Chapter: 11
Right Questioning

Do not ask theoretical questions, because theories solve less and confuse more. If there are no theories, there will be fewer problems. So it is not that theories solve questions or problems. On the contrary, questions arise out of theories.

And do not ask philosophical questions because philosophical questions simply seem to be questions. They are not questions. That’s why no answer has been possible. If a question is really a question then it is answerable. If a question is false, just a linguistic confusion, then it cannot be answered. That’s why philosophy has been answering and nothing has been answered. Philosophers go on answering continuously for centuries and centuries, and the questions remain the same. So howsoever you answer a philosophical question, you never answer it, because the question is false. The question was not meant to be answered at all; intrinsically the question is such that no answer is possible.

For example, if you ask who created the world, then it is something unanswerable. It is absurd. And do not ask metaphysical questions, not because they are not real questions – they are real questions – but they cannot be answered. Their realm is of the beyond. So you can question but they cannot be answered. They can be solved, but they cannot be answered.

Ask questions which are personal, intimate, existential. That is, one must be aware of what one is questioning and enquiring of – whether it is something which really means something to you. If it is answered, will a new dimension open for you? Will something be added to your existence? Will your being in any way be transformed through it? Really, is it something which you needed to have answered? Only such questions are religious.

Religion is really concerned with problems, not simply with questions. A question can be only a curiosity, but a problem is something intimate, personal, in which you are involved. It is you. A question is something separate from you; a problem – it is you. So before asking, dig deep inside and ask something that is intimate and personal, in which you are confused, in which you are involved. Only then can you be helped.

So now begin.

 

Osho,
I have many confusions, but my main one is that I would like to know if everything I do is premeditated, my whole life. No matter what I do is there a certain course that it will take. Do I have any hand in it? – there is confusion.

It is both: yes and no both.

 

I would like to know if our lives are predestined or not?

It is both – yes and no both – and it is always so with living problems. In a way you are determined – in a way. Whatsoever is physical in you, whatsoever is material in you, whatsoever is mental in you, is determined. And everything has a cause somewhere and is predictable. But still something in you constantly remains undetermined, and is unpredictable, and that is your consciousness.

So it depends. If you are identified with your body and your material existence much too much, then in the same proportion you are determined by causes. Then you are a machine, a biological machine. But if you are not identified with your material bodily existence, mind and body both included – if you can feel yourself something separate, different, above, transcending, then that transcending consciousness is never determined. It is spontaneous, free. Consciousness means freedom, and matter means non-freedom. Matter is the realm of slavery; consciousness is the realm of freedom. So it depends on you, how you define yourself. If you said, “I am only the body,” then I would say yes, you are determined completely.

So a person who says that man is only a body cannot then say that man is not predetermined. This may seem very strange, because ordinarily, persons who don’t believe in consciousness, don’t believe in determination. And ordinarily persons who are religious and believe in consciousness believe in predetermination. So whatsoever I am saying will look very contradictory. But I say this is the case.

A person who has known consciousness has known freedom. So only a spiritual person can say there is no determination at all, but that realization comes only when you are completely unidentified with bodily existence. So who you are – if you feel yourself to be just a material existence, then no freedom is possible. With matter, freedom is impossible. Matter means that which cannot be free. It must flow in the chain of cause and effect. That’s why I say both, and it will depend on you.

Once someone has achieved consciousness, enlightenment, he is completely out of cause and effect, and becomes unpredictable, absolutely unpredictable. You cannot say anything about him. He begins to live each moment; to say it in other words, his existence becomes atomic.

Your existence is a chain, a river-like chain, in which every step is determined from the past. Really your future is not future; it is just a by-product of the past. Your future is no future at all. It is only the past with the mind shaping, formulating, cultivating, conditioning. So your future – that’s why your future is predictable.

In America there is a modern thinker and psychologist, B. F. Skinner. He also says that man is as predictable as anything. The main difficulty is not that man is unpredictable, it is that we have not yet devised implements to know his whole past. So the moment we know his past we can predict – everything is predictable. And he is right in a way. All the persons he has been working with in his labs are such. No buddha has come to his lab to be experimented upon, so he is right. He has been experimenting on hundreds and hundreds of people and he sees that they are all mechanical devices; nothing is there which can be called freedom.

