The first truth to experience is that one is alone. The first truth to experience is that love is illusory. Just think of it, just think of the enormity of it, that love is illusory. And you have lived only through that illusion . . .
You were in love with your parents, you were in love with your brothers and sisters, then you started falling in love with a woman or a man. You are in love with your country, your church, your religion, and you are in love with your car, and ice cream – and so on and so forth. You are living in all these illusions.
And suddenly you find yourself naked, alone, all illusions have disappeared. It hurts.
Just this morning, Vivek was saying – and she has been saying again and again with these Ikkyu discourses – “These discourses are heavy, depressing.” They are bound to be so, because whenever any of your illusions are touched it creates great restlessness. You become afraid; somehow you were managing it – and you know deep down that there is no bottom to it but you don’t want to look. Seeing will be frightening; you want to go on remaining in the illusion.
Nobody wants to see that his love is false. People are ready to believe that their past loves were false – but this? No, this love is true. When it has disappeared, they will say it was also false – but then another love is true. In whatsoever illusion they are living, they pretend that this one is true. “Others – Ikkyu may be right, Osho may be right about other loves, they were false, we know. But this one? This one is a totally different thing. This is not an ordinary love, I have found my soul mate.”
Nobody has ever found one – how can you find your soul mate? Aloneness is absolute. These are just efforts to deceive yourself – and you can go on deceiving. That’s what you have been doing down the ages, for so many lives . . .
-Osho
From Take it Easy #15, previously Take it Easy, V.2 #1
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