RELATIONSHIP-2 RELAT-02.TXT *********************************************************************** The following has been taken from a lecture by a great Eastern teacher. It has been edited to some degree. *********************************************************************** A relationship is one of the mysteries of life. And because it exists between two persons, it depends on both. Whenever two persons meet, a new world is created. Just by their meeting, a new phenomenon comes into existance, one which was not before, one which never existed before, and through that new phenomenon, both persons are changed and transformed. Unrelated, you are one thing; related you immediately become something else. A new thing has happened. A relationship is created by you, then, in turn, a relationship creates you. Two persons meet. That means two worlds meet. It is not a simple thing. It is very complex, the most complex. Each person is a world unto him or her self, a complex mystery with a long past and with eternal future. In the beginning, only peripheries meet. If the relationship grows intimate, becomes closer, becomes deeper, then by and by, centers start meeting. When centers meet, it is called love. When peripheries meet it is called acquaintance. You touch the person from without, just from the boundry, then it is acquaintance. Many times you start calling your acquaintance your love. Then you are a fallacy. Acuquaintance is not love. Love is very rare. To meet a person at his center is to pass through a revolution in yourself, because if you want to meet a person at his center, you will have to allow that person to reach to your center also. You will have to become vulnerable, absolutely vulnerable, open. It is risky. To allow someone to reach your center is risky, dangerous. You never know what that person will do to you once all your secrets are known, once your hiddeness has become unhidden, once you are exposed completely. What the other person will do is not known to you. Fear is there, that's why we never open. It is just acquaintance, and we think love has happened. Peripheries meet, and we think we have met, you are not your periphery. Really the periphery is the boundary where you end, just the fencing around you. It is not you, the periphery is the place where you end and the world begins. Even husbands and wives who may have lived together for many years, may just be acquaintances. They may not know each other, and the more you live with someone, the more you forget completely that the centers have remained unknown. The first thing to be understood is don't take acquaintance as love. You may be making love, you may be sexually related, but sex is also peripleral. Unless centers meet, sex is just a meeting of two bodies, and a meeting of two bodies is not your meeting. Sex also remains acquaintance - bodily, but still acquaintance. You can allow someone to enter you to your center only when you are not afraid, when you are not fearful. So, I say to you, there are two types of living, one is fear oriented, the other is love oriented. Fear oriented living can never lead you into a deep relationship. You remain afraid, and the other cannot be allowed to penetrate you to your very core. Up to an extent, you allow the other to penetratte, then a wall comes and everything stops. The love oriented person is the spiritual person. The love oriented person is one who is not afraid of the future, one who is not afraid of the result or of the consequence, one who lives here and now. In an Eastern scripture it says "Don't be bothered about the result. That is the fear oriented mind. Don't think about what will or could happen. Just be here and act totally." Don't calculate. A fear oriented mind is always calculating, planning, arranging, safeguarding, one's whole life is lost in this way. Love is a rare flowering. It only happens sometimes. Millions and millions of people live in the false attitude that they are lovers. They believe that they love, but that is only their belief. Love is a rare flowering. Sometimes it happens. It is rare because it can only happen when there is no fear, never before. That means love can only happen to a deeply spiritual person. Sex is possible for all. Acquaintance is possible for all, not love. When you are not afraid, then there is nothing to hide. Then you can be open. Then you can withdraw all the boundries then you can invite the other to penetrate you to the very core. And remember. If you allow someone to penetrate you deeply, the other will allow you to penetrate into him or her self. When you are not afraid, the other becomes fearless. In your love, fear is always there. The husband is afraid of the wife. The wife is afraid of the husband. If they are afraid then it is not love. Then it is just an arrangement of two fearful persons depending on each other, fighting, exploiting, manupulating, dominating, controling, possessing. But it is not love. If you can allow love to happen, There is no need for prayer, There is no need for meditation, There is no need for any church or temple, You can forget all of these if you can love. Because, through love, everything will happen for you