Love is risky

Love is risky, take the risk

To love is to move into danger because you cannot control it, it is not safe. It is not within your hands. It is unpredictable: where it will lead nobody knows.

A man who becomes too head-oriented goes farther away from the heart, and the heart is the center that responds to the call of love.

A head-oriented man is cut off from the universe. He lives in the universe but lives as if in a deep stupor. He lives in the universe, but lives as a tree that has lost its roots. He lives only for name’s sake: the sap of life is no more flowing. He has lost contact; he’s unconnected. That’s what alienation is.

The modern man feels too alienated, feels too much an outsider, does not feel at home, at ease with life, existence, the world. He feels almost as if he has been thrown into it, and it is a curse rather than a blessing.

Why has this happened? Too much head orientation, too much training of the head has cut all the roots from the heart. There are many people—I have observed thousands of people who don’t know what the heart is; they bypass. The heart is throbbing but the energy no longer moves via it. They bypass it; they go directly to the head. Even when they love, they THINK that they love. Even when they feel, they THINK that they feel. Even feeling is via thinking. Of course, it has to be false.

Thinking is a great falsifier, because thinking is man’s effort to understand the universe, and love is god’s effort to understand man. Let me repeat it: when you try to understand existence or truth, it is your effort—a part, a very tiny part trying to grasp the whole, the infinite whole. The effort is bound to be doomed. It’s impossible. It cannot happen in the nature of things. Love is when existence has found you. Love is when god’s hand is searching for you, groping for you.

Hence, you cannot manage love. You can manage logic; you can be very efficient as far as logic is concerned. The moment love arises, you become absolutely inefficient. Then you don’t know where you are, then you don’t know what you are doing, then you don’t know where you are moving, then you don’t know any control. Logic is controlled; love is uncontrolled. Logic is manipulated; love is a happening. Logic gives you a feeling that you are somebody; love gives you a feeling that you are nobody.

When you look through the eyes of logic, you will know a few things, but those few things will not give you the vision of reality. They will be only abstractions.

When you look through love, then you know the reality as it is. Love is falling with the universe, together; falling in a togetherness. It is orgasmic: you are streaming, and the existence has always been streaming, and both streamings meet and mingle and are infused in each other. A higher synthesis arises: the part is meeting in the whole and the whole is meeting in the part. Then something arises which is more than the part and the whole together—that’s what love is. ‘Love’ is one of the most significant words in human languages, because love is existential language.

But somehow, from the very childhood, we are being crippled. Our roots with the heart are cut. We are forced towards the head and we are not allowed to move towards the heart. It is something humanity has suffered for long, a calamity—that man has not yet become capable of living with love.

There are reasons.

Love is risky. To love is to move into danger because you cannot control it, it is not safe. It is not within your hands. It is unpredictable: where it will lead nobody knows. Whether it will lead anywhere, that too nobody knows. One is moving into utter darkness but roots grow only in darkness. If the roots of a tree become afraid of darkness and don’t move underground, the tree will die. They have to move into darkness. They have to find their way towards the deepest layers of the earth where they can find sources of water, nourishment.

The heart is the darkest part of your being. It is like a dark night. It is your very womb, it is your earth. So people are afraid to move into darkness; they would like to remain in the light. At least you can see where you are and what is going to happen. You are safe, secure. When you move in love, you cannot calculate the possibilities, you cannot calculate the results. You cannot be result-oriented. For love, the future does not exist, only the present exists. You can be in this moment but you cannot think anything about the next moment. No planning is possible in love.

Abridged from The Beloved by Osho

Osho is known for his revolutionary contribution to the science of inner transformation, with an approach to meditation that acknowledges the accelerated pace of contemporary life.

X

Your wellbeing is a few clicks away.

Subscribe to your weekly dose of positivity, wellness, and motivation and get a free printable
Soulveda Gratitude journal