Osho on Relationships: Risk Everything for Truth

No relationship can truly grow if you go on holding back. If you remain clever and go on safeguarding and protecting yourself, only personalities meet, and the essential centres remain alone. Then just your mask is related – not you.

Whenever such a thing happens, there are four persons in the relationship, not two. Two false persons go on meeting, and the two real persons remain worlds apart.

Risk is there. If you become true, nobody knows whether this relationship will be capable of understanding truth, authenticity; whether this relationship will be strong enough to stand in the storm. There is a risk – and because of it, people remain very very guarded. They say things which should be said; they do things which should be done. Love becomes more or less like a duty. But then the reality remains hungry, and the essence is not fed. So the essence becomes more and more sad. The lies of the personality are a very heavy burden on the essence, on the soul.

Risk Everything for Truth

The risk is real, and there is no guarantee for it – but I will tell you that the risk is worth taking. At the most, the relationship can break – at the most. But it is better to be separate and to be real rather than being unreal and together – because then it is never going to be satisfying. Benediction will never come out of it. You will remain hungry and thirsty, and you will go on dragging, just waiting for some miracle to happen.

For the miracle to happen you will have to do something, and that is – start being true, at the risk that maybe the relationship is not strong enough and may not be able to bear it. The truth may be unbearable – but then that relationship is not worthwhile. So that test has to be passed.

Risk everything for truth, otherwise you will remain discontented. You will do many things, but nothing will really happen to you. You will move much, but you will never arrive anywhere, mm? The whole effect will be almost absurd.

It is as if you are hungry and you simply fantasize about food; beautiful, delicious. But fantasy is fantasy – it is not real. You cannot eat unreal food. For moments you can delude yourself – you can live in a dreamlike world – but a dream is not going to give you anything. It will take many things from you – and it will not give you anything in return.

The time that you are using with a false personality is simply wasted; it will never come back to you again. Those same moments could have been real, authentic. Even a single moment of authenticity is better than a whole life of inauthentic living. So don’t be afraid. The mind will say to you to go on safeguarding the other and yourself, to keep safe. That’s how millions of people are living.

Lies Are Sweet, But Unreal

Freud, in his last days, wrote in a letter to a friend that as far as he had observed — And he really observed deeply — nobody has observed so deeply, so penetratingly, so persistently and so scientifically. Freud says in the letter that as far as he has observed through his life, one conclusion seems absolutely certain – that people cannot live without lies.

Truth is dangerous. Lies are very sweet, but unreal. Delicious… you go on saying sweet nothings to your lover, and he goes on whispering in your ear sweet – but – nothings. And meanwhile life goes on slipping out of your hands, and everybody is coming closer and closer to death.

Before death comes, remember one thing – that love has to be lived before death happens. Otherwise you live in vain, and the whole of your life will be futile – a desert. Before death comes, make it a certainty that love has happened. But that is possible only with the truth.

Never Sacrifice Truth for Anything

So be true. Risk everything for truth, and never risk truth for anything else. Let this be the fundamental law – even if I have to sacrifice myself, my life, I am going to sacrifice it for truth but truth I will never sacrifice for anything – and tremendous happiness will be yours; undreamed of benedictions will shower on you.

Once you are true, everything else becomes possible. If you are false – just a facade, a painted thing, a face, a mask – nothing is possible. Because with the false, only false happens; with the truth, truth.

Move Into it

I understand your problem. That is the problem of all lovers – that deep down they are afraid. They go on wondering whether this relationship will be strong enough to bear truth. But how can you know beforehand? There is no a priori knowledge. One has to move into it to know it.

How are you to know, sitting inside your house, whether you will be able to withstand the storm and the wind outside? You have never been in the storm. Go and see. Trial and error is the only way – go and see. Maybe you will be defeated, but even in that defeat you will have become stronger than you are right now.

If one experience defeats you – and another, and another – by and by the very going through the storm will make you stronger and stronger and stronger. A day comes when one simply starts delighting in the storm, one simply starts dancing in the storm. Then the storm is not the enemy. That too is an opportunity – a wild opportunity – to be.

Beauty and Love Is Found Outside the Comfort Zone

Remember, being never happens comfortably – otherwise it would have happened to all. Remember, being cannot happen conveniently – otherwise everybody would have being without any problem. Being happens only when you take risk, when you move in danger. And love is the greatest danger there is. It demands you totally.

So don’t be afraid – go into it. If the relationship survives truth, it will be beautiful. If it dies, then too it is good because one false relationship has ended, and now you will be more capable of moving into another relationship… truer, more solid, more concerning the essence.

But remember always, falsity never pays. It appears to, but it never pays. Only truth does… and in the beginning, truth never looks like it is going to pay. It seems it will shatter everything. If you look at it from the outside, truth looks very very dangerous, terrible. But this is an outside view. If you go in, truth is the only beautiful thing. And once you start cherishing it, tasting it, you will demand more and more because it will bring contentment.