People who are very egoistic are always against love. In India, you will find them in the monasteries, in the Himalayas. People who are very egoistic are against love. They may say that they are leaving the world, the world of love, to seek and search for God. They are deceiving nobody except themselves; because unless you love tremendously, you cannot seek God. In the Himalayan peaks, they are seeking nothing but their own egos. God is to be sought in love because God is to be sought in your own crucifixion; when the ego disappears, He is.
Have you watched in your own mind that whenever you are moving in a love relationship, there arises a certain uneasiness? You are allured, fascinated. You would like to delve deeply into it, but a part of you starts becoming uneasy. Look at that part; that is Judas. That part says,’What are you going to do? — surrender? What are you going to do? — become ordinary?’
Nothing is more ordinary than love. Love is very earthly. Nothing is more natural than love. Nobody needs to learn it; everybody is born knowing it. Love is all over. The whole existence throbs in love. Love is the very beat of life. Love is very natural, very ordinary.
The ego is *unnatural, extraordinary: you want to feel superior to others, you want to be crowned. You don’t want to belong to the earth because all belong to the earth. You want something to be special, to be somebody special — it is the Judas. To betray, one needs to be in love.
Remember, if your love is nothing but an opposition to hate, the hate will exist within you. There is another dimension of love where love is only the absence of hate, not opposite to it. I teach you THAT love: love as an absence of hate. The real problem is not how to love; the real problem is how to understand hate and drop it through that understanding. Don’t hide your hate, don’t suppress it; bring it out, get rid of it. Before you can be able to really love and love totally, hate has to be dropped. You can do a simple thing: you can hide the hate and you can go on loving. But the hate which is hiding behind you is going to betray, some day or other. You are a Judas, and you are going to be a Judas.
Until Judas betrayed Jesus, he himself was not aware of what he was doing. He became aware only when Jesus was crucified, when he himself saw what he had done. Then he became aware. Then he repented, and committed suicide.
This point is significant. In the life of Jesus, or in the life of Krishna, or in the life of Buddha, this point is very significant. They always speak as if they are playing a part in a drama (Leela : लीला), as if they are simply acting, as if this earth is a great stage and they are fulfilling simple prophecies.
It is said that before Rama was born, a great poet, Valmiki, wrote Rama’s whole life; before he was born! And then Rama was born; he had to follow Valmiki, because when such a great poet writes something, it has to be followed. What else can you do?
It may not have been so, but the story is beautiful. It says that life is a drama: as if it has been written already and it is only unfolding.
Jesus said to those people, ‘But all this was done that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.’ It was said in the old scriptures that this was the way the Messiah was to be caught, crucified. This was the way that the Messiah was to be betrayed by his own disciple, Judas.
What is Jesus saying? He’s saying to Judas, in an indirect way, ‘Don’t feel guilty about it. It is just a fulfillment of a prophecy. You are not responsible.’ This is his love. He is taking the responsibility from Judas. He is saying, ‘Don’t be afraid, don’t feel guilty, don’t feel responsible. You are not doing anything. You are just an instrument in the hands of history. It has been prophesied long before that one of my disciples would betray me. You are just instrumental.’
This is what Krishna said to Arjuna in the Gita: ‘Don’t be worried. You simply fight the war. You are just instrumental; NIMITTA MATRA — you are not the doer. The doer is always God. You are just a vehicle that He is using. You just surrender yourself into the hands of the whole, and let things happen. Whatsoever is going to happen is going to happen. You relax. Please don’t be tense about it.’
The same is Jesus’ meaning when he says, ‘But all this was done that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.’ He is saying to Judas, ‘Don’t be worried.’ He is saying to the multitudes, ‘Don’t feel afraid. Nobody is doing anything wrong. Everything is okay, because this is how it had to happen. This is a beautiful gesture on Jesus’ part.
Just a few days ago I was reading the story of a Hassid mystic, Baal Shem. One day he was sitting just in front of his house. It must have been a winter morning, cold, and he was sunning himself. A beggar came. He told the beggar to wait and he would go in the house to search for something for him. But he could not find anything; there was nothing. The wife had gone to some neighbor, and he could only find his wife’s ring, the wedding ring that he had given her. He came with the ring and gave it to the beggar.
When the wife returned and found her ring missing, she asked. Baal Shem told the whole story: ‘I searched, but nothing could be found.’
The wife created much trouble for him. She said, ‘You run after him! Catch hold of the beggar. That ring is my wedding ring and it is very costly, almost a hundred gold coins!’
Baal Shem ran to catch