But he is wrong because the study is limited, and even if only one person is free, it makes no difference – the whole theory falls down. It makes no difference if even only one person in the whole history of man is free and unpredictable, man is free and unpredictable.

But the whole thing will depend on the emphasis: whether you emphasize your body or you emphasize your consciousness. Where do you belong? Where are you belonging? – in the body or in the consciousness? Are you just an outward flow of life? – then everything is determined. Are you something inside also? But don’t give any preformulated answer to it. Don’t say, “Yes, I am a soul inside.” Don’t say it. If you feel that “there is nothing inside me,” then be honest, because honesty is going to be the first step toward the inner freedom of consciousness.

So say, “I have no inside,” if you feel that there is no inside. And really, if you go in, you will feel that everything is just part of the outside: your body has come from without, your thoughts have come from without, your self is being given to you by others. That’s why you are so fearful of other’s opinion – because they can withdraw your self completely. They may say, “You are a good man.” But if you don’t behave according to them they can withdraw their opinion and you will be poorer, and your “good” self will be nowhere.

That’s why everyone is in fear, constant fear of others, because they are the contributors of your self. They can withdraw; at least they can withdraw their contribution. Your self is a contribution from others, your body is a contribution from others, your thoughts are a contribution from others, so where is the inside? You are just layers and layers of outside accumulation. If you are identifying with this personality, then everything is determined.

So unless one becomes aware of everything that comes from the outside and goes on continuously not identifying with it, a moment comes where you don’t find anything to reject. When you don’t find anything to reject, you have come into a vacuum. This vacuum is the passage between the outside and the inside; this is the door. But we fear the vacuum. We are afraid of being empty so we cling to the outside accumulation.

So one has to be courageous enough to non-identify, and then to remain in the vacuum where there is no outside. When the outside falls completely you will be in a vacuum. If you are not courageous enough to be in the vacuum, you will again go out and cling to something, and be filled with it. So this moment is meditation, this “vacuum moment.” If you are courageous enough, and if you can remain in this vacuum, soon your whole being will turn inside automatically, because when there is nothing to be attached to from the outside, your being turns inward. Then you know for the first time that you are something which transcends all that you have been thinking yourself to be.

Now you are something different from becoming; now you are being. This being is free; nothing can determine it. It is absolute freedom. No cause, no effect chain is possible here. So once a person begins to live “in” he becomes atomic. His actions now have a different correlation.

Ordinarily our actions are related with past actions. They come in a series: A, B, C. A was a past act; it created a situation in which B became possible; then B became a past act associated with A, then it created a situation in which C became a possibility, and it flowers. So your acts have a chain with other past acts, and this goes to the beginningless beginning and to the endless end. Not only your acts. Your father and mother, their acts have a continuity with you. Not only your father and mother, your society, your history – all that has happened before you – is somehow interrelated with your act, that is happening this moment. The whole history has come to flower in you.

Everything that has ever happened is connected with your act, so your act is obviously determined – because your act is just such a minute part and the whole history is such a vital living force. You cannot determine it; it will determine you.

That’s why Marx said, “It is not consciousness which determines conditions of society. It is society and society conditions which determine consciousness. It is not that great men create great societies.” Marx says, “It is great societies which create great men.” And he is right in a way, because as far as acts are concerned, you are not the owner; the whole history is the owner. You are just carrying something.

For example, you are carrying biological cells in you. They can become persons, but those cells are not yours. They’ve been given to you, not by someone, but by the whole biological evolution. The whole evolution has made your biological cell, which will give birth to a child. So you can be in a blissful ignorance that you are the father. You have been just a saint through which the whole history has acted, the whole biological evolution has acted, and has forced you to act. That’s why sex is so forceful. It is beyond you.

