The second question:

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

IT IS FELT BY MANY IN THE WEST AND ELSEWHERE THAT THE PEAK OF LOVE IS REACHED ONLY BETWEEN AN 'I' AND A 'THOU'. IF I AND THOU ARE BOTH DROPPED, CAN LOVE STILL EXIST? CAN LOVE EXIST WITHOUT RELATIONSHIP?

Love, life, light -- these three l's are the most mysterious. And the mystery is this -- that you cannot understand them logically. If you are illogical you can penetrate them; if you are simply logical you cannot understand, because the whole phenomenon depends on a paradox. Try to understand.

When you love someone, two are needed: I and thou. Without two how can love be possible? If you are alone how can you relate, how can you love? If you are alone there can be no love. Love is possible only when there are two, this is the base. But if they remain two love is again impossible. If they continue to be two then again love is impossible. Two are needed for love to exist, and then there is a second need -- that the two must merge and become one. This is the paradox.

'I' and 'thou' is a basic requirement for love to exist but this is only the base. The temple can come only when these two merge into one. And the mystery is that somehow you remain two and somehow you become one. This is illogical. Two lovers are two and still one. They have found a bridge somewhere where I disappears, thou disappears; where a unity is formed, a harmony comes into being. Two are needed to create that harmony, but two are needed to dissolve into it.

It is just like this: a river flows, two banks are needed. A river cannot flow with only one bank, it is impossible; the river cannot exist. Two banks are needed for the river to flow. But if you look a little deeper those two banks are joined together just below the river. If they are not joined then also the river cannot exist, it will simply drop into the abyss. Two banks, apparently two on the surface, are one deep down.

Love exists like a river between two persons who on the surface remain two, but deep down have become one. That's why I say it is paradoxical. Two are needed just to be dissolved into one. So love is a deep alchemy and very delicate. If you really become one, love will disappear, the river cannot flow. If you really remain two, love will disappear, because there can be no river in an abyss if the two banks are really separate. So lovers create a game in which on the surface they remain two and deep down they become one.

Sometimes they fight also, sometimes they are angry also, sometimes in every way they separate -- but this is only on the surface. Their separation is just to get married again, their fight is just to create love again. They go a little away from each other just to come and meet again, and the meeting after the separation is beautiful. They fight to love again. They are intimate enemies. Their enmity is a play, they enjoy it.

If there is really love you can enjoy the fight. If there is no love, only then the fight becomes a problem; otherwise you can enjoy, it is a game. It creates hunger. If you have ever loved, then you know that love always reaches peaks after you have been fighting. Fight -- you create the separation, and with separation the hunger arises, you feel starved; the other is needed more. You fall in love again, then there is a more intense meeting. To create that intensity the two should remain two, and at the same time, simultaneously, they should become one.

In India we have pictured Shiva as Ardhanarishwar -- half-man, half-woman. That is the only symbol of its type all over the world. Shiva -- half is man, half is woman; half Shiva and half Parvati, his consort. Half the body is of man and half of woman: Ardhanarishwar, half-man, half-woman. That is the symbol. Lovers join together but on the surface they remain two. Shiva is one, the body is two -- half comes from Parvati, half he contributes. The body is two, on the surface the banks are two; in the depth the souls have mingled and become one.

Or look at it in this way: the room is dark, you bring two lamps into it, two candles into it. Those two candles remain two, but their light has mingled and become one. You cannot separate the light; you cannot say, "This light belongs to this candle and that light belongs to that candle." Light has mingled and become one. The spirit is like light, the body is the candle.

Two lovers are only two bodies, but not two souls. This is very difficult to achieve. That's why love is one of the most difficult things to achieve, and if even for moments you can achieve it is worth it. If even only for moments in your whole life, if even for moments you can achieve this oneness with someone, this oneness will become the door for the divine. Love achieved becomes the door for the divine, because then you can feel how this universe exists in the many and remains one.

But this can come only through experience -- if you love a person and you feel that you are two and still one. And this should not be just a thought but an experience. You can think, but thinking is of no use. This must be an experience: how the bodies have remained two and the inner beings have merged, melted into each other -- the light has become one.

