Accept Yourself

The Face Inside

Love is not possessiveness; many people think that’s what love is you possess somebody totally. To possess somebody is to destroy all possibility of love.     

A man who is conscious of the whole range will enjoy this moment as much as he can. He will float. He will not bother about tomorrow because he knows tomorrow never comes. He knows it deeply that finally only one thing has to be attained – one’s own self.

Live, and live so totally that you come in contact with yourself. And there is no other way to come in contact with yourself. The deeper you live, the deeper you know yourself, in relationship, in aloneness. The deeper you move in a relationship, in love, the deeper you know. Love becomes a mirror. And one who has never loved cannot be alone, he can at the most be lonely.

One who has loved and known a relationship can be alone. Now his aloneness has a totally different quality to it, it is not loneliness. He has lived in a relationship, fulfilled his love, known the other, and known himself through the other. Now he can know himself directly, now the mirror is not needed. Just think of someone who has never come across a mirror. Can he close his eyes and see his face? Impossible. He cannot even imagine his face, he cannot meditate on it. But a man who has come to a mirror, looked into it, known his face through it, can close his eyes and see the face inside. That’s what happens in relationship. When a person moves into a relationship, the relationship mirrors, reflects him, and he comes to know many things in himself that he never knew existed.

Through the other he comes to know his anger, his greed, his jealousy, his possessiveness, his compassion, his love, and thousands of moods of his being. Many climates he encounters through the other. By and by a moment comes when he can now be alone; he can close his eyes and know his own consciousness directly. That’s why I say that for people who have never loved meditation is very, very difficult.

Those who have loved deeply can become deep meditators; those who have loved in a relationship are now in a position to be by themselves. Now they have become mature, now the other is not needed. If the other is there they can share, but the need has disappeared; now there is no dependence.

If consciousness becomes conscious of death, in the end fear arises. The fear creates a continuous escaping within you – you are escaping from life. Wherever there is life you will escape because wherever there is life, a hint, a glimpse of death comes. People who are afraid of death never fall in love with people, they fall in love with things – things never die because they have never lived.

You can have things for ever and ever and moreover, they are replaceable. If one car gives up you can replace it with another of exactly the same make. But you cannot replace a person – if your wife dies, she dies for ever. You can have another wife, but no other woman will ever replace her – for good or for bad, no other woman can be the same woman. If your child dies you can adopt another one, but no adopted child can have the same quality of relationship with you that your own child can have. The wound remains, it cannot be healed. People who are afraid of death become afraid of life. They go on accumulating things: a big palace, a big car, millions of dollars, rupees, this and that, things which are deathless. A rupee is more deathless than a rose. But they are not bothered about roses, they only go on accumulating rupees.