"If you really love a person." from Osho

IF YOU REALLY LOVE A PERSON you will never encroach on his or her freedom. That is the ONLY indication of your love. Your love can be proved only by one thing: how much freedom you are giving to the other -- even the freedom to love others. That is the ONLY indication of your love.

THE MORE LOVE YOU GIVE, THE MORE YOU WILL HAVE -- because by giving, your love starts flowing. It may have been dormant, stagnant; by sharing, it starts flowing. It is like drawing water from a well: the moment you start to draw water, from hidden springs more water starts coming to fill the space. If you don't draw the water from the well, the water will become dirty; it may even become poisonous. And the springs will not be used; they will become blocked. If you go on drawing water every day, more and more water will be flowing in the well, and the springs will become bigger because they will be used more.

But people live in the outside economics even in their inner life. THE WIFE BECOMES VERY ANGRY if she finds her husband just being friendly with another woman. The husband becomes aggressive, jealous, if he finds that his wife was having a good time with somebody else, just enjoying, laughing. This is sheer stupidity! It is not understanding the inner world and the inner meta-economics. He is still thinking in terms of money -- that if his wife has laughed with somebody else that means she will not be able to laugh with him any more; so much laughter is lost! Now he is a loser, and of course that creates anger.

In fact, IF THE WIFE DOES NOT LAUGH WITH MANY PEOPLE, does not enjoy friendship, is not loving to many people, her love sources will die; she will not be able to love her husband either. She will forget how to love, her springs will go dry.

That's why you see husbands and wives looking so sad and bored with each other, it is bound to happen. They are going against a natural inner law: YOU HAVE MORE, THE MORE YOU GIVE. Giving does not destroy anything in you; in fact it is creative. The person who loves many people will be able to love his wife or her husband more totally.

BUT HUMANITY HAS NOT UNDERSTOOD this simple phenomenon even yet. We are still behaving in a very childish and stupid way. It is as if your wife says, "You breathe only when I am there, and when I am not there stop breathing -- because so much breath will be lost, so much life will be lost. And when you come home and you have been breathing in every place, everywhere, you will be almost dead! So when I am not with you, stop breathing!" And the husband insists also that, "When I am not at home, you stop breathing -- so that when we are together great breathing happens!" But both will die!

THAT'S HOW WE HAVE KILLED LOVE IN THE WORLD. We have killed everything valuable, because our whole logic is stupid. It is good that the husband goes for a morning walk and breathes in the fresh air, jogs and runs on the beach, and enjoys the sun. And the wife also goes and enjoys the flowers and the trees and the grass. And when they come together, they will be able to be more alive with each other, more loving to each other. They will be at their peak; they will be full of life-juices to share. But this has not happened yet.

JEALOUSY KILLS LOVE, POSSESSIVENESS KILLS LOVE. Be non-jealous if you want great love to happen; if you want your life to grow multidimensionally, it needs freedom. You need freedom, and the person you love needs freedom. In freedom only there is expansion, growth.

Albert Einstein discovered that the universe is continuously growing and expanding. Five thousand years before Albert Einstein, the Upanishads were saying the same thing. The name they gave to the universe, "brahmand", means that which goes on expanding, which is continuously growing. There is no end to that growth, no limit to that growth. A meditator has to live his life in such a way that everything goes on growing, expanding, without any limit. Your love, your joy, your silence, your life -- EVERYTHING SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO GROW. And it can happen only if you allow the same to others.

But what we have been doing for thousands of years is just the opposite: we encroach on each other's territory, WE DESTROY EVERYBODY'S SPACE IN THE NAME OF LOVE, in the name of friendship. We use beautiful words to hide ugly realities.

IF YOU REALLY LOVE A PERSON, you will allow all the space possible to the person; you will never encroach on his or her freedom. That is the ONLY indication of your love. And the miracle is, the more we allow each other to love as many people as possible, you will find the person infinitely loving towards you -- because love is not money, love is not a commodity. It is an inner energy which grows by sharing, which dies by not sharing.

OSHO
I Am That
Ch #1: Beyond the changing
am in Buddha Hall