Once experienced, then the whole philosophy of the Upanishads becomes exactly clear, absolutely clear. The many are just the surface; behind each individual is hidden the nonindividual, behind each part is hidden the whole. And if two can exist as two on the surface, why not many? If two can remain two and still one, why can't many remain many and still one? One in the many is the message of the Upanishads. And this will remain only theoretical if you have never been in love.

But people go on confusing love with sex. Sex may be part of love, but sex is not love. Sex is just a physical, biological attraction, and in sex you remain two. In sex you are not concerned with the other, you are concerned with yourself. You are simply exploiting the other, you are simply using the other for some biological satisfaction of your own, and the other is using you. That's why sexual partners never feel any deep intimacy. They are using the other. The other is not a person, the other is not a thou; the other is just an it, a thing you can use, and the other is using you. Deep down it is mutual masturbation and nothing else. The other is used as a device. It is not love, because you don't care for the other.

Love is totally different. It is not using the other, it is caring for the other, it is just being happy in the other. It is not your happiness that you derive from the other; if the other is happy you are happy, and the other's happiness becomes your happiness. If the other is healthy you feel healthy. If the other is dancing you feel a dance inside. If the other is smiling the smile penetrates you and becomes your smile.

Love is the happiness of the other; sex is happiness of your own, the other has to be used. In love the other's happiness has become even more significant than your own. Lovers are each other's servants, sex partners are each other's exploiters.

Sex can exist in the milieu of love, but then it has a different quality; it is not sexual at all. Then it is one of the many ways of merging into each other. One of the many -- not the only, not the sole, not the supreme. Many are the ways to merge into each other. Two lovers can sit silently with each other and the silence can become the merger. Really only lovers can sit silently.

Wives and husbands cannot sit silently, because silence becomes boredom. So they go on talking about something or other. They go on talking even nonsense, rubbish, rot, just to avoid the other. Their talk is to avoid the other, because if there is no talk the other's presence will be felt, and the other's presence is boredom. They are bored with each other so they go on talking. They go on giving each other news of the neighborhood, what was in the newspaper, what was on the radio, what was on the tv, what was in the film. They go on talking and chattering just to create a screen, a smokescreen, so the other is not felt. Lovers never like to chatter. Whenever lovers are together they will remain silent, because in silence merging is possible.

Lovers can merge in many ways. Both can enjoy a certain thing, and that enjoyment becomes a merger. Two lovers can meditate on a flower and enjoy the flower -- then the flower becomes the merger. Both enjoying the same thing, both feeling ecstatic about the same thing, they merge. Sex is only one of the ways. Two lovers can enjoy poetry, a haiku, two lovers can enjoy painting, two lovers can just go for a walk and enjoy the walk together. The only thing necessary is togetherness. Whatsoever the act, if they can be together they can merge.

Sex is one of the ways of being together, bodily together. And I say not the supreme, because it depends.... If you are a very gross person, then sex seems to be the supreme. If you are a refined person, if you have a high intelligence, then you can merge in anything. If you know higher realms of happiness, simply listening to music you can move into a deeper ecstasy than sex. Or simply sitting near a waterfall and the sound of the waterfall, and in that sound you both can merge. You are no more there; only the water falling and the sound, and that can become a higher peak of orgasm than can ever be attained through sex. Sex is for the gross. That is only one of the many ways in which lovers can merge and forget their I and thou and become one.

And unless you transcend sex and find out other ways, sooner or later you will be fed up with your lover, because sex will become repetitive, it will become mechanical. And then you will start looking for another partner, because the new attracts. Unless your partner remains constantly new you will get fed up. And it is very difficult; if you have only one way of enjoying each other's togetherness, it is bound to become a routine. If you have so many ways to be together, only then can your togetherness remain fresh, alive, young, and always new.

Lovers are never old. Husbands and wives are always old; they may be married only for one day but they are old -- one day old. The mystery has gone, the newness disappeared. Lovers are always young. They may have been together for seventy years but they are still young, the freshness is there. And this is possible only if sex is one of the ways of being together, not the only way. Then you can find millions of ways of being together, and you enjoy that togetherness. That togetherness is felt as oneness.

