Osho Vedanta: Seven steps to Samadhi, Discourses Series Chapter 7 You Become the Offering, Question 4

The fourth question:

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

CAN LOVE BE TAUGHT? CAN ONE BE SCHOOLED IN LOVE? CAN ONE WITHOUT HEART LEARN TO HAVE HEART?

No one is without heart. You have the heart, but a nonfunctioning heart; it is there, but not functioning. It is there as a seed, it has not grown. Love cannot be taught, but situations can be created where the heart can grow; and when the heart grows love grows. Situations are needed. Love cannot be taught like mathematics. Mathematics can be directly taught, it is informative; love cannot be taught that way, it is not simply information. You have to grow, you have to change -- but situations can be created.

In old Eastern universities -- Nalanda, Taxila -- there were many situations created where love became possible. For example, children were not taught under the roofs, in the rooms; they were always taught under the trees, in the shade of the trees. Have you ever felt any difference? Sit by the side of a concrete wall, and then go out, close your eyes, sit under a tree, your back in contact with the tree, and feel the difference. With a concrete wall you can feel only death just behind you, everything dead -- and a dead situation makes you dead. Under a living tree in the open, where sunrays are dancing and where flowers are blooming, where the breeze will come and the tree will dance, sitting there under the tree you can feel the vibration of life. The more vibrations of life you feel, the more your heart will start functioning. Play with children and you will feel that you have become younger. One of the secrets of remaining always young is to play with children, because when you play with children you forget that you are old.

There have been many experiments. I was reading about one experiment in an Oxford laboratory. One woman who was eighty years old and almost blind, ninety percent blind, was hypnotized. In hypnosis it was suggested to her that her age was regressing, by and by she was becoming younger, then she was becoming a child again. Then the hypnotist suggested, "Now you are only eight years old" -- from eighty to eight. And then the hypnotist said, "Now open your eyes."

She opened her eyes; a book was given to her. It had been impossible for her to read anything, but she simply started reading and she said, "My eyes are so young and fresh." Just the idea that she was now eight years old, not eighty but eight years old, changed the whole pattern of the eyes.

In England there are almost eight hundred people who have gone beyond the age of one hundred. So there was a report: an interviewer went to ask many of these old persons, these centenarians, how they could live so long. Many answers were given, but I liked one the best, and it may be the key. One old man who was one hundred and twenty said, "I am still interested in young girls." That may be the key. If a person of one hundred and twenty is still interested in young girls, he can live long.

It is written in old scriptures that in India, whenever a king became old, it was suggested by the wise men that he should sleep in the night with a young girl on each side. You may be one hundred and twenty, but if a girl of twenty years falls in love with you, you cannot remain one hundred and twenty -- immediately something, regression, happens. Play with children and you will be younger; sit with old men, listen to their talk and you will feel you are dead, already dead. Your mind depends on many things; situations help.

Bernard Shaw, in his old age, changed his home from London to a village. He was then ninety, and somebody asked, "Why have you changed to this village? Why have you chosen this village?"

He said, "I was walking one day in the cemetery of this village, and there I saw one stone. It was written on that stone, on somebody's stone, that this man was born in 1800 and died in 1900, and it was written that this man died untimely, when he was only one hundred years of age. So," Bernard Shaw said, "this village is good to live in, because people here think that death at one hundred years is untimely death. This is a good milieu for living a long time." He really lived a long time.

Love cannot be taught; you cannot be given a book to read about love. But a situation, a more natural milieu, birds, trees, animals, where you feel life more, will help you to grow into your heart dimension. Persons who love are needed near you, because love is infectious. When a loving person comes near you... you may have been sad before, but when he comes -- blissful, loving -- suddenly the sadness disappears as if a cloud has moved and the sun has become visible. You feel it. Sit with someone who is sad; within minutes you will feel a sadness gathering in you. We are not like islands, we are joined together, so everyone influences everybody else.

A loving milieu is needed to teach love. In our schools, colleges, universities, there is no loving milieu. The teacher is not related at all. Just because of the traditions of the old days, in India the vice-chancellor is never called the vice-chancellor, he is called kulapati, the head of the family. There were ten thousand students in Nalanda, and the head of the family, the vice-chancellor, knew every student by his face and name. He knew everybody -- ten thousand students. When someone was ill and when someone was okay, he would go and see. He loved his students, he knew them by name. He was really the "head of the family." Just traditionally in India they still go on calling the vice-chancellor kulapati.

I was in a university, and I asked the kulapati, "What type of kulapati are you? What type of head of the family are you? You don't know even a single student by name -- no personal relationships, you are not related at all. You may be an administrator but you are not a head of the family." The teacher has to be a loving father; only through love can love be taught. If you love a child you are teaching love to him.

I was reading a letter somebody wrote to me. The woman who wrote the letter belongs to a theosophical family, very religious. She wrote to me, "Whenever there was any problem in the family, any sadness, any anger, any conflict, my mother would give me a book and she would say, 'Go and look in it.' The Philosophy of Divine Love, or The Art of Love -- but nobody loved me ever; they would always give me books to read. So I would read the books, but I never felt what love is."

Love cannot be taught in that way; a milieu has to be created. The teacher, the family, the society, must be loving; only then a child learns how to love. Many experiments have been done. A child can be brought up without the mother, or without the mother's breast. He will grow, he will be healthy, but he will become incapable of love. If the mother has not loved him, if he has not been breastfed, if he has not felt the warmth of his mother's body, if he has not been touched lovingly, he will not be able to love anybody, his sensitivity will never grow.

So I know love cannot be taught, but still I say it has to be taught. And by teaching love I mean create a milieu, an atmosphere where love can grow, where heart can start functioning. And remember, you are with a heart, but a nonfunctioning heart. It is there waiting to function, and when it starts functioning you will be totally a different person.

Enough for today.

VEDANTA: SEVEN STEPS TO SAMADHI

Chapter-7

You Become the Offering

4-CAN LOVE BE TAUGHT? CAN ONE BE SCHOOLED IN LOVE? CAN ONE WITHOUT HEART LEARN TO HAVE HEART?