meditation, prayer, God. That's what Jesus meant when he said "Love is God". But love is difficult. Fear has to be dropped. And this is the strange thing, you are so afraid, yet you have nothing to lose. The poet Kabir has said "I look into people. They are so afraid, but I cannot see why. They have nothing to lose. It is like a person who is naked, but never goes to take a bath in the river because he is afraid his clothes will be stolen". This is the situation you are in, you have no clothes, but you are always afraid of losing them. What have you got to lose? Nothing! This body will be taken by death. Before it is taken by death, give it to love! Whatsoever you have will be taken away, why not share it? That is the only way of possessing it. If you can share and give, you are the master. It is going to be taken away. There is nothing you can retain forever, death will destroy everything. So, if you follow me rightly, the struggle is between death and love. If you can give, there will be no death. Before anything can be taken from you, you will have already have given it. You will have made it a gift. There can be no death. For a lover, there is no death. For a non-lover, every moment is a death. Because, every moment, something is being snatched away from him. The body is disappearing, he is losing it every moment. There will be death and everything will be annihilated. What is the fear? Why are you so afraid of being known? Even if everything is known about you and you are an open book, why do you fear? How can it harm you? The fear is just a false conception, given by society, that you have to hide. That you have to protect yourself, that you constantly have to be in a fighting mood, that everybody is an enemy, that everything is against you. Nobody is against you. Even if you feel somebody is against you, he too, is not against you. Everybody is concerned with himself, not with you. There is nothing to fear! This has to be realized before a real deep relationship can happen. There is nothing to fear! Meditate on it. Then, allow the other to enter you, invite the other to enter you. Do not create any barrier anywhere, become a passage, no locks, no closed doors in you. Then deep love is possible. When two centers meet, there is love. And love is an alchemical phenomenon. It is just like the meeting of hydrogen and oxygen, a new thing, water, is created. You can have hydrogen, you can have oxygen, but if you are thirsty, they will be useless. You can have as much of both as you want but the thirst will not go. When two centers meet, a new thing is created. That new thing is love. And it is like water, the thirst is satisified, suddenly you become content. That is the visible sign of love, you become content, as if you have achieved everything. There is nothing to achieve now. You have reached the goal. There is no more goal. The destiny is fulfilled. The seed has become a flower. It has come to its total flowering. Deep contentment is the visible sign of love. Whenever a person is in love, his love cannot be seen, he is in deep contentment. But you can see his contentment, the deep satisfaction around him. His every movement is content. When there is love and two have met, and desolved, and merged, and a new alchemical quality is born, contentment is there. It is as if the whole existance has stopped. There is no movement. I say to you: Drop fears, be fearless, be open, allow some center to meet the center within you, you will be reborn through it, a new quality of being will be created. This quality of being says there is God. God is not an argument, God is a fulfillment, a feeling of fulfillment. You may have observed that whenever you are discontent, you want to deny God. Whenever you are dissatisfied, your whole being wants to say there is no God. Atheism is not out of logic, it is out of discontent and that's why you may say you are discontent and that's why you are an atheist. You may say there is no God and you have proofs. But that is not the true thing. If you are satisfied, suddenly your whole being says there is God. Suddenly you feel it, the whole existance becomes devine. If love is there you will feel, for the first time that existance is a blessing. Much has to be done before this can happen. You have to destroy all that creates barriers in you. Make love a spiritual practice. Do not allow it to be just a frivolous thing. Don't allow it to be just an occupation of the mind. Don't let it be just a bodily satisfaction. Make it an inner search, take the other as a help, as a friend. If you have heard anything about tantra you will know that tantra says: If you have a partner who is ready to move with you towards the inner center, who is ready to move with you to the highest peak of relationship, then this relationship will become meditative. Then through this relationship, you will achieve the ultimate relationship. Then your partner becomes a door for you. Fall in love, and don't make it a struggle, make it a deep allowance for the other, just an invitation. Allow the other to penetrate you without any conditions and suddenly A MAGICAL HAPPENING MANEFESTS LOVE --Spoken by the Enlightened One in Puna India