If you love a person, how can you destroy his or her freedom? If you trust a person, you trust her or his freedom too.
I said, 'Why?'
He said, 'I trusted my wife and she has betrayed me. I had trusted her absolutely and she has been in love with some other man. And I never came to know about it until just now! I have got hold of a few letters. So then I inquired, and then I insisted, and now she has confessed that she has been in love all the time. I will commit suicide' he said.
I said, 'You say you trusted her?'
He said, 'Yes, I trusted her and she betrayed me.'
What do you mean by trust?—some wrong notion about trust; trust also seems to be political.
'You trusted her so that she would not betray you. Your trust was a trick. Now you want to make her feel guilty. This is not trust.'
He was very puzzled. He said, 'What do you mean by trust then, if this is not trust? I trusted her unconditionally.'
I said, 'If I were in your place, trust would mean to me that I trust her freedom, and I trust her intelligence, and I trust her loving capacity. If she falls in love with somebody else, I trust that too. She is intelligent, she can choose. She is free, she can love. I trust her understanding.'
What do you mean by trust? When you trust her intelligence, her understanding, her awareness, you trust it. And if she finds that she would like to move into love with somebody else, it is perfectly okay. Even if you feel pain, that is your problem; it is not her problem. And if you feel pain, that is not because of love, that is because of jealousy.
What kind of trust is this, that you say it has been betrayed? My understanding of trust is that it cannot be betrayed. By its very nature, by its very definition, trust cannot be betrayed. It is impossible to betray trust. If trust can be betrayed, then it is not trust. Think over it.
If I love a woman, I trust her intelligence infinitely. And, if in some moments she wants to be loving to somebody else, it is perfectly good. I have always trusted her intelligence. She must be feeling like that. She is free. She is not my other half, she is independent. And when two persons are independent individuals, only then there is love. Love can flow only between two freedoms. tvis204
I have seen couples who have lived together for thirty or forty years; still, they seem to be as immature as they were on their first day together. Still the same complaint: "She doesn't understand what I am saying." Forty years being together and you have not been able to figure out some way that your wife can understand exactly what you are saying, and you can understand exactly what she is saying.
But I think there is no possibility for it to happen except through meditation, because meditation gives you the qualities of silence, awareness, a patient listening, a capacity to put yourself in the other's position.
It is possible with me: I am not concerned with the trivia of your life.
You are here basically to listen and understand.
You are here to grow spiritually. enligh16
I was talking to a friend yesterday. There is a conflict between him and his wife. As is natural, he thought if he had married another woman there would not have been this state of affairs. Now this man has no experience of another woman. She exists only in imagination. The wife also feels the same way. She feels she has made a wrong choice. Another man would have made a better husband. In this case also, there is no experience of the other man. He is purely imaginary. Now we cannot have the experience of all the women in the world or all the men in the world, therefore, the illusion persists.
I told my friend, "It is not a question of this woman or that woman. It is a question of your different natures. There is conflict in your dispositions. And it is the arrangement between a man and a woman that society has prescribed that is to be blamed for this, for it is an arrangement of ownership. Wherever we make permanent relationships, strife is bound to be, for the mind is most impermanent and relationships very permanent. way109
I was traveling for twenty years in this country. I was staying in thousands of homes, and I saw it continuously: when the husband is not in the house, the wife seems to be very cheerful, very happy. The moment the husband enters the house she has a headache, and she lies down on the bed. And I was watching, because I was just staying in the house. Just a moment before, everything was okay—as if the husband has not entered but a headache has entered.
Slowly slowly, I understood the logic. There is a great investment in it. And remember, I am not saying that she is simply pretending. If you pretend too long it can become a reality, it can become an autohypnosis. I'm not saying that she is not suffering from a headache, remember. She may be suffering: just the face of the husband is enough to trigger the process! It has happened so many times that now it has become an automatic process. So I am not saying that she is deceiving the husband; she is deceived by her own investments.
You have a certain image and you don't want it to be changed, and criticism means again a disturbance. dh0210
One of my friends was continually complaining to me about his wife; "She is always sad, long faced and I am so worried to enter the house…I try to waste my time in this club and that club but finally I have to go back home and there she is."
I said to him, "Do one thing just as an experiment. Because she has been serious and she has been nagging, I cannot imagine that you enter the house smiling."
He said, "Do you think I can manage that? The moment I see her something freezes inside me—smile?"
I said, "Just as an experiment. Today you do one thing: take beautiful roses—it is the season; and the best ice-cream available in the city—tutti frutti; and go smiling, singing a song!"
