In life there are three things — one. the objective world, the world of things. Everybody is able to see that. We are naturally capable of seeing the objective world. But this is only the beginning of the journey. Many have stopped there and think that they have arrived. Of course they have not arrived so they are miserable.
Beyond the objective is the opening of another world — the world of the subjective. The objective is the world of things, objects; the objective is the world of science, mathematics, physics, chemistry. The objective is very clear because naturally we are born perfectly able to see the objective.
The subjective has to be explored; nobody is born with a vision of the subjective. The subjective has to be explored; one has to learn what it is; one has to taste it by and by and move into it by and by. The world of music, poetry, art — the world of any creativity — is the world of the subjective. The man who starts moving inwards becomes more poetic, more aesthetic. He has a different aroma around him, a different aura.
The scientist lives with things; the poet lives with persons. The scientist is not at all aware of who he is, he is simply aware of what surrounds him. He may be able to know about the moon and about Mars and about the stars far, far away, but he is completely oblivious of his own inwardness. In fact, the more he becomes concerned with faraway things, the more and more he becomes oblivious of himself: He remains almost in a sort of sleep about himself.
The poet, the painter the dancer, the musician, they are closer to home. They live in the subjective — they know they are persons. And when you know you are a person, suddenly you become capable of looking into other persons. For a poet even a tree is a person, even animals are people; for a scientist even a man or a woman is nothing but an object. A scientist looks at a man as if he is also just an object. And if he is not aware of his own inwardness how can he be aware of the inwardness of the other?
When I use the word 'person' I mean that there is an inside which is not available to outside observation, analysis, dissection. There is a rock, it has no inside; you can break it and you can see everything. If you break a rock, nothing is disturbed, nothing is destroyed. Even if it is in pieces, it is the same rock. But if you break a person, something of tremendous value immediately disappears.
Now you are left with a dead body, and the dead body is not the person. The rock broken is still the same rock, but the person is no longer the same person. In fact, the person broken is not a person at all. On the dissection table of a surgeon you are not a person, only when a poet touches you and holds your hand do you become a person.
That's why people hanker for love. The reason for the hankering for love is nothing but this: you would like somebody to see that you are a person, not a thing.
You go to the dentist, he is not worried about you — he is simply interested in your teeth. Even if I go to the dentist — I see him…what a miracle! He is not interested in me, he just looks at my teeth. I am there, sitting in his chair, he is completely oblivious of me.
A great space is available just in his room but he will not even look at me — that's not his concern. He is only interested in the teeth, in his own technique. His knowledge of the objective world is his only world.
People hanker for love because only love can make you a person, only love can reveal your inwardness to you, only love can make you feel that you are not just that which is apparent from the outside. You are something more; you are something totally different to what you appear to be. The reflection in the mirror is not your totality; the reflection in the mirror is just the reflection of your surface, not of your depth. It says nothing about your depth.
When you come to a scientist, or a person who is absolutely absorbed with the objective dimension, he looks at you as if you are just the reflection in the mirror. He does not look at you, he looks around you. His approach is not direct, his approach is not intimate — and you feel something is missing. He is mistreating you because he is not accepting your personality. He is treating you as if you are a thing.
He is doing things but he is not touching you at all; you remain almost non-existential to him.
And unless somebody touches you with love, looks at you with love, your own inwardness remains unfulfilled, unrecognised — that is what the need to be needed is.
The subjective is the dimension, the inward dimension, of poetry, song, dance, music, of art. It is better than the scientific dimension because it is deeper. It is better than the objective dimension because it is closer to home. But it is not yet the dimension of religion, remember. There are many people whose mind is obsessed with the objective — when they think about God, God also becomes an object. Then God is also outside. Ask a Christian where God is and he will look upwards, somewhere in the sky — outside.
When you ask a person where God is and he looks somewhere else than within himself, then he belongs to the non-religious dimension. People ask, 'What is the proof of God?' Proofs are needed only for a thing. God does not need proof. If I love you, what is the proof? For poetry there is no proof, for chemistry there is. But poetry exists. And a world without chemistry would not be very much worse, but a world without poetry would not be a human world at all.
Poetry brings meaning to life, the unproved brings meaning to life — the proved at the most makes you comfortable. God is not an object and cannot be proved. God is more like music. It exists, certainly it exists, but there is no way to grab it. You cannot have it in your fist, you cannot lock it into your treasury, there is no way.
Love exists but you cannot possess it. If you try to possess it, you belong to the objective dimension and you are killing love — that's why possession is destructive. If you possess a woman, if you say, 'She is my wife and I possess her' then she is no longer a person. You have reduced her to be a thing and she will never be able to forgive you.
No wife has ever been able to forgive her husband; no husband has ever been able to forgive his wife — because both have reduced each other to things. A husband is a thing, a wife is a thing, and when you become a thing you become ugly — you lose freedom, you lose inwardness, you lose poetry, you lose romance, you lose meaning. You become simply a thing in the world of things. Utility is there — but who lives for utility? Utility can never be satisfying. You are being used, how can it be satisfying? Whenever you feel you are being used, you feel offended. And you SHOULD feel offended, because it is a crime to use somebody and it is a crime to allow somebody to use you. It is a crime against God.
But there are people who try to use God also. When you go and you pray for something you are trying to use God. You don't know what prayer is, you don't know what love is, you don't know what poetry is, you don't know the subjective realm at all. Your prayer, if it has a motivation in it, a desire in it, is ugly. But we find — we are very cunning people — we find ways and means
OSHO