The Dark Gap Is Love

By Osho

Excerpts from

Love's Mysteries 

p.17 to 23

If you think too much – and thinking is always of the past or of the future – your energies will be distracted from feeling. Feeling is herenow. If your energies are moving into the pattern of thinking then you will not have enough energies to move into feelings – and love will not be possible.

So the first step is to be herenow. Future and past bring thinking; thinking destroys feeling. And a person obsessed with thinking, by and by completely forgets that he has a heart too. A man who is into thinking to much, by and by starts moving in such a way, starts living in such a way, where feeling has no say. Not listening to the feeling and by and by feeling starts fading away from him. There are millions of people in this state, who don’t know what heart means. They think heart is just a pump. Their whole concentration is in the head. Head is an extremity – it is needed, it is a good instrument, but it has to be used as a slave. It should not be the master. Once the head becomes the master and the heart is left behind, you will live, you will die, but you will not know what is god, because you will not know what is love. The same dark interval, first contacted looks like love…and when you are lost into it totally, it becomes God. Love is the beginning of God – or God, the ultimate peak of love.

The second step towards love, and towards the divine melody, is: learn to transform your poisons into honey. Because many people love, but their love is very much contaminated by poisons – with hate, jealousy, anger, possessiveness…a thousand and one poisons surround your love. Love is a delicate thing. Just think of anger, hatred, possession, jealousy – how can love survive?

First, people move into the head and forget the heart – they are in the majority. A minority still lives a little in the heart, but then that minority does another wrong: the small light of love is surrounded by jealousy, hatred, anger, a thousand and one poisons. The whole journey becomes bitter. I told you, love is the ladder between heaven and hell, but the ladder is always a two-way thing: you can go up, and you can come down – you will be entering into hell and not into heaven. And instead of attaining to a melody, your life will become a nauseous noise – conflicting, traffic noise, a cacophony of noises with no harmony. You will remain on the verge of madness.

So the second thing to remember is: learn to transform your poisons into honey. How are they transformed? There is no simple process. In fact, to call it transformation is not right, because you didn’t do anything; you only need patience. This is one of the greatest secrets I am telling you. Try it: when anger comes, you are not to do anything, just sit silently and watch it. Don’t be against it, don’t be for it. Don’t cooperate with it, don’t repress it. Just watch it, be patient, just see what happens…let it rise.

Remember: don’t do anything in the moment of anger – wait. Just give it a little time and wait…and you will be surprised. And one day you will understand that if you can wait enough, anger itself becomes compassion. It is a wheel; it is moving on its own – You are in a hurry. Just as night becomes day if you can wait a little, in the same way, anger becomes compassion if you can wait a little. The same energy – just patience has to be added to it, nothing else. You try it.

Never do anything in the mood when the poison is possessing you; just wait. When the poison has started changing into its other…This is one of the basic laws of life: that everything continuously changes into its other. Just as I told you that man changes into woman, woman changes into man, there are periodical changes in you – the good man becomes the bad, the bad man becomes the good; the saint has sinner’s moments and the sinner has saintly moments…one has to just wait.

Act when the saint is uppermost – that’s all. Don’t act when the sinner is uppermost, don’t act when anger is uppermost, otherwise you will repent, you will create a chain of reactions and you will get into karma. That is the whole meaning of getting into karma. Do anything when you are in a negative moment and you will be in a chain, and then there is no end to it. When you are negative you do something, the other becomes negative, the other is ready to do something – negativity creates more negativity. Negativity provokes more negativity, anger brings more anger, hostility brings more hostility, and things go on and on and on…and people have been entangled with each other for Lives together. And they continue!

Wait. When you are angry, it is the moment to meditate. Don’t waste this moment anger is creating such a great energy in you. It can destroy. But energy is neutral – the same energy that can destroy, can be creative. The same energy that can shatter, can shower life – just wait, waiting, and not doing anything in a hurry, one day you will be surprised, seeing the inner change. You were full of anger, and then anger goes on and on and comes to a climax…and then the wheel turns. You can see the wheel is turning, the anger is relaxing, and energy is being released, and now, you are in a positive mood – the creative mood. Now you can do something. Do it. Always wait for the positive.

What I am saying is not repression. I am not saying to repress the negative, I am saying – watch the negative. Remember the difference is there. I am not saying to sit on top of the negative, forget the negative, do something against it – no. I am not saying when you are angry, smile - no; that smile is false, ugly, phoney. When you are angry, then close the room, keep a mirror in front of you, see your angry face yourself. There is no need to show it to anybody else. It is your business, it is your energy, it is your life, and you have to wait for the right moment. Go on looking in the mirror: see the red face, the red eyes, the murderer there.

Have you ever thought that everybody carries a murderer inside? You also carry a murderer inside. Don’t think that the murderer exists somewhere else – somebody else is a murderer who commits a murder – no, everybody has the possibility to commit a murder. You carry the suicidal instinct in you.

