INTIMACY: THE GOAL OF LIFE IS LOVE

                                    

When two lovers are really open to each other, when they are not afraid of each other and not hiding anything from each other, that is intimacy. When they can say each and everything without any fear that the other will be offended or hurt… If the lover thinks the other will be offended, then the intimacy is not yet deep enough. Then it is a kind of arrangement, which can be broken by anything. But when two lovers start feeling that there I nothing to hide and everything can be said, and the trust has come to such a depth where even if you don’t say it the other is going to know, then they start becoming one.

Life is a pilgrimage, and unless love is attained, it remains a pilgrimage, never reaching anywhere. It goes on moving in circles, and the moment of fulfillment never comes when one can say, “I have arrived. I have become that for which I had come. The seed is fulfilled in the flowers.” Love is the goal, life is the journey without a goal is bound to be neurotic, haphazard; it will not have any direction. One day you are going north, and another day you are going south; it will remain accidental, anything can lead you anywhere. You will remain driftwood unless the goal is clear. It may be a very distant star – that doesn’t make any difference – but it should be clear. If it is distant, it is okay, but it should be there.

The word intimacy comes from the Latin root intimum, which means your interiority, your innermost core. Unless you have something there, you can’t be intimate with anybody. You cannot allow intimum, intimacy, because they will see the hole, the wound, and the pus oozing out of it. They will see that you don’t know who you are, that you are a madman, that you don’t know where you are going. That you have not even heard your own song that your life is a chaos, not a cosmos. Hence, the fear of intimacy.

Even lovers rarely become intimate. And just to be sexually related to somebody is not intimacy – the genital orgasm is not all that is there in intimacy, it is just the periphery of it. Intimacy can be with it or it can be without it. Intimacy is a totally different dimension. It is allowing the other to come into you, to see you as you see yourself – to allow the other to see you from your inside, to invite somebody to that deepest core of your being. In the modern world intimacy is disappearing. Even lovers are not intimate. Friendship is only a word now; it has disappeared. And the reason? The reason is that there is nothing to share. Who wants to show one’s inner poverty? One wants to pretend, “O am rich, I have arrived, I know what I am doing, I know where I am going.”

One is not ready and courageous to open up, to show one’s inner chaos and be vulnerable. The other may exploit it; that fear is there. The other may become too dominant, seeing that you are chaos. Seeing that you need a master, that you are not a master of your own being, the other may become the master. Hence, everybody tries own being, the other may become the master. Hence, everybody tries to protect themselves so that nobody knows their inner helplessness; otherwise they can be exploited. This world consists of much exploitation.

Love is a goal. And once goal is clear, you start growing an inner richness. The wound disappears and becomes a lotus; the wound is transformed into a lotus. That is the miracle of love, the magic of love. Love is the greatest alchemical force in the world. Those who know how to use it can reach the highest peak called God. Those who know not how to use it remain crawling in the dark recesses of existence; they never come to the sunlit peaks of life.

Love is state is your consciousness when you are joyous, when there is a dance in your being. Something starts vibrating, radiating, from your center; something starts pulsating around you. It starts reaching people: it can reach women, it can reach men, it can reach rocks and trees and stars.

When I am talking about love, I am talking about this love: a love that is not a relationship but a state of being. Always remember: whenever I use the word love, I use it as a state of being, not as a relationship. Relationship is only a very minor aspect of it. But your idea of love is basically that of relationship, as if that is all.

Relationship is needed only because you can’t be alone, because you are not yet capable of meditation. Hence, meditation is a must before you can really love. One should be capable of being alone, utterly alone, and yet tremendously blissful. Then you can love. Then your love is no longer a need but a sharing, no longer a necessity,. You will not become dependent on the people you love. You will share – and sharing is beautiful.

But what ordinarily happens in the world is: You don’t have love; the person you think you love has no love in his being, either, and both are asking for love from each other. Two beggars begging each other! Hence, the fight, the conflict, the continuous quarrel between the lovers – over trivia, over immaterial things, over stupid things! – but they go on quarrelling.

The basic quarrel is that the husband thinks he is not getting what is his right to get; the wife thinks she is not getting what is her right to get. The wife thinks she has been deceived, and the husband also thinks that he has been deceived. Where is love? Nobody bothers to give, everybody wants to get. And when everybody is after getting, nobody gets it and everybody feels at a loss, empty, tense.

The basic foundation is missing, and you have started making the temple without the foundation. It is going to fall and collapse any moment. And you know how many times your love has collapsed, and still you go on doing the same thing again and again.

You live in such unawareness! You don’t see what you have been doing to your life and to others’ lives. You go on mechanically, robot like, repeating the old pattern, knowing perfectly well you have done this before. And you know what has always been the outcome, and deep down you are also alert that it is going to happen the same way again – because there is no difference. You are preparing the same conclusion, the same collapse.

If you can learn anything from the failure of love, it is to become more aware, become more meditative. And by meditation I mean the capacity to be joyous alone. Very rare people are capable of being blissful for no reason at all – just sitting silently and blissfully! Others will think them mad because the idea of happiness is that it has to come from somebody else. You meet a beautiful woman and you are happy, or you meet a beautiful man and you are happy. But sitting silently in your room and being so blissful, so blessed out? You must be crazy or something! People will suspect that you are on a drug, stoned.

Yes, meditation is the ultimate LSD! It is releasing your own psychedelic powers. It is releasing your own imprisoned splendor. And you become so joyous, such a celebration arises in your being, that you need not have any relationship. Still you can relate with people… and that’s the difference between relating and relationship.

Relationship is a thing: You cling to it. Relating is a flow, a movement, a process. You meet a person, you are loving because you have so much love to give – and the more you give, the more you have. Once you have understood this strange arithmetic of love – that the more you give, the more you have…This is just against the economic laws that operate in the outside world. Once you have known that, if you want to have more love and joy, you give and share, then you simply share. And whosoever allows you to share your joy with him or with her, you feel grateful to him or her. But it is not relationship; it is a riverlike flow.

The river passes by the side of a tree, saying hello, nourishing the tree, giving water to the tree….and it moves on, and dances on. It does not cling to the tree. And the tree does not say. “Where are you going ? We are married! And before you can leave me you will need a divorce – atleast a separation! Where are you going? And if you were going to leave me, why did you dance so beautifully around me? Why did you nourish me in the first place?” No, the tree showers its flowers onto the river in deep gratefulness, and the river moves on. The wind comes and dances around the tree and moves on. And the tree gives its fragrance to the wind.

This is relating. If the humanity is ever going to become grown up, mature, this will be the way of love: people meeting, sharing, moving, a non possessive quality, non dominating quality. Otherwise love becomes a power trip.