Osho, from Glimpses of a Golden Childhood:
“Love is good, simply good, but it is not enough to give you wings. For that, friendship is needed—and love does not allow it… Love is very afraid of friendship, because anything higher is dangerous, and friendship is higher.
When you are able to enjoy friendship, whether with a man or a woman, then you understand that love is a lie, a deception. Alas, then you realize how much time has been wasted. But friendship is only a bridge. This bridge leads to the state of friendship.
Love takes you; it is a step—but it is love only if it leads you to friendship. If it does not lead you to friendship, it is lust, not love. If it leads you to friendship, be grateful to it, but do not allow it to encroach upon your freedom. Do not carry the boat on your shoulders just because it took you across the river.
Love is 99% biological. Friendship is 99% psychological. The state of friendship is 99% spiritual.
Love is very earthly. From time to time it jumps and feels as if it has freed itself from the earth, but the earth knows better—soon it comes to its senses with a thud… Love cannot fly.”
It is good to be able to distinguish between different ways of relating to another person—for example, between the “state of friendship,” which is the spiritual dimension of love, and “love that cannot fly,” which is love-as-desire. When the period of being in love ends and we realize that in the other we were seeing only our projected reality, the thud back to the ground comes.
The essence of this quote, however, I see in the sentence: “Do not carry the boat on your shoulders just because it took you across the river.” For me, this is the most important part of this “lesson of love”—the dimension of freedom.