So this is one way, how acts happen in relation to other past acts, in relation to past. But when a person becomes enlightened, then a new phenomena begins to happen. Any act is not connected with a past act; any act is connected with the person, with his consciousness. Now it comes from his consciousness. It is not from a past act. That’s why you cannot predict it – because past acts are known. If I have seen you angry in many situations, I can predict that in this situation you will be angry.

Skinner says that we can determine; I have seen your thirst so the thirst can be created. Skinner says that the old proverb has gone wrong now, that you can bring the horse to the river but you cannot force him to drink. Skinner says we can force him to drink, we can create the situation. We can create the situation; we can make the whole atmosphere so hot that the horse has to drink, and we know when he drinks, so we can create the situation and then the act will follow. So I would say yes, the proverb has gone wrong, that you can bring the horse to the river but you cannot force him to drink. The horse can be forced, and you can also be forced, because your acts are situational. But I say you can bring a buddha to the river, you cannot force him to drink. Really, the more you force him, the more it will be impossible; exactly the contrary will happen. He can drink, but if you force him he will not. No heat will do, even if you bring a thousand suns around him it will not help, it will not help. On the contrary it will become impossible – more and more impossible – because now the person has a different origin of his acts. It is not connected with other acts. It is directly connected with consciousness.

That’s why I emphasize so much: act consciously! Then, by and by, when you act consciously your acts change their total organization; the whole crystallization is different. It becomes associated with consciousness and not with acts. Then you are free. Then every moment you act; not that acts create other acts. You act. You begin to act, and no one can say how you will act, because habits are mechanical, consciousness is not. Habits are mechanical and by that I mean that habits repeat themselves. And the more you repeat, the more efficient you become in repetition.

So this must be understood: the more you repeat, the more you become efficient, and what do you mean by being efficient? By being efficient is meant that now no more consciousness is needed. A person who is an efficient typist – what do you mean by an efficient typist? You mean that now no conscious effort is needed. He can do it unconsciously, even with closed eyes. He can continue with other thoughts, he can sing, he can smoke and the typing continues. Now typing has gone to the unconscious center of the body. Now the body is typing; the man is not needed. That is efficiency. Efficiency means the thing is so determined that no error is possible. In freedom, error is possible. No machine is; it cannot err, because to err, one has to be conscious.

So acts can have a chain relationship with your other acts. Then they are determined. Then your childhood determines your youth, and your youth determines your old age, and everything is determined. Your birth determines your death. Buddha continues saying, he repeated so many times, “Given this, this happens. Provide the cause, and the effect will be there.” This is the world of cause and effect in which everything is determined. You may know it or you may not know it.

Another crystallization of acts is with consciousness. Then it is moment to moment, because consciousness is a flow. It is not a static thing; it is life itself. It changes. It is alive. It goes on expanding. It goes on becoming new and fresh and young. It is never the past. It is always the present, so the act will be spontaneous.

I remember a Zen story…

 

A Zen master asks his disciple a particular question. The question is answered exactly as it should be answered.

Another day, and the master asks again, again the same question, and the disciple says, “But I have answered this one just the other day, I have answered it.”

“But,” the master says, “now I am asking again.” The disciple repeats the answer, and the master says, “You don’t know!”

“But,” the disciple says, “yesterday I answered in the same way – those were the words exactly – and you nodded your head, and I interpreted that it was right. But why have you now changed your mind?”

The master said, “Anything that can be repeated is not coming from you. Anything that can be repeated is not coming from you. This answer has come from your memory, not from your consciousness. Memory is of the past. If you have really known, the answer would have differed, because so much has gone on, so much has changed. I am not the same man who asked you the other day. My emphasis is different, my eyes are different, the whole situation is different. You are different, but the answer is the same. You don’t know the answer. And just to see whether you would repeat it, I had to ask again. Nothing can be repeated.”

 

The more alive you are, the less repetitive. Only a dead man can be consistent. Life is inconsistency because life is freedom. Freedom cannot be consistent. Consistent with what? – with the past.

So an enlightened person is consistent only with his consciousness and never with the past. He is always totally with his act. Nothing is left behind; nothing has been left. He is totally in it but it is momentary, it is atomic. The next moment the act has gone, the consciousness has gone back in again. It will come up again when any situation arises, and the act is going to be free again – as if this man is for the first time in this situation, he has never been in this situation before.