He said, "If you say so I will do it, but I don't think it is going to make any difference."
I said, "I will come behind you, and see whether there is any difference or not."
The poor fellow tried hard. Many times on the way he laughed. I said, "Why are you laughing?"
He said, "I am laughing at what I am doing! I wanted you to tell me to divorce her and you have suggested I act as if I am going on a honeymoon!"
I said, "Just imagine it is a honeymoon…but try your best."
He opened the door and his wife was standing there. He smiled and then he laughed at himself because to smile…And that woman was standing almost like a stone. He presented the flowers and the ice-cream, and then I entered.
The woman could not believe what was happening. When the man had gone to the bathroom she asked me, "What is the matter? He has never brought anything, he has never smiled, he has never taken me out, he has never made me feel that I am loved, that I am respected. What magic has happened?"
I said, "Nothing; both of you have just been doing wrong. Now when he comes out of the bathroom you give him a good hug."
She said, "A hug?"
I said, "Give him one! You have given him so many things, now give him a good hug, kiss him…. "
She said, "My God…. "
I said, "He is your husband, you have decided to live together. Either live joyously or say goodbye joyously. There is no reason…it is such a small life. Why waste two person's lives unnecessarily?"
At that very moment the man came from the bathroom. The woman hesitated a little but I pushed her, so she hugged the man and the man became so afraid he fell on the floor! He had never imagined that she was going to hug him.
I had to help him up. I said, "What happened?"
He said, "It's just that I have never imagined that this woman can hug and kiss—but she can! And when she smiled she looked so beautiful."
Two persons living together in love should make it a point that their relationship is continuously growing, bringing more flowers every season, creating more joys. Just sitting together silently is enough….
One of my friends was retiring; he was a big industrialist, and he was retiring because of my advice. I said, "You have so much and you don't have a son; you have two daughters and they are married in rich families. Now why unnecessarily bother about all kinds of worries—of business, and income tax, and this and that? You can close everything; you have enough. Even if you live one thousand years, it will do."
He said, "That's true. The real problem is not the business, the real problem is I will be left alone with my wife. I can retire right now if you promise me one thing, that you will live with us.
I said, "This is strange. Are you retiring or am I retiring?"
He said, "That is the condition. Do you think I am interested in all these troubles? It is just to escape from my wife."
The wife was a great social worker. She used to run an orphanage, a house for widows, and a hospital particularly for people who are beggars and cannot pay for their treatment. I also asked her in the evening, "Do you really enjoy all this, from the morning till the evening?"
She said, "Enjoy? It is a kind of austerity, a self-imposed torture."
I said, "Why should you impose this torture on yourself?" She said, "Just to avoid your friend. If we are left alone, that is the worst experience in life."
And this is a love marriage, not an arranged marriage. They married each other against the whole family, the whole society, because they belonged to different religions, different castes; but their imprints gave them signals that this is the right woman, this is the right man. And all this happens unconsciously. That's why you cannot answer why you have fallen in love with a certain woman, or with a certain man. It is not a conscious decision. It has been decided by your unconscious imprint.
Particularly people in India go on using women as if they are just servants. Their whole work consists of taking care of the children and the kitchen and the house, as if that's their whole life.
Have you respected your wife as a human being?
Then, if anger arises, it is natural. If she feels frustrated—because her life is running out and she has not known any joy, she has not known any bliss, she has not known anything that can give meaning and significance to her life….
Have you just sat by her side sometimes, silently, just holding her hand, not saying a word, just feeling her, and letting her feel you? No, that is not done in India at all.
Wives and husbands have only one kind of communication: quarreling. I have been acquainted with thousands of Indian families, I have stayed with thousands of Indian families. While I was traveling all over the country I was staying with so many families that I have come to know almost all kinds of families, but very rarely have I seen husbands and wives respectful to each other. Using each other, exploiting each other, reducing each other to things, but never respecting each other's divinity—then this hell is created.
One of the great Hindu saints, Tulsidas, who is worshipped and read all over India by every Hindu, has a strange statement: Dhol gamar pashu aur nari. Ye sab tadan ke adhikari. He is categorizing women with drums—dhol means drum, gamar means idiots, pashu means animals, and nari means woman. All these four are constantly to be beaten. The dhol, the drum, will not work if you don't beat it. So for thousands of years Indian women have been beaten. It has been taken for granted, there is no question.
I have come across situations where a husband was beating his wife and I could not tolerate it and I entered their house, and I was amazed: more than the husband, the wife was against me, saying, "He is my husband, you cannot interfere in our affairs. If he is beating me, it is perfectly okay."
