To me, religion is a love affair. It has nothing to do with intellect, it has nothing to do with reason. It is falling in love. With whomsoever you have fallen in love, that is your way. Go through it — that is your door.
Love is the door, it is irrelevant with whom you have fallen in love. Love redeems, neither Jesus, nor Krishna. Love redeems. Fall in love. Love is the only redeeming force. Love is the savior.
You project beauty, you project a thousand and one things on the poor woman. When you come closer, when you are able to live with the woman, those phantoms will start wearing out. Those imaginations cannot persist against reality for long, the woman’s reality will assert. And then you will feel cheated and you will think she has cheated you. She has not done a thing. She herself is feeling cheated by you, because she has also projected something on you. She was thinking you are a hero, an Alexander or something, a great man, and now you are just a mouse and nothing else. And she was thinking you are a mountain — you are not even a molehill! She feels cheated. You both feel cheated, you both feel frustrated.
Love is not a relationship between two persons. It is a state of mind within yourself. If you are loving, you are loving to everybody — not only to persons, but to things as well. Love moves from you to objects also. Even when you are alone, when no one is there, you are loving. It is just like breathing. If I take an oath that I will breathe only when I am with you, only death can follow. Breathing is not relationship; it is not tied to any relationship. And for the etheric body, love is just like breathing. It is its breath.
Real love is not a function of the ego. The ego is always asking for power, so even when you love — because your love is not real, because it is just a part of the ego — it is bound to be violent. Whenever we love it is a violence, a type of war. Father and son, mother and daughter, husband and wife — they are not lovers; we have converted them into enemies. They are constantly fighting, and only when they are not fighting do we say it is love.
To me, love is a by-product of a meditative mind. It is not related to sex; it is related to dhyana, meditation. The more silent you become, the more at ease with yourself you will be, the more fulfilled you will feel, and the more a new expression of your being will be there. You will begin to love. Not anyone in particular. It may happen with someone in particular, but that is another thing. You begin to love. This loving becomes your way of existing. It can never turn into repulsion because it is not an attraction.
Ordinarily when you fall in love with someone, the real feeling is how to get love from him. It is not that love is going from you to him. Rather it is an expectation that love will come to you from him. That is why love becomes possessive. You possess someone so that you can get something out of him. But the love I am talking about is neither possessive nor does it have any expectations. It is just how you behave. You have become so silent, so loving, that your silence goes to others now.
Whenever freedom happens in human consciousness, freedom is felt from inside and love is felt from outside. This love, this compassion, is an absence of both love and hate. The complete dualism is absent; there is neither attraction nor repulsion. So with a person who is free and loving, it depends on you whether you can take his love or not. It is not up to me how much love I can give you; it depends on how much love you can take. Ordinarily love depends on the person who is giving. He may give love; he may not. But the love I am talking about is not dependent on the giver. He is completely open and giving every moment. Even when no one is present, the love is flowing.
The day you realize yourself, your very being becomes love. It is no longer a relationship, it is no longer addressed to anyone in particular; it is simply overflowing in all directions and all dimensions. And it is not something on my part, that I am doing it. Love cannot be done. And the love that is done is false; it is only pretension.
I teach human love, because it is in the fulfillment of human love that divine love flowers — not against it, but in absolute continuity with it.
Whenever there is love the woman blossoms. Without love, the woman shrinks. The men who love power never fall in love. Even if they fall in love they keep themselves at a distance.
Why are men and women constantly fighting? They are fighting because they feel a certain dependence on each other. And nobody likes dependence — everybody hates it. That hate is there that poisons your love. That hate is there that creates constant conflict. What I am proposing is that if every man and woman is brought up with the idea that you have both the wings, you are not alone, that hidden within you is your opposite pole, then you will have a certain balance and your need will change into something new. You will love a woman, but it will not be a need, it will be a joy, it will be a sharing. You will love a woman who resembles your inner woman; there will be a certain deep connection. You will love a man who resembles your inner man. And if you are not fighting with your inner man, you cannot fight with your outer resemblance.