So that’s why I say yes and no both. It depends on you – whether you are consciousness, or you are just an amalgamated, constituted, bodily existence.

Religion gives freedom because religion gives consciousness. Science will continue to grow more and more into slavery because science is concerned with matter. So the more science knows about matter, the more the world will be enslaved, because the whole phenomena is of cause and effect. If they know that given this, this happens, then everything can be determined.

Sooner – very soon – sooner than this century ends, we will see humanity being determined in so many ways. It is already being determined. Now the state knows very well how to determine you, how to create a stimulus response, how to create the stimulus and the response will follow. The greatest calamity that is possible is not the hydrogen bomb. It can only destroy. The real calamity will come from the psychological sciences, and that will be how to determine the human being completely. And it can be determined because we are not conscious – so we can be determined. Still as we are, we are determined. Someone is a Hindu; this is a determination. This is not freedom. Someone is a Mohammedan; this is a determination.

Parents are deciding; society is deciding. Someone is a doctor and someone is an engineer – this is a determination, someone has determined.

So we are being determined constantly, but our methods are still very primitive. But now, now new techniques can determine to such an extent that really it can then be said that there is no soul. If your every response – each and every response – is determined, then what is the meaning of calling yourself a soul?

All of this can be determined through body chemistry. If alcohol is given to you, you behave differently. Your body chemistry is different so you behave differently. Your behavior can be determined by alcohol.

In the old Tantra, the ultimate technique was to give intoxicants and still be conscious, to take intoxicants and still be conscious. When a person was still conscious when everything was bound to be unconscious, only then Tantra would say that now this man is enlightened, otherwise not – because if body chemistry can change your consciousness, what is the meaning? If just an injection can make you unconscious, then what is the meaning? Then that injection, that chemical drug, is more important, more powerful than your own consciousness, than your soul and everything. So it was a very daring experiment, but it is possible, it is possible to transcend every intoxicant drug and be conscious. Then the stimulus is given, but the response is not there; the condition is given, but the effect is not conditioned.

In every way, in every moment, in every act, act consciously more and more. But if something is given from the outside then we become more aware; something flows inside. But from the inside, we are not aware. For example sex. It is just…just a chemical phenomenon; some hormones floating in the body. A particular quantity of a particular hormone creates sexual desire in you. When it is created you are no longer there. You become the desire. You may repent when the hormones have gone, you may repent when the chemistry has come back to the ordinary level, but it is meaningless. This repentance is meaningless because again the hormones will be there and again you will act the same. Tantra also experimented with sex: given the whole situation – no sexual desire, then you are free. Somewhere, now, chemistry will be left far behind. Now the body will be there; you are not the body.

Anger also is chemistry and nothing else. So soon chemists will be able, particularly biochemists, to make you anger-proof. Just as a watch is waterproof, a man can be anger-proof or sex-proof. Some bodily change in the chemistry can be done and you will be anger-proof, but you will not be a Buddha. You will be anger-proof but you will not be a Buddha, because the difference will be Buddha was not incapable of anger – he was capable. Given the situation, the biological effect will not be there – you will be incapable of being angry. The biological situation is not, so the effect is not.

If your sex hormones are thrown out of the body you will not be sexual, but you will not be. So the real thing is how to be aware in a situation which requires your unawareness, how to be conscious in a situation which happens only in unconsciousness.

So whenever there is any such situation, meditate in it. You have been given a great opportunity. If you feel jealousy, meditate in it because this is the moment. Body chemistry is working around you. It will give you unconsciousness; you will behave as if you are mad. Now be conscious. Let there be jealousy; don’t suppress it. Let there be jealousy, but be conscious; be a witness to it.

There is anger; be a witness to it. There is sex; be a witness to it. Let the body do whatsoever it is that is happening there. Begin to meditate in the whole situation. And by and by, the more the awareness is deepened, the less is the possibility of your being determined. You become free. And moksha, freedom, doesn’t mean anything else. It means only consciousness so free that nothing can determine it.