Just look in the mirror: these are your climates – you have to be acquainted with them. This is part of the growth towards self-knowledge. You have heard so much from Socrates still today: ‘Know thyself?’ – but is this the way to know thyself. ‘Know thyself’ does not mean sit silently and repeat? ‘I am Brahma, I am Soul, I am God, I am This’ – all this is nonsense. ‘Know thyself’ means know all your climates, all possibilities – the murderer, the sinner, the criminal, the saint, the holy man inside you, the virtue, the God, the Devil – know all the climates, the whole range of it, and by knowing it you will be discovering secrets, keys.

You will see that anger cannot be there forever – or can it be? You have not tried it, so try it – it cannot be there forever. If you don’t do anything, what is going to be there forever. If you don’t do anything, what is going to happen? Can anger hang there forever and ever? Nothing hangs there forever. Happiness comes and goes, unhappiness comes and goes. Can’t you see a simple law – that everything changes, nothing remains permanent. So why be in a hurry? Anger has come – it will go. You just wait, have a little patience. Just look in the mirror and wait. Let anger be there, let your face go ugly and murderous – but wait, watch.

Don’t repress, and don’t act according to the anger, and soon you will see that the face is becoming softer, eyes are becoming calmer, the energy is changing – the male is turning into female…and soon you will be full of radiance. The same redness that was anger, now is a certain radiance – a beauty on your face, in your eyes. Now go out; the time has come to act.

Act when you are positive. Don’t force positivity, wait for the positivity to come on its own. This is the secret – when I say, ‘learn to transform your poisons into honey,’ this is what I mean.

Third: whenever it is negative, keep it to yourself. Whenever it is positive, share. Ordinarily, people share their negativities, they don’t share their positivities. Humanity is simply stupid. when they are happy, they don’t share, they are very miserly. When they ate unhappy, they are very, very spendthrift – then they are ready to share. When people smile, they smile very economically – just so, so far. But when they are angry, they are totally angry. The third step is to share the positivity. That will bring your love flowing like a river, arising from your heart. You dilemma of the heart will start moving when you share.

I have heard a very strange saying of Jorge Luis Borges:

Give that which is holy unto the dogs

Cast thy pearls before swine

For the thing that mattereth is giving

You have heard the contrary saying: Don’t throw to the dogs, and don’t cast pearls before the swine, because they will not understand.

The real thing is not what you are giving – pearls and holiness and love – and To whom you are giving; that is not the point. The point is that you are giving. When you have, give it.

Gurdjieff used to say, ‘All that I hoarded was lost, and all that I gave is mine. All that I gave is still with me, and all that I hoarded is lost, gone.’ True: you only have that which you have shared. You have only as much love as you have shared. Love is not a property to be hoarded, it is a radiance, a fragrance to be shared. The more you share, the more you have; the less you share, the less you have. The more you share, the more it will arise from your innermost core – it is infinite: more will be welling up. Draw water from a well, and more water comes running fresh into the well. Don’t draw the water, close the well, become a miser, and no more will the springs then function. By and by, the spring will become dead, blocked; and the water that is in the well will die, will become stale, dirty. The flowing water is fresh…the flowing love is fresh.

So the third step towards love is: share your positivities, share your life, share all that you have. Whatsoever beautiful is with you, never hoard it. Your wisdom, share; your prayer, share; your love, your happiness, your delight, share. Yes, if you cannot find anybody, share it with dogs – but share. Share it with rocks – but share. When you have pearls, throw them – don’t bother whether they are swine or saints, just throw them. The thing that mattereth is giving.

Hoarding poisons the heart. All hoarding is poisonous. If you share, your system will be free of poisons. And when you give, don’t bother whether it is responded to or not. Don’t even wait for a thank you. Feel grateful to the person who allowed you to share something with him. Not otherwise – don’t wait, saying deep in your heart that he should be thankful because you shared something with him. No – feel thankful yourself that he was ready to listen to you, to share some energy with you…that he was ready to listen to your song…that he was ready to see your dance…that when you had come to give to him, he didn’t reject – he could have rejected. Sharing is one of the most spiritual virtues, one of the greatest spiritual virtues.

The fourth: Once you start thinking that you are somebody, you stop; then love does not flow. Love flows out only of somebody who is a nobody. Love abides only in nothingness. When you are empty, there is love. When you are full of the ego, love disappears. Love and ego cannot exist together. Love can exist with God, but cannot exist with the ego, because love and God are synonymous. Love and ego are impossible to be together. So be nothing. That is the meaning of being humble, meek. Says Jesus: Blessed are the meek, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.

p.29

If you start living rightly...and what do I mean by 'rightly'? Those four steps: be herenow, learn to transform your poisons into honey, share your positivity, and be nothing. That's what I mean by 'living rightly.'

If you live rightly, in twenty-four hours’ time you will cross many times to this shore form that, from that to this, from this to that – many times God will penetrate you, radiate you. Many times you will be suddenly on the other shore. Walking on the street…and suddenly he is there. The sun is falling on you, the sunrays falling behind the trees…and suddenly the other shore is there. It is not somewhere far away, near other galaxies; it is always here. It is a quality of your awareness, it is a quality of your understanding, it is a quality of your meditation, if you are unburdened here, unobsessed with the worldly things.

Live in the world, but don’t allow the world to live in you.

Published by Osho International Foundation, 1998