Rajneesh Foundation - Being in love: how to love with awareness and relate without fear

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS LOVE?

It is unfortunate that we have to ask this question. In the natural course of things everybody would know what love is. But in fact nobody knows, or only very rarely does somebody know, what love is. Love has become one of the rarest experiences. Yes, it is talked about. Films and stories are written about it, songs are composed about it, on the television shows you will see it, on the radio, in magazinesa great industry exists to supply you with ideas of what love is. Many people are involved in the industry of helping people understand what love is. But still love remains an unknown phenomenon. And it should be one of the most known.

It is almost like somebody asking, What is food? Would you not be surprised if somebody came and asked you that question? Only if somebody has been starved from the very beginning and has never tasted food would the question be relevant. It is the same with the question What is love?

Love is the food of the soul, but you have been starved. Your soul has not received love at all, so you dont know the taste. So the question is relevant, but it is unfortunate. The body has received food so the body continues; but the soul has not received food so the soul is dead, or is not born yet, or is always on its deathbed.

When we are born we are born fully equipped with the capacity to love and to be loved. Each child is born full of love and knows perfectly what it is. There is no need to tell a child what love is. But the problem arises because the mother and the father dont know what love is. No child receives the parents that he deservesno child ever receives the parents that he deserves; those parents simply dont exist on the earth. And by the time this child becomes a parent, he too will have lost the capacity to love.

I have heard about a small valley where children were born and within three months they all became blind. It was a small, primitive society, and a fly existed there which caused an infection and blindness in the eyes, so the whole community had gone blind. Every child was born with eyes that functioned perfectly well, but within three months at the most they had gone blind because of these flies. Now, somewhere later in life those children must have asked, What are eyes? What do you mean when you use the word eye? What is vision? What is seeing? What do you mean? And the question would have been relevant. Those children had been born with sight, but they had lost it somewhere on the way of their growth.

Thats what has happened to love. Every child is born with as much love as one can contain, with more love than one can contain, with overflowing love. A child is born as love; a child is made of the stuff called love. But the parents cannot give love. They have their own hangoverstheir parents never loved them. The parents can only pretend. They can talk about love. They can say, We love you very much, but what they actually do is unloving. The way they behave, the way they treat the child is insulting; there is no respect. No parent respects the child. Who ever thinks of respecting a child? A child is not thought to be a person at all. A child is thought of as a problem. If he keeps quiet, he is good; if he does not scream or cause any mischief, good; if he simply keeps out of the parents way, perfectly good. Thats what a child should be. But there is no respect and there is no love.

The parents have not known what love is. The wife has not loved the husband, the husband has not loved the wife. Love does not exist between theminstead there is domination, possessiveness, jealousy, and all kinds of poisons that destroy love. Just as a certain poison can destroy your vision, so the poison of possessiveness and jealousy destroys love.

Love is a fragile flower. It has to be protected, it has to be strengthened, it has to be watered; only then does it become strong. And the childs love is very fragilenaturally, because the child is fragile, his body is fragile. Do you think a child left on his own will be able to survive? Just think how helpless the human child isif a child is left on his own, it is next to impossible that he will survive. He will die, and that is what is happening to love. Love is left alone, untended.

The parents cant love, they dont know what love is, they have never flowed in love. Just think of your own parentsand remember, I am not saying that they are responsible. They are victims just as you are victims; their own parents were the same. And so onyou can go back to Adam and Eve and God the father! It seems that even God the father was not very respectful to Adam and Eve. Thats why from the very beginning he started commanding them, Do this and Dont do that. He started doing the same rubbish that all parents do. Dont eat the fruit of this tree. And when Adam had eaten the fruit, the father God was so angry in reaction that he threw Adam and Eve out of heaven.

That expulsion is always there, and each parent threatens to expel the child, to throw him out. If you dont listen, if you dont behave, you will be thrown out. Naturally the child is afraid. Thrown out? Into the wilderness of this life? He starts compromising. The child by and by becomes twisted, and he starts manipulating. He does not want to smile, but if the mother is nearby and he wants milk, he smiles. Now this is politicsthe beginning, the ABC of politics.

Deep down the child starts hating the parents because he is not respected; deep down he starts feeling frustrated because he is not loved as he is. He is expected to do certain things, and only then will he be loved. Love has conditions; he is not worthy as he is. First he has to become worthy, only then will the parents love be given. So to become worthy the child starts becoming false; he loses any sense of his own intrinsic value. His respect for himself is lost, and by and by he starts feeling that he is guilty.

Many times the idea comes to the mind of a child, Are these my real parents? Is it possible they have adopted me? Maybe they are deceiving me, because there seems to be no love. A thousand and one times he sees the anger in their eyes, the ugly anger on the faces of his parents, and for such small things that he cannot understand the proportion of anger caused by these small things. Just for very small things he sees the parents ragehe cannot believe it, it is so unjust and unfair! But he has to surrender, he has to bow down, he has to accept it as a necessity. By and by, his capacity for love is killed.

Love grows only in love. Love needs a milieu of lovethat is the most fundamental thing to be remembered. Only in a milieu of love does love grow; it needs the same kind of pulsation around. If the mother is loving, if the father is lovingnot only to the child, if they are loving to each other too, if the home has an atmosphere where love flowsthe child will start functioning as a love-being, and he will never ask the question, What is love? He will know it from the very beginning, it will become his foundation.

But that doesnt happen. It is unfortunate, but it has not happened up to now. And children learn the ways of their parentstheir nagging, their conflict. Just go on watching yourself. If you are a woman, watchyou may be repeating, almost identically, the ways your mother used to behave. Watch yourself when you are with your boyfriend or your husband: What are you doing? Are you not repeating a pattern? If you are a man, watch: What are you doing? Are you not behaving just like your father? Are you not doing the same nonsense that he used to do? Once upon a time you were surprisedHow can my father do this?and now you are doing the same. People go on repeating; people are imitators. The human being is a monkey. You are repeating your father or your mother, and that has to be dropped. Only then will you know what love is, otherwise you will remain corrupted.