You can ask anything you would like to ask.

 

Osho,
Can you explain what divine love is? Or rather, what is love experienced in a divine way?

First take the question – whether the question is determined by the immediate moment or the question was always ready in your mind; you were just waiting to ask it.

It was ready – because it cannot come just now, so it is determined. It was ready. You had decided it. It was waiting to be asked. It was forcing you to ask. So your memory has determined it, not your consciousness. If you are conscious in this moment, then this question cannot come in this way. It would have taken a completely different shape. It would have been qualitatively different, because whatsoever I have been saying, if you were here, immediately present to it, then this question would have been impossible.

And another thing, if this question was present in you, it is impossible to hear, because it must continue knocking to find an opportunity to ask, to be asked. So this question being constantly present in the mind will create a tension and because of this tension you will not be able to be immediately here. And that’s why your consciousness cannot act atomically, with freedom. The question comes from mental bondage. So understand this first and then we can take the question.

The question in itself is not bad. It is good, very good, but your mind, working with it, has been ill. This is how awareness has to be worked out moment to moment, not only in acts, but in questions, and every gesture. If I raise this finger, it can be both. It can be just a habit. If it is just a habit, then I am not the master of my body at all. It may be a spontaneous expression of something that is present in my consciousness just now, then it is altogether different.

If you go to a Christian preacher, then his every gesture is also predetermined. He has been taught. He has passed through a training. I happened to be in a theological college once, a Christian theological college, so I just walked around. They were training preachers, a five year course, then they would become D.D., Doctors of Divinity. Absurdity! No one can be a doctor of divinity. And even if you can be a doctor of divinity then nothing, nothing is of value. With a five year course one can become a doctor of divinity! One can become a doctor of chemistry, that is okay. It means something. But a doctor of divinity is sheer idiocy.

So I went around and I saw that everything was being taught there. They were trained in everything: how to stand at the pulpit, how to begin, how to raise the hymn, how to look at the audience, where to stop and where to give a gap, and an interval. Everything! This must not happen. This is a misfortune if it happens.

So be aware that the question was present, knocking at the mind continuously. You were not hearing at all. Whatsoever was being said has not been heard – and only because of this question. And one thing more, when I am talking about your question, the same mind will create another question and that will continue to knock at your mind. And you will miss again because the mind works repetitively, in a mechanical way. It will provide you with another question. And this is not to you personally, but to everyone. It makes no difference that you have asked and others have not asked. It makes no difference.

Now the question. It is difficult for me to say that anything such as divine love exists, because love is divine. Whenever it exists it is divine, wherever it exists it is divine. So to say “divine love” is meaningless. Love is divine, but we are cunning, the mind is cunning. It says: “We know what love is. The only thing that we don’t know is divine love.”

We don’t even know love. Love is one of the most unknown things. Too much talk, never lived – and really this is a trick of the mind. The thing which we cannot live, we talk about more and more.

So love is the only theme around which literature, music, poetry, dance – everything happens around it. And inside there is nothing. If there is really love, then there will be no talk about it. We talk only about things which we lack. This talking too much about love means love is non-existential. This is how mind works. We talk about things which are not. We never talk about things which are. This talking about things which are not is just a substitution method. That which is not – we create an illusion by talking, by language, by symbols, by art. We create a facade, an illusion, that the thing is there. You can write a very good poem about love, and you have not known love at all. And it is possible that one who has not known love may write a better poem, because the vacuum is much deeper in him. It has to be filled, substituted. So the first thing: love is lacking, love is not there.

So it is better to understand what love is, because when you ask what divine love is, it is understood that love is known. Love is not known. So whatsoever is known as love is something else. And the false must be known before some steps toward the real, toward the true.

What is known as love is not love, but infatuation. Infatuation. That infatuation is not known in animals, so we think that love is something human, because animals don’t know anything like…such as love – they know sex. But this is the problem. Animals don’t know anything like love; they know sex very well. So is love something new to human mind? Are there some flaws?

