Reading of The Day: Portrait of an Artist as a Lover

I got this from Osho Times e-mail newsletter and I personally find this a very enlightening read regarding love. It’s a bit lengthy, but it’s definitely worth the time.

Honestly speaking I would rather post a link here, but since I can’t find any permanent link on the site that I can link to, I have to copy the whole article and paste it over here. Just as a disclaimer:

I claim no rights of the reposting of this material, no modifications of any kind has been done to this material and the necessary copyright information has been accompanied with the material itself. Should this act of copying is deemed illegal or inethical, please notify me as soon as possible so that I can take it down upon notice.

As an artist, I can easily put my feelings of love and joy into my work. Why can’t I express the same feelings to fellow humans?

From Osho Times Online: Your Answers on Relating (July 2005 Issue)

It is easy to be a sculptor because you are working with lifeless objects. You can create beautiful statues but those statues are dead. You cannot relate with them, you are alive. There is no dialogue possible between life and death.

You can appreciate; you can enjoy; it is your creation. You can feel fulfilled — whatever you wanted, you succeeded in doing it. But remember one thing: on the other side, there is no one. You are alone.

Because of this situation, there are people who can love their dogs, who can love their gardens, who can love their cars, who can love anything in the world except man. Because man means you are not alone, the other is there. It is a dialogue. With a statue, it is a monologue. The statue is not going to say anything, is not going to criticize you, is not going to possess you. You possess the statue; you can sell it in the market. But that you cannot do with a human being. That is the problem.

When you start relating with human beings, you have to take into consideration that they are not things, they are consciousnesses. You cannot dominate them…although almost everybody is trying to do that, and spoiling their whole life. The moment you try to dominate a human being, you are creating an enemy, because that human being also wants to dominate. You may call it love, you may call it friendship, but behind the curtain of friendship and love and brotherhood there is a deep will to power. You want to dominate; you don’t want to be dominated.

With human beings, you will be in constant conflict. The closer you are, the more the conflict will hurt you. There are thousands of people who have been so wounded by human relationship that they have dropped out of all human love, friendship. They have turned towards things. It is easier: the other party is always willing, whatsoever you want to do.

You are an artist, you sculpt. But have you ever thought about what you are doing? You are cutting chunks of the marble — that you cannot do to a human being, but people are doing that to human beings too. Parents are cutting their children’s wings, their freedom, their individuality. Lovers are cutting each other continuously.

To be in love with a human being is not an easy affair. The love affair is the most difficult affair in the world for the simple reason that two consciousnesses, two alive beings, cannot tolerate any kind of slavery.

When the parents say to their children “Don’t do this!” even the small child feels hurt, humiliated, insulted. And he’s going to do it if he has any guts.

You are working on objects, on things. They cannot say yes, they cannot say no. Whatever you want to do with them, you can do, but not with man. It is your fault that you have not yet become mature enough to understand that with human beings, if you want a loving relationship then you should forget all power politics. You can be just a friend, neither trying to dominate the other nor being dominated by the other. It is possible only if you have a certain meditativeness in your life. Otherwise, it is not possible.

To love a human being is one of the most difficult things in the world because the moment you start showing your love, the other starts going on a power trip. He knows you are dependent on him or on her. You can be enslaved psychologically and spiritually and nobody wants to be a slave. But all your human relationships turn into slavery.

No statue will make you a slave. On the contrary, the statue makes you a master craftsman, it makes you a creator, an artist. There is no conflict. The real test for love is with human beings.

A man is really intelligent if he can make a human relationship work smoothly. It needs great insight. Creating a statue or making a beautiful painting is one thing — those paints won’t say, “I don’t want to be put on this corner of the canvas, I simply refuse!” Wherever you want it, the paint is available. But it is not so easy with human beings.

Every human being has a birthright not to be dominated by anyone — but also a birth duty not to try to dominate anyone. And only then, friendship can flower.

Love needs a clarity of vision. Love needs a cleaning of all kinds of ugly things which are in your mind: jealousy, anger, the desire to dominate.