If two can exist as one, then many can exist as one. Love becomes the door for meditation, prayer. That is the meaning when Jesus goes on insisting that love is God -- because love becomes the door, the opening towards the divine.

So to conclude, love is a relationship and yet not a relationship. Love exists between two, that's why you can call it a relationship. And still, if love exists at all it is not a relationship, because the two must disappear and become one. Hence I call it one of the basic paradoxes, one of the basic mysteries which logic cannot reveal.

If you ask logic and mathematics, they will say that if there are two they will remain two, they cannot become one. If they become one, then they cannot remain two. This is simple Aristotelean logic: one is one, two are two, and if you say that two have become one, then they cannot remain two. And this is the problem -- that love is both two and one simultaneously. If you are too much logic-obsessed, love is not for you. But even an Aristotle falls in love, because logic is one thing, but nobody is ready to lose love for logic. Even an Aristotle falls in love, and even an Aristotle knows that there are points where mathematics is transcended -- two become one and yet remain two.

This has been one of the problems for theologicians all over the world, and they have discussed it for many centuries. No conclusion has been reached, because no conclusion can be reached through logic. Not only with lovers -- the same is the problem with God. Whether the devotee becomes one or remains separate -- the same problem. A bhakta, a devotee -- whether he remains ultimately separate from his god or becomes one, the same problem.

Mohammedans insist that he remains separate, because if he becomes one then love cannot exist. When you have become one, who is going to love and whom? So Mohammedans pray, "Let me be separate so that I can love you. Let there be a gap so that devotees can be in prayer and love." Hindus have said that the devotee becomes one with the divine, but then it's a problem: if the devotee becomes one with the divine, then where is the devotion? where can the devotion exist? And if the devotee becomes the divine he becomes equal, so God is not higher than the devotee.

My attitude is this: just as it happens in love, it happens with the divine. You remain separate and yet you become one. You remain separate on the surface, in the depths you have become one. The devotee becomes the god and still remains the devotee. But then it is illogical. You can refute me very easily, you can argue against it very easily, but if you have loved you will understand.

And if you have not loved yet then don't waste a single moment -- be in love immediately, because life cannot give you a higher peak than love. And if you cannot achieve a natural peak that life offers to you, you cannot be capable, worthy, of achieving any other peaks which are not ordinarily available. Meditation is a higher peak than love. If you cannot love, are incapable of love, meditation is not for you.

It happened once, a man came to Ramanuja. Ramanuja was a mystic, a devotee mystic, a very unique person -- a philosopher and yet a lover, a devotee. It rarely happens -- a very acute mind, a very penetrating mind, but with a very overflowing heart. A man came and asked Ramanuja, "Show me the way towards the divine. How can I attain the God?"

So Ramanuja asked, "First let me ask a question. Have you ever loved anybody?"

The devotee must have been a really religious person. He said, "What are you talking about? Love? I am a celibate. I avoid women just as one should avoid diseases. I don't look at them, I close my eyes."

Ramanuja said, "Still, think a little. Move into the past, find out. Somewhere in your heart, has there ever been any flickering -- even a small one -- of love?"

The man said, "But I have come here to learn prayer, not to learn love. Teach me how to pray. You are talking about worldly things and I have heard that you are a great mystic saint. I have come here just to be led into the divine, not to talk about worldly things!"

Ramanuja is reported to have said... he even became very sad, and said to the man, "Then I cannot help you. If you have no experience of love then there is no possibility for any experience of prayer. So first go into the world and love, and when you have loved and you are enriched through it, then come to me -- because only a lover can understand what prayer is. If you don't know anything illogical through experience, you cannot understand. And love is prayer given by nature easily -- you cannot attain even that. Prayer is love not given so easily, it is achieved only when you reach higher peaks of totality. Much effort is needed to achieve it. For love no effort is needed; it is available, it is flowing. You are resisting it."

The same is the problem, and the problem arises because of our logical minds. Aristotle says, "a is a, b is b, and a cannot be b." This is a simple logical process. If you ask the mystics, they say, "a is a, b is b but a also can be b, and b also can be a." Life is not divided into solid blocks. Life is a flow, it transcends blocks. It moves from one pole to the other. Love is a relationship and yet not a relationship.