There is some flaw. You begin to love someone; if that someone is given to you totally, love will soon die. If there are barriers, and you cannot achieve the person you love, you cannot get the person you love, love will develop. It will become intense. The more the barriers, the more intense the love will be felt. If the beloved or the lover is such that he is impossible to get, then love will become eternal. If you can get your lover easily, easily dies the love. So what is the reason?

When you try to get something and you are not getting it, you become tense about getting it. The more there are barriers and hindrances, the more your ego feels to do something. It becomes an ego problem. Tension is created. The ego comes in and takes over the tension. The more you are denied, the more tense, the more complex, the more infatuated. This you call “love,” this tension. That’s why, if you are married to your lover, the honeymoon is over, the love is over. Even before, because all that you knew as love was not love. It was just infatuation, ego infatuation, ego tension – a struggle, a conflict, aggression, malice, resolve.

The old human societies, ancient human societies, were very cunning. They devised methods to make your love last long. So if a person cannot see his wife in the daylight, the love will be long. If he cannot meet her often – even with his wife – if he cannot meet her, then even his own wife holds an infatuation and tension is created. Then one man can remain with one wife his whole life, and can die praying to God that the same wife should be given to him again.

In the West, marriage cannot exist anymore. It is not that the Western mind is more sexual. No. The only thing is the infatuation is not allowed to accumulate. Sex is so easily available that marriage cannot exist. Love too cannot exist with this kind of freedom. If you make a completely free sexual society, then only sex can exist. And it will come to the very level as animals are. But by that I don’t mean that you have gone somewhere else; you simply think that you have gone somewhere, the level remains the same. The whole thing is illusory.

This infatuation is bound to create boredom because boredom is the second side, the other side of infatuation. If you love someone and don’t get the loved one, infatuation goes deep. If you get it, then the other side comes in. You begin to get bored, fed up. And there are many dualisms: infatuation/boredom, love/hate, attraction/repulsion. With infatuation you will feel attraction, you will feel love. With boredom you will feel repulsion, you will feel hate. This is how things are.

No attraction can be love because repulsion is bound to come. It is in the very nature of things. The other side will come. If you don’t want that the other side should come, then you must create barriers, such barriers in which the infatuation never ends – the infatuation continues, so that the other side is not known. You must create daily tensions, then it continues. This is the whole old system of creating a facade of love.

Now it will not be possible, and if it will not be possible then with marriage love will also go down. Really, it has gone in the West, it has gone. Sex remains. And then, sooner or later, sex alone cannot stand. Then it becomes so mechanical, so physical.

Nietzsche declared only seventy years before that God is dead. But the real thing that is going to be dead is sex. And with this century sex will be completely dead. I don’t mean by that that people will become non-sexual. They will be sexual, but the infatuation, the significance, the too-much emphasis on it will go. It will become an act just as ordinary as anything – as urination, or food, or anything. It will not be meaningful. It became meaningful because of the barriers and the infatuation – and this you have been calling love.

This is not love. This is just sex delayed, just sex delayed. Then what is love? Love is a very different dimension. Really it is not related with sex at all – really. Sex may come in, may not come in; it is not really related with sex at all. It has a different being of its own.

To me, love is a by-product of a meditative mind. It is not really related with sex. It is related with dhyana, it is related with meditation, because the more silent you become, the more at ease with yourself, the more fulfilled you feel, a new expression of your being takes place. You begin to love. Not for someone particularly – it may happen, it may happen even particularly, that is another thing – but you begin to love. This loving becomes just your way of existing. Then there is no other side. Then it can never turn into repulsion because it is not attraction at all.

You must understand the distinction exactly. When I fall in love with someone ordinarily, really, the feeling is not that love is flowing from me toward him; the real feeling is how to possess him. It is not that something is going from me to him. Rather it is an expectation that something will come from him to me. That’s why love becomes possession: possess someone so that you can get something out of him. But the love I am talking about is neither possession nor with any expectations. It is just how you behave. You have become so silent that the silence goes to others.

