? Love is so beautiful. Hate is so ugly, and yet it happens too.

Love sharpens intelligence, fear dulls it. Who wants you to be intelligent? Not those who are in power. How can they want you to be intelligent? -- because if you are intelligent, you will start seeing the whole strategy, their games. They want you to be stupid and mediocre. They certainly want you to be efficient as far as work is concerned, but not intelligent; hence humanity lives at the lowest, at the minimum of its potential. The scientific researchers say that the ordinary man uses only five percent of his potential intelligence in his whole life. The ordinary man, only five percent -- what about the extraordinary? What about an Albert Einstein, a Mozart, a Beethoven? The researchers say that even those who are very talented, they don't use more than ten percent. And those whom we call geniuses, they use only fifteen percent. Think of a world where…

It seems very difficult to love someone for twenty-four hours a day. Why does it happen so? Should love be a continuous process? And at which stage does love become devotion?

That is why those who are too much obsessed with thinking cannot love, because even when they are there, even if they reach to the original divine source, even if they meet God, they will go on thinking about him and they will miss him completely. You can go on thinking about and about and about, but it is never the fact. A moment of love is a timeless moment. Then there is no question of thinking how to love twenty-four hours. You never think about how to live twenty-four hours, how to be alive twenty-four hours. Either you are alive or you are not. So the basic thing to be understood is not time, but now - how to be here and now in a state of love. Why is there hate? When you feel hatred, go to the cause of it. Only then can love flower. When do…