13 Provocative Osho Quotes on Love, Freedom, and Aloneness

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Excerpt: This collection of Osho Quotes on love will challenge not only how you think about love, but how you think about freedom and aloneness, too.

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Introduction: Why isn’t this taught in school?

We spend years of our lives—decades even—studying math, science, and history in formal educational settings yet rarely (if ever) take even a single class on love, relationships, or dealing with our being… seems a little out of proportion wouldn’t you think?

This is not to say that math, science, or history are not important. It’s simply to bring back to light the importance of reading, researching, and reflecting on the topics of love, relationships, and dealing with your being on your own time.

Changing the curricula and priorities of our educational systems is beyond the intent of this post. Changing the way you view personal development and self-help books, however, is an idea and action that is well within our grasps.

Why is it that when it comes to understanding a subject like math, there’s an easy and direct connection: read books, answer challenging questions, and seek help from educators… but when it comes to understanding a subject like ourselves there’s only a, “ya-live-and-ya-learn-when-ya-got-time” policy?  

Why don’t we spend more time immersing ourselves in the topics of love, relationships, and inner being when these are the very subjects that explain who we are, why we are, how we relate, how we differ, how we feel, why we feel, etc?

Why must we prioritize learning advanced external information (i.e. math equations) that has little application or use in living out our daily lives when nearly everybody on the planet (who has their basic needs for survival met) has circling thoughts and questions about their inner lives, their relationships, their being, and their purpose every single day?  

Not reading about, thinking about, or reflecting about love, relationships, and our being is a mistake and leads to unnecessary suffering, confusion, and poor decision making throughout our lifetimes. All it takes is one thought to change the entire mental infrastructure from which we view and interact with the world. One thought. Now imagine the life-changing power compiled into the thought collection that is a book!

Our list of 13 Osho quotes on love below came from the book, Love, Freedom, Aloneness: The Koan of Relationships. It has served for me as one of the, “mental infrastructure changing books” mentioned above. These quotes are not meant to serve as a list of answers but rather as food for thought. I encourage you to open your mind, read the list, and reflect on how they might shed light onto the circling questions of your mind as you move forward in life. Good luck!

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The List: 13 Provocative Osho Quotes on Love, Freedom, and Aloneness:

“Many times I say learn the art of love, but what I really mean is: Learn the art of removing all that hinders love.  It is a negative process.  It is like digging a well:  You go on removing many layers of earth, stones, rocks, and then suddenly there is water.  The water was always there; it was an undercurrent.  Now you have removed all the barriers, the water is available.  So is love: Love is the undercurrent of your being.  It is already flowing, but there are many rocks, many layers of earth to be removed.”

Osho, Love, Freedom, Aloneness

“Love has to be of the quality that gives freedom, not new chains for you; a love that gives you wings and supports you to fly as high as possible.”

Osho, Love, Freedom, Aloneness

“I say to you, you are absolutely free, unconditionally free.  Don’t avoid the responsibility; avoiding is not going to help.  The sooner you accept it the better, because immediately you can start creating yourself.  And the moment you create yourself great joy arises, and when you have completed yourself, the way you wanted to, there is immense contentment, just as when a painter finishes his painting, the last touch, and a great contentment arises in his heart.  A job well done brings great peace.  One feels that one has participated with the whole.”

Osho, Love, Freedom, Aloneness

“In real love there is no relationship, because there are not two persons to be related to.  In real love there is only love, a flowering, a fragrance, a melting, a merging.  Only in egoistic love are there two persons, the lover and the loved.  And whenever there is the lover and the loved, love disappears.  Whenever there is love, the lover and the beloved both disappear into love.”

Osho, Love, Freedom, Aloneness

“When you don’t need a person at all, when you are totally sufficient unto yourself, when you can be alone and tremendously happy and ecstatic, then love is possible.  But then, too, you cannot be certain whether the other’s love is real or not – you can be certain about only one thing: whether your love is real.  How can you be certain about the other?  But then there is no need.  This continuous anxiety about whether the other’s love is real or not simply shows one thing: that your love is not real.  Otherwise, who bothers?  Why be worried about it?  Enjoy it while it lasts, be together while you can be together!  It is a fiction, but you need fiction.”

Osho, Love, Freedom, Aloneness

“Unless meditation is achieved, love remains a misery.  Once you have learned how to live alone, once you have learned how to enjoy your simple existence, for no reason at all, then there is a possibility of solving the second, more complicated problem of two persons being together.  Only two meditators can live in love – and then love will not be a koan.  But then it will not be a relationship, either, in the sense that you understand it.  It will be simply a state of love, not a state of relationship.”