When you are angry, anger goes to others. When you are in hate, hate goes to others. When you are in love, the so-called love, you feel love is going to others. But you are not dependable, reliable. This moment there is love, the next moment there will be hate. And don’t think that that hate is something opposite to your love. It is just part and parcel of it; a continuity.

If you have loved someone, you will hate him. You may not be courageous enough to recognize it, or to say it, or to confess it, but you will hate. So see lovers: always in conflict if they are together. When they are not together they may be singing about each other, but when they are together they are just fighting. They cannot live alone, they cannot live together – because when they are alone, the other fails. Infatuation is created because the other is not available; then infatuation is there, then they feel again love. When the other is present, the infatuation is gone; they feel hatred.

The love I am talking about means you have become so silent that now there is neither anger nor attraction nor repulsion. Really, now there is no love, no hate. Really, now you are not other-oriented at all, at all! The other has disappeared; you are alone with yourself. In this feeling of aloneness, love comes to you just as a fragrance. Love is a fragrance when someone is alone, totally alone.

To ask for the other is always ugly. To depend on the other is always possessive. To ask something from the other, will always creates bondage and suffering, and conflict. A person who is sufficient unto himself – that’s what I mean by meditation. It is being sufficient unto oneself. You have become a circle, alone. The mandala is complete.

You are trying to make the mandala complete with others: man with woman, woman with man. Trying to make the circle complete. In certain moments the lines meet, but they have not even met when the separation sets in – and you are again half. If you become a whole inside, a circle – complete, sufficient, no line going outward, nothing going outward to the other, a perfect circle inside – then something begins to flower in you which is love. Then whosoever comes near you, you love him. It is not an act at all. It is not that you “do” love to him. It is not any doing at all. It is that your very being, your very presence is love. Love flows through you.

If you ask such a person, “Do you love me?” he will be in a very difficult situation. He cannot say, “I love you,” because it is not an act on his part. It is no “doing” to him. He cannot say, “I do not love you,” because he loves. Really, he is love.

This love comes only with the freedom I have been talking of. So freedom is your feeling, and love is the others’ feeling about you. When this meditation happens inside, freedom is your feeling – that I am free, completely free. This is your freedom, this is your feeling. No one else will be able to feel it because this is something very in. How can anyone else feel it? Your freedom cannot be felt by others.

Sometimes your behavior may create only difficulties for them, but they cannot conceive of what has happened in you. And in a way you will become difficult for them. In a way you will be a trouble, an inconvenience, because you cannot be predicted. Nothing can be known about you: what you will do, what you will say, what is going to happen in the next moment. No one can know. Then everyone becomes inconvenienced around you. Your freedom can only be felt in this way by others – that you become inconvenient to them. They can never be at ease with you. That is the only feeling they get because you may do anything; you are not dead.

But they cannot feel your freedom – and how can they feel it? They have not known it. They have not even enquired into it, they have not sought it, they have not been on any search. And they are in such a bondage. They cannot even conceive of what freedom is. They have been in cages. They have not known the open sky, so even if you talk about the open sky it will be incommunicable, it will not be communicated to them.

But they can feel your love, because they have asked for it always and always. Even in their cages they have been searching for love; even in their bondage. Really they have created the whole bondage because they have been asking for love. They have created the whole bondage – the bondage with persons, the bondage with things. They have been creating it only in the search for love.

So whenever a person happens to be free, his love is felt. But you will feel that love as compassion, not as love, because there will be no excitement in it. It will be a very diffused light – with no heat, not even warmth. If we can phrase “cold love” then it will be meaningful.

You cannot say Buddha’s love is warm – you cannot say that. It is ice cool. There is no excitement in it. It is there, that’s all, because no excitement can be a part of your being. Excitement comes and goes; it cannot be constant. So if there is excitement in love then Buddha will have to go into hate again and again. Excitement will not be there, peaks will not be there; then valleys will be there. So he is neither a peak nor a valley; he is just a plain. The love is ice cool so you will feel it as compassion, as karuna.

