Osho Story on Ramanuja

Osho - The whole existence is in love: trees love the earth, the earth loves the trees -- otherwise, how they can exist together? Who will withhold them? There must be a common link. It is not only the roots, because if the earth is not in deep love with the tree, even roots won't help. A deep invisible love exists. The whole existence, the whole cosmos moves around love. Love is the ritambhara. That's why I said yesterday: Truth plus love is ritambhara. Truth alone is too dry.

If you can understand... Right now it can only be an intellectual understanding, but keep it in your memory. Some day it can become an existential experience. It is how I feel.

Enemies love each other, otherwise why they should bother about each other? Even a man who says there is no God loves God, because he continuously says that there is no God. He is obsessed, fascinated, otherwise why bother? An atheist his whole life tries to prove there is no God. He is in such a love, and so much afraid of God, that if he is then there will be tremendous transformation in his being. So afraid, he goes on trying -- "There is no God." In his effort to prove there is no God, he is showing a deep fear that the God is calling. And if God is there, then he cannot remain the same.

It is just like a monk who moves on the street of a town with closed or half closed eyes so that he cannot see a woman. He goes on saying to himself, "There is no woman. This is all maya, illusory. This is just like a dream." But why go on trying this is just like a dream, trying to prove that there exists no love object? -- otherwise the monastery will disappear, the monkhood will disappear; his whole pattern of life will be shattered.

All is love, and love is all. From the crudest to the supreme-most, from the rock to the God, it is love... many layers, many steps, many degrees, but it is love. If you can love a woman you will be able to love a Master. If you can love a Master you will be able to love God. Loving a woman is loving the body. Body is beautiful -- nothing is wrong in it -- a miracle really. But if you can love, then love can grow.

It happened that one of the great devotees of India, Ramanuja, was passing through a town. A man came, and the man must have been the type that ordinarily is attracted towards religion: the ascetic type, the man who tries to live without love. Nobody has ever succeeded. Nobody will ever succeed, because love is the basic energy of life and existence. Nobody can succeed against it. The man asked Ramanuja that "I would like to be initiated by you. How I can find God? I would like to be accepted as a disciple."

Ramanuja looked at the man, and you can see when a man is against love; he is like a dead rock, completely dried, with no heart. Ramanuja said, "First tell me few things: have you ever loved anybody?" The man was shocked because a person like Ramanuja talking about love? -- such ordinary worldly things? He said, "What are you saying? I am a religious man. I have never loved anybody." Ramanuja persisted. He said, "You just close your eyes and think a little. You may have loved, even if you are against. You may not have loved in reality, but in imagination..." The man said, "I am absolutely against love, because love is the whole pattern of maya and illusion, and I want to get out of this world, and love is the cause people cannot get out of it. No, not even in imagination!"

Ramanuja persisted. He said, "Just look within. Sometimes in dream a love object may have appeared." The man said, "That's why I don't sleep much! But I am not here to be taught love, I am here to be taught prayer."

Ramanuja became sad, and he said, "I cannot help you, because a man who has not known love, how can he know prayer?"

Because prayer is the most refined love, the essential love -- as if the body has disappeared, only the spirit of love has remained; as if the lamp is no more there, just the flame; as if the flower has disappeared into the earth, but the fragrance is lingering in the air -- that is prayer. Sex is the body of love, love is the spirit; then, love is the body of prayer, prayer is the spirit. You can draw concentric circles: first circle sex, second circle love, and the third circle, which is the center, is prayer. Through sex you discover the body of the other, and through discovering the body of the other you discover your own body.

A man who has never been in sexual relationship with someone has no sense of His own body, because who will give you the sense? Nobody touched your body with loving hands, nobody caressed your body with loving hands, nobody embraced your body; how can you feel your body? You exist like a ghost. You don't know where your body ends and the other's body starts.

Only in a loving embrace for the first time the body takes shape; the beloved gives you the shape of your body. She shapes you, she forms you, she surrounds you all around and gives you the definition of your body. Without a beloved you don't know what type of body you have got, where the oases are in your body desert, where are the flowers, where your body is most alive and where dead. You don't know; you remain unacquainted. Who will give you the acquaintance? In fact when you fall in love and somebody loves your body, for the first time you become aware of your body, that you have a body.

Lovers help each other to know their bodies. Sex helps you to understand the body of the other, and via the other to have a feeling and definition of your own body. Sex makes you embodied, rooted in the body, and then love makes you feel yourself, soul, spirit, atma -- the second circle. And then prayer helps you to feel the no-self, or the brahma, or the God.

These are the three steps: from sex to love, from love to prayer. And there are many dimensions of love, because if the whole energy is love then there are going to be many dimensions of love. You love a woman or a man -- you become acquainted with your body. You love a Master -- you become acquainted with your self, your being, and through that acquaintance, suddenly you fall in love with the whole. The woman becomes the door for the Master, the Master becomes the door for the divine. Suddenly you fall into the whole, and you come to know the innermost core of all existence.

Jesus says rightly, "Love is God," because love is the energy that moves the stars, that moves the clouds, that allows the seeds to sprout, that allows the birds to sing, that allows you to be here. Love is the most mysterious phenomenon. It is ritambhara.

Source - Osho Book "Yoga, Vol3"

Osho on : Bodhidharma, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Dadu, Diogenes, Gorakh, Guru Nanak Dev, Hakim Sanai, Meera, Sahajo, Sarmad

Osho Stories on: Baal Shem, Diogenes, Naropa, Rabia, Shirdi Sai Baba

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