Osho, Love, Freedom, Aloneness

“When you say to a woman or a man, ‘I love you,’ you are simply saying, ‘I cannot be deceived by your body, I have seen you.  Your body may become old but I have seen you, the bodiless you.  I have seen your innermost core, the core that is divine.’  Liking is superficial.  Love penetrates and goes to the very core of the person, touches the very soul of the person.”

Osho, Love, Freedom, Aloneness

“Love is a ladder.  It starts with one person, it ends with the totality.  Love is the beginning, God is the end.  To be afraid of love, to be afraid of the growing pains of love, is to remain enclosed in a dark cell.  Modern man is living in a dark cell.  It is narcissistic – narcissism is the greatest obsession of the modern mind.  And then there are problems, which are meaningless.  There are problems that are creative because they lead you to higher awareness.  There are problems that lead you nowhere; they simply keep you tethered, they simply keep you in your old mess.  Love creates problems.  You can avoid those problems by avoiding love – but those are very essential problems!  They have to be faced, encountered; they have to be lived and gone through and gone beyond.  And to go beyond, the way is through.  Love is the only real thing worth doing.  All else is secondary.  If it helps love, it is good.  All else is just a means, love is the end.  So whatsover the pain, go into love.”

Osho, Love, Freedom, Aloneness

“Forget relationships and learn how to relate.  Once you are in a relationship you start taking each other for granted – that’s what destroys all love affairs.  The woman thinks she knows the man, the man thinks he knows the woman.  Nobody knows either!  It is impossible to know the other, the other remains a mystery.  And to take the other for granted is insulting, disrespectful.  To think that you know your wife is very, very ungrateful.  How can you know the woman? How can you know the man? They are processes, they are not things.  The woman that you knew yesterday is not there today.  So much water has gone down the Ganges; she is somebody else, totally different.  Relate again, start again, don’t take it for granted.  And the man that you slept with last night, look at his face again in the morning.  He is no more the same person, so much has changed.  So much, incalculably much has changed.  That is the difference between a thing and a person.  The furniture in the room is the same, but the man and the woman, they are no more the same.  Explore again, start again.  That’s what I mean by relating.”

Osho, Love, Freedom, Aloneness

“Remain continuously on a honeymoon.  Go on searching and seeking each other, finding new ways of loving each other, finding new ways of being with each other.  And each person is such an infinite mystery, inexhaustible, unfathomable, that it is not possible that you can ever say, ‘I have known her,’ or, ‘I have known him.’  At the most you can say, ‘I have tried my best, but the mystery remains a mystery.’  In fact the more you know, the more mysterious the other becomes.  Then love is a constant adventure.”

Osho, Love, Freedom, Aloneness

“Love knows no boundaries.  Love cannot be jealous, because love cannot possess.  It is ugly, the very idea that you possess somebody because you love.  You possess somebody – it means you have killed somebody and turned him into a commodity.   Only things can be possessed.  Love gives freedom.  Love is freedom.”

Osho, Love, Freedom, Aloneness

“If you love a person and live the whole life with him or with her, a great intimacy will grow and love will have deeper and deeper revelations to make to you.  It is not possible if you go on changing partners very often.  It is as if you go on changing a tree from one place to another, then another; then it never grows roots anywhere.  To grow roots, a tree needs to remain in one place.  Then it goes deeper; then it becomes stronger.  Intimacy is good, and to remain in one commitment is beautiful, but the basic necessity is love.  If a tree is rooted in a place where there are only rocks and they are killing the tree, then it is better to remove it.  Then don’t insist that it should remain in the one place.  Remain true to life – remove the tree, because now it is going against life.”

Osho, Love, Freedom, Aloneness

“People should be taught that nobody can love twenty-four hours a day; rest periods are needed.  And nobody can love on order.  Love is a spontaneous phenomenon.  Whenever it happens, it happens, and whenever it doesn’t happen it doesn’t happen.  Nothing can be done about it.  If you do anything, you will create a pseudo phenomenon, an acting.  Real lovers, intelligent lovers, will make each other alert to the phenomenon:  ‘When I want to be alone that does not mean that I am rejecting you.  In fact, it is because of your love that you have made it possible for me to be alone.’  And if your woman wants to be left alone for one night, for a few days, you will not feel hurt.  You will not say that you have been rejected, that your love has not been received and welcomed.  You will respect her decision to be alone for a few days.  In fact, you will be happy!  Your love was so much that she is feeling empty; now she needs rest to become full again.  This is intelligence.”

Osho, Love, Freedom, Aloneness

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If you enjoyed these Osho quotes on love, freedom, and aloneness you should definitely pick up his book.  It comes highly recommended!