Osho - Compassion, Love and Sex

Osho,
Only compassion is therapeutic you said. Could you comment on the word compassion compassion for oneself and compassion for the other?

Yes, only compassion is therapeutic because all that is ill inman is because of lack of love. All that is wrong with man is somewhereassociated with love. He has not been able to love, or he has not been able toreceive love. He has not been able to share his being. Thats the misery. Thatcreates all sorts of complexes inside.

Those wounds inside can surface in many ways: they can becomephysical illness, they can become mental illness, but deep down man suffersfrom lack of love. Just as food is needed for the body, love is needed for thesoul. The body cannot survive without food, and the soul cannot survive withoutlove. In fact, without love the soul is never born, there is no question of itssurvival.

You simply think that you have a soul. You believe that you havea soul because of your fear of death. But you have not known unless you haveloved. Only in love does one come to feel that one is more than the body, morethan the mind.

Thats why I say compassion is therapeutic. What is compassion?Compassion is the purest form of love. Sex is the lowest form of love,compassion the highest form of love. In sex the contact is basically physical;in compassion the contact is basically spiritual. In love, compassion and sexare both mixed; the physical and the spiritual are both mixed. Love is midwaybetween sex and compassion.

You can also call compassion prayerfulness. You can also callcompassion meditation. The highest form of energy is compassion. The word compassionis beautiful: half of it is passion somehow passion has become sorefined that it is no longer like passion. It has become compassion.

In sex, you use the other, you reduce the other to a means, youreduce the other to a thing. Thats why in a sexual relationship you feelguilty. That guilt has nothing to do with religious teachings; that guilt isdeeper than religious teachings. In a sexual relationship as such you feelguilty. You feel guilty because you are reducing a human being to a thing, to acommodity, to be used and thrown away.

Thats why in sex you also feel a sort of bondage, you are alsobeing reduced to a thing. When you are a thing your freedom disappears becauseyour freedom exists only when you are a person. The more you are a person, themore free; the more you are a thing, the less free.

The furniture in your room is not free. If you leave the roomlocked and you come after many years, the furniture will be in the same place,in the same way; it will not arrange itself in a new way. It has no freedom.But if you leave a man in the room, you will not find him the same not eventhe next day, not even the next moment. You cannot find the same man again.

Old Heraclitus says: You cannot step in the same river twice.You cannot come across the same man again. It is impossible to meet the sameman twice because man is a river, continuously flowing. You never know what isgoing to happen. The future remains open.

For a thing, future is closed: a rock will remain a rock willremain a rock. It has no potentiality for growth. It cannot change, it cannotevolve. A man never remains the same: he may fall back, he may go ahead, he maygo into hell or into heaven but he never remains the same. He goes on moving,this way or that.

When you have a sexual relationship with somebody, you havereduced that somebody to a thing. And in reducing him you have reduced yourselfalso to a thing because it is a mutual compromise: I allow you to reduce me toa thing, you allow me to reduce you to a thing. I allow you to use me, youallow me to use you. We use each other. We both have become things.

Thats why Watch two lovers, when they have not yet settled theromance is still alive, the honeymoon has not ended, and you will see twopersons throbbing with life, ready to explode ready to explore the unknown.And then watch a married couple, the husband and the wife, and you will see twodead things, two graveyards, side by side helping each other to remain dead,forcing each other to remain dead. That is the constant conflict of themarriage. Nobody wants to be reduced to a thing.

Sex is the lowest form of that energy, X. If you arereligious, call it the divine. If you are scientific, call it X.This energy, X, can become love. When it becomes love, then you startrespecting the other person. Yes, sometimes you use the other person, but youfeel thankful for it. You never say thank-you to a thing. When you are in lovewith a woman and you make love to her, you say thank-you. When you make love toyour wife, have you ever said thank-you? No, you take it for granted. Has yourwife said thank-you to you ever? Maybe, many years before you can remember sometime when you were just undecided, were just trying, courting, seducing eachother maybe. But once you were settled, has she said thank-you to you foranything? You have been doing so many things for her, she has been doing somany things for you; you are both living for each other, but gratitude hasdisappeared.

In love, there is gratitude, there is a deep gratefulness. Youknow that the other is not a thing. You know that the other has a grandeur, apersonality, a soul, an individuality. In love you give total freedom to theother. Of course, you give and you take; it is a give-and-take relationship but with respect.

In sex, it is a give-and-take relationship with no respect. Incompassion, you simply give. There is no idea anywhere in your mind to get anythingback you simply share. Not that nothing comes millionfold it is returned,but that is just by the way, just a natural consequence. There is no hankeringfor it.

In love, if you give something, deep down you go on expectingthat it should be returned. If it is not returned, you feel like complaining.You may not say so, but in a thousand and one ways it can be inferred that youare grumbling, that you are feeling that you have been cheated. Love seems tobe a subtle bargain.

In compassion, you simply give. In love, you are thankful becausethe other has given something to you. In compassion, you are thankful becausethe other has taken something from you, you are thankful because the other hasnot rejected you. You had come with energy to give, you had come with manyflowers to share, and the other allowed you, the other was receptive. You arethankful because the other was receptive.

Compassion is the highest form of love. Much comes back millionfold I say but that is not the point; you dont hanker for it. If itdoes not come there is no complaint about it. If it comes you are simplysurprised. If it comes, it is unbelievable. If it does not come, there is noproblem you had never given your heart to somebody for any bargain. Yousimply shower because you have. You have so much that if you dontshower you will become burdened. Just like a cloud full of rainwater has toshower. And next time, when a cloud is showering, watch silently, and you willalways hear when the cloud has showered and the earth has absorbed, you willalways hear the cloud saying to the earth Thank-you. The earth helped thecloud to unburden.