I have heard…in a marriage registrar’s office, a couple came to get married. They filled out the forms. The woman looked at the man — they were lovers, and they had come to the registry office against their family, because in India, marriage is not done in the registrar’s office. It is available. Legally you can do it but that happens only when you are doing something against the family, against the society.

Those two people must have been in deep love. They had revolted against the society, against the religion, against their parents, against the family. They had risked everything and they were going to be married. The woman looked at the man who was filling out the form — because she had filled out hers — and then she suddenly said to the registrar, “I want an immediate divorce.”

He said, “What happened? You are filling out forms for marriage. Even the honeymoon has not happened. In fact, even marriage has not happened because I have not sealed it. Why do you want a divorce so suddenly?”

She said, “I hate this man!”

The registrar said, “This is strange! You brought him here?”

She said, “Yes, I brought him here. I used to love him, but when I saw his form…he has signed in such big letters! He was watching when I was signing. I signed just the way I always sign, and he has signed in letters three times bigger; almost half of the form is his signature! I don’t want to live with this man, he has shown his domination, his power.”

The registrar said, “Then there is no need of any divorce. Just throw away your forms in the wastepaper basket, because I have not sealed them, and get lost.”

Such a small thing, that the man was signing in big letters but it is indicative. It shows that he’s a male chauvinist.

What about your whole life? Everything is a problem, everything is a conflict. The reason is that we have accepted a false idea that we know how to love. We don’t know. We come from animals — animals don’t love. Love is a very new thing in human life. Animals reproduce but they don’t love. You will not find in buffalos, Romeo and Juliet, Laila and Majnu, Siri and Farias, Soni and Mahival. No buffalos are interested in such romantic things — they are very earthbound, they reproduce — and nature is perfectly satisfied with buffalos, remember. Nature may be trying to destroy humanity but nature is not trying to destroy buffalos and donkeys and monkeys, no. They are not problems at all.

Love is a new phenomenon that has arisen with human consciousness. You will have to learn it.

Creating beautiful paintings, poetries, sculpture, music, dances — that is all in your hands. But when you come into contact with a human being, you have to understand that on the other side is the same kind of consciousness. You have to give respect and dignity to the person you love. This is the reason why you cannot relate with human beings.

Forget about human beings and love — you simply meditate. That will release in you the insight, the vision, the clarity, and the energy to share.

Love is another name of sharing your abundant energy. You have too much, you are burdened with it. You would like to share it with people you like. Your love — what you call love — is not a sharing, it is a snatching.

You will have to change the meaning of love. It is not something that you are trying to get from the other. And this has been the whole history of love — everybody is trying to get it from the other, as much as possible. Both are trying to get, and naturally, nobody is getting anything. Love is not something to get. Love is something to give. But you can give only when you have it. Do you have love in you? Have you ever asked this question? Sitting silently, have you ever observed? Do you have any love energy to give?

You don’t have; neither has anybody else. Then you get caught in a love relationship. Both are pretenders, pretending that they are going to give you the very paradise. Both are trying to convince each other that “Once you get married to me, a thousand Arabian nights will be forgotten — our nights, our days will all be golden.”

But you don’t know that you don’t have anything to give. All these things you are saying just to get. And the other is doing the same. Once you are married, then there is going to be trouble because both will be waiting for a thousand Arabian nights and not even an Indian night is happening! Then there is an anger, a rage which slowly, slowly becomes poisonous.

Love turning into hate is a very simple phenomenon, because everyone feels betrayed. You show one face at the beach, in the movie hall, on the dance floor. It is perfectly okay for half an hour or one hour sitting on the beach, holding each other’s hands, dreaming about the beautiful life that is ahead of you. But once you are married, all that you have been expecting, dreaming, will start evaporating.

My suggestion to you is: meditate. Become more and more silent, quiet, calm. Let a serenity arise in you. That will help you in a thousand and one ways…not only in love, it will also help you to create better sculpture. Because a man who cannot love human beings — how can he create? What can he create? A loveless heart cannot be authentically creative. He can imitate, but he cannot create.

All creation is out of love, understanding, silence.

Sermons in Stones

Copyright ©2005 Osho International Foundation