This is the difficulty. Freedom cannot be felt from the outside; only love can be felt and that too as compassion. And this has been one of the very difficult phenomena of human history, because their freedom creates inconvenience and their love compassion – so human society is always divided about these people.

A Christ: someone has felt only the inconvenience that he has created – and these will be the people who are well settled, because they don’t need any compassion. These will be the people who are well settled, who think that they have got love and health, wealth, respect, everything. So when Christ happens, the “haves” will be against him because he will be creating only inconvenience for them, and the “have-nots” will be with him because they will feel his compassion. They are in need of love. No one has loved them; this man loves them. They will not feel the inconvenience because they have nothing by which to feel the inconvenience – they have nothing to lose.

So when this man dies everyone will feel his compassion, because now there is no inconvenience; there is no inconvenience. Even the settled ones, the conformists, will feel at ease. They will worship him. But when he is living, he is a rebel. He is a rebel not because there is something wrong in society. He is a rebel because he is free.

You must understand: he is not a rebel because there is something wrong in the society. Those rebellions are only political. So if a society changes, the very one who was a rebellious one will become an orthodox one. This happened in 1917. The same revolutionaries became one of the most anti-revolutionary cliques in the world. A Stalin or a Mao, they become the most anti-revolutionary leaders the moment they are in power because they are not rebellious; they were rebelling only against a particular situation. The situation gets thrown over, now they are in the same saddle.

But a Christ is always rebellious. No situation will do it. No situation will help his rebellion to lessen. The rebellion will never be less because the rebellion is not against anyone. It is because he has a free consciousness. So anywhere he feels the barrier, he will be rebellious. Rebellion is his spirit. So even if Jesus comes today, Christians will not be at ease with him. They cannot be. They will behave in the same manner as Jews behaved with him; now they are settled. The pope cannot behave otherwise; he is settled. And a Jesus again in the marketplace will disturb the whole thing. Rome will not be. With Jesus Rome is not possible, with Jesus the pope is not possible; only without Jesus is he possible.

But compassion is also felt. That’s one thing more to be understood. That’s why every teacher who has known is a rebellious teacher, but the tradition that is connected with him is never rebellious. It is only concerned with his compassion. It is never concerned with his rebellion, never concerned with his freedom, only with his love. Then it becomes impotent because love cannot exist without freedom; love cannot exist without rebellion.

You cannot be as loving as Buddha unless you are as free as Buddha. So a Buddhist monk is just trying to be in compassion, but then compassion is impotent because the freedom is not there. And the freedom is the source. A Mahavira is in compassion, but a Jaina monk is not in compassion at all. He just tries, he is just trying to act nonviolence and compassion, etcetera, but he is not compassion at all. He is cruel in every way; cunning, crooked, in every way. Even in his compassion and its exhibition, he is cunning. There is no compassion at all, because the freedom is not there.

So to me, whenever there is the happening of freedom in a consciousness, freedom is felt inside and love is felt outside. Then love is not opposite to hatred. It is just absence of both: hate and love. It is difficult, that is why I have to use the word love for both things. It is absence of both love and hate. The complete dualism is absent. It is absence of attraction and repulsion both.

So a person who is free and loving, it depends on you whether you can take his love or not. With us, it is not so. If I love you it is not on me how much I can take; it is always on you, how much you can give. Ordinarily we love, then the love depends on the person who is giving; he may not give. But when this love happens, then how much you can take is not dependent on the giver. It is dependant on you, because the giver is completely open and giving all the moment. Even when there is no one present, the love is flowing.

It is just like a flower – no one passing by, in a dense forest – a single flower. No one may even know about it, that it has flowered and is giving its perfume. But it will give it, because it is not being given to someone. It is just being given, by the very intrinsic happening. The flower has flowered so the fragrance is there. Someone may pass or not; it is irrelevant. If someone passes and is capable, is sensitive, he may get it. If someone passes and is completely dead, insensitive, he may not even be aware that there was a flower by the road, by the side.

So when love is there you can get it or not. When love is not there the other can give to you or not. And there is no division of divine or non-divine. Love is divine, so all we can say – love is divine, love is godliness.

So more tomorrow, hmm?