So deep has the conditioning gone.
In Indian villages I have seen with my own eyes…In India you cannot marry a widow. It is really the same logic because if people start marrying widows then who cares about virginity? In a strange way widows look more beautiful. Perhaps they have to look more beautiful, otherwise who is going to be interested in them? Virgins are inexperienced, look childish; widows are experienced, well polished, more attractive. But in an Indian village, if you marry a widow, the whole village—which is still a tribe—boycotts you, and the boycott is total. You cannot take water from the village well, you cannot purchase anything from any village shop; nobody will welcome you into his home.
The village will simply forget about you as if you don't exist. You cannot live; it is impossible. If you cannot purchase anything and nobody speaks to you, if you cannot even get water from the well, life has become impossible. What kind of freedom…?
One man—he was one of my students in the University—told me that he would like to marry a widow. In India that is a problem. Nobody wants to marry a widow. So there are people who think that to marry a widow is a great sacrifice.
I said, "You can marry, but once you have married she will not be a widow. Then what will you do? Then the whole charm will disappear because the charm is in her being a widow."
He laughed—he thought I was joking. And he got married. And after six months he said, "You were right. I'm no more interested in her. My interest was basically in her widowhood. I wanted to show to the public that I am a great servant of people, that I am serving people even through my love. I am sacrificing my love for a widow. I am going against the society, I am going against the tradition. I am doing something great. But now the marriage has happened and the widow has come, now there is no point."
I said,"You do one thing. You commit suicide. She will be a widow again, and somebody else will have a chance to serve her again. If you are really a public servant, do this." Since then I have not seen him.
I am absolutely in favor of liberation—liberation for both man and woman—because it is a simple law: the enslaver also becomes a slave of his own slaves.
Man has enslaved woman, but he has also become a slave. That's why you cannot find a husband who is not really henpecked—at least I have not found one yet. I have been searching for a husband who is not henpecked.
Once I was on a journey and someone asked me which word in a man's vocabulary was the most valuable. My reply was, "Love". The man was surprised. He said he had expected me to answer "soul" or "God". I laughed and said, "Love is God."
Raising on the ray of love one can enter the enlightened kingdom of God. It is better to say that love is God than to say that truth is God, because the harmony, the beauty, the vitality and the bliss that are part of love are not part of truth. Truth is to be known; love is to be felt as well as known. The growth and perfection of love lead to the ultimate merger with God.
The greatest poverty of all is the absence of love. The man who has not developed the capacity to love lives in a private hell of his own. A man who is filled with love is in heaven. You can look at man as a wonderful and unique plant, a plant that is capable of producing both nectar and poison. If a man lives by hate he reaps a harvest of poison; if he lives by love he gathers blossoms laden with nectar.
If I mold my life and live it with the well-being of all men in mind, that is love. Love results from the awareness that you are not separate, not different from anything else in existence. I am in you; you are in me. This love is religious.
The doors of love only open for the person who is prepared to let his ego go. To surrender one's ego for someone else is love; to surrender one's ego for all is divine love.
Love is not sexual passion. Those who mistake sex for love remain empty of love. Sex is only a passing manifestation of love. It is part of nature's mechanism, a method of procreation. Love exists on a higher plane, and as love grows, sex dissipates. The energy that has been manifested in sex is transformed into love.
Love is the creative refinement of sex energy. And so, when love reaches perfection, the absence of sex automatically follows. A life of love, an abstinence from physical pleasures is called brahmacharya, and anyone who wishes to be free from sex must develop his capacity to love. Freedom from sex cannot be achieved through supression. Liberation from sex is only possible through love.
I have said that love is God. This is the ultimate truth. But let me say as well that love also exists within the family unit. This is the first step on the journey to love, and the ultimate can never happen if the beginning has been absent. Love is responsible for the existence of the family and when the family unit moves apart and its members spread out into society, love increases and grows. When a man's family has finally grown to incorporate all of mankind, his love becomes one with God.
Without love man is an individual, an ego. He has no family; he has no link with other people. This is gradual death. Life, on the other hand, is interrelation.
Love surpasses the duality of the ego. This alone is truth. The man who thirsts for truth must first develop his capacity to love—to the point where the difference between the lover and the beloved disappears and only love remains.
When the light of love is freed from the duality of lover and the beloved, when it is freed from the haze of seer and seen, when only the light of pure love shines brightly, that is freedom and liberation.
I urge all men to strive for that supreme freedom.
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