baul -xvi-

We are all trying to do this, one way or the other.

Somebody by possessing more money, somebody by possessing a beautiful woman, somebody by possessing prestige and power, somebody by becoming a president or a premier, somebody by becoming an artist, a poet, somebody by becoming a mahatma...

But we are áll trying, in some way or other, to prove our innermost fantasy: that we are the most important person in the world.

Then you cannot be a lover.

-

Ambition is poison for love.

A lover is not in any need to prove.

He knóws that he is loved, and that's enough.

Try to diagnose it very carefully. When you are not loved - and how can you be loved if you don't love?... - when you are not loved, and you don't love, suddenly a great need arises...

to perform, to do something, to show the world that you are important, that you are needed. There is a great need to be needed. You feel futile, impotent, useless, if you are not needed.

The need in itself is not wrong.

It is a love need to be needed.

If a woman loves you, a man loves you, you are fulfilled: somebody needs you, you are significant. Then you don't bother about the crowd. You don't go into the marketplace and shout: "I am important!"

Then you are not ambitious. You don't collect money like an obsession. If somebody loves you, in that love you are dignified. In that love you become a sovereign. Lóve makes you an emperor, a sovereign.

Love fulfills you so deeply, and so greatly... then there is no need to perform, or do anything. Ego simply does not exist with love. But... if that need is unfulfilled, then you will try to fulfill it somehow.

You would like to become a very famous man.

So many people need you...


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