baul -xii-

By and by people learn...

how not to believe, how not to trust, how to become chronic doubters.

And this happens so slowly, in such small doses, that you are never alert to what is happening to you. By the time it has happened, it is too late.

This is what people call 'experience'. They call a person 'experienced' if he has lost his contact with his heart. They say that he is a very experienced man, very clever, very cunning, nobody can deceive him.

Maybe nobody can deceive him... but he has deceived himself. He has lost all that was worthy, he has lost all. And whát is he saying?

-

Then a very peculiar phenomenon happens!

People cannot love persons, because persons can be deceptive.

They start loving things. Because there is a great néed to love... They go on finding substitutes: somebody loves his house, somebody loves his car, somebody loves his clothes, somebody loves money.

Of course, the house cannot deceive you. The love is not risky. You can love the car - a car is more reliable than a real person. You can love money - money is dead, it is always under your control.

Why do so many people love things rather than persons?

-

And even if they sometimes love a person...

they try to reduce the person to being a thing.

If you love a woman, you are immediately ready to reduce her to being 'your wife'. That is, you are ready to reduce her to a certain role: the role of a wife. Which is more predictable than the reality of a beloved...

If you love a man, you are ready to possess him like a thing. You would like him to be 'your husband', because 'a lover' is more liquid, one never knows...

A husband seems to be more solid. At least the law is there, the court is there, the police is there, the state government is there, to give a certain solidity to the husband. A lover seems to be like a dream, not so substantial.

Immediately people fall in love, they are ready to get married.

Such fear of love!

And whomsoever we love, we start trying to control.

Thát is the conflict that goes on between wives and husbands, mothers and sons, brothers and sisters, friends... whó is going to possess whom?

That means: whó is going to define whom?

Whó is going to reduce whom to a thing?

Whó will be the master?

And whó will be the slave?


~osho~
the beloved vol.1
(1977) - ch.9