🍁Osho, Blessed Are the Ignorant Chapter #3.

 .[An elderly sannyasin, returning from the west, says: I have felt you very close to me the last few months. People have been so very kind to me... have been welcoming..It’s been lovely.]

It is – because the world is really a very loving world.

We just live with wrong attitudes, so even kind people look unkind, even loving people don’t look loving – because we are hiding behind fear, we are not vulnerable.

And when we are afraid, the other becomes afraid. Fear creates fear.

When we are defensive, the other becomes defensive – and of course this is a vicious circle.

When you see that the other is defensive, you become more afraid, you become more defensive. ..."Then hatred arises.

We have been brought up with very wrong values – the darwinian concept that life is a struggle, and the fittest survives. ..."All nonsense!

Life is not a struggle at all – it is a love affair.

It is absurd to say that the fittest survives.

In fact the one who survives is the one who is very very soft, loving, kind, compassionate. The fragile survives... the feminine survives.

But we have been brought up with those ideas, so we are continuously on guard.

Everybody is on guard – and everybody is thirsty for love, hungry for love.

People are dying. Millions of people are available and nobody loving.

Everybody wants to be loved, and everybody wants somebody to love, but the fear... the wrong conditioning.

Once you drop these conditionings, suddenly the whole world changes its colour – it becomes psychedelic. It is very colourful.

That is my whole effort in giving you sannyas – so that you drop the old violent attitudes – attitudes based in fear and obsessions based in fear – and you start loving.

And there is nothing to lose! Even if you are cheated and robbed, there is nothing to lose. Even if you are killed, there is nothing to lose.

Life is beautiful only when there is love. Love is a higher value than life... a greater value than life.

Life can be sacrificed to love, but love cannot be sacrificed to life.

Just the other day I was reading a story. Leslie weatherhead tells the story of the second world war.

Two soldiers were very friendly, great friends. One evening one soldier comes back to the trench but finds that his friend has not returned.

The day has been very hard, and many people have been killed on the front. He becomes afraid – is his friend killed?

He enquires, and then somebody says, ’We are not certain that he is killed, but he was so terribly wounded that it was impossible for him to come to the trench. By now he must be dead.’

It is getting dark now and the enemy is still firing madly but the soldier wants to go and search for his friend.

The officer says, ’No, this is foolish’, but he doesn’t listen to the officer – he goes.

It is very difficult in the dark and there are thousands of corpses all around. He looks and looks and in the middle of the night he returns – dragging his friend’s dead body on his back.

He himself is now terribly wounded, mortally wounded... he cannot survive.

The moment he reaches the trench he falls on the floor with the body of his dead friend.

The officer comes and he says, ’I told you not to be foolish! It was not worth it. Now you know what you have done to yourself. The friend is dead and you are dying!’

The dying man opened his eyes and he said, ’But it was worth it – because when I went there, he looked at me and he said, ”Jim, I knew you would come.”’

For love, life can be sacrificed – it is worth it.

But we have been taught just the contrary: sacrifice everything just to be alive; just to survive, sacrifice everything.

I teach you the contrary: to be loving, sacrifice everything.

Even if life is sacrificed, good – it is worth it. And the moment you have this attitude, the whole world changes.

Your change changes the whole world. And suddenly you see that people are so loving and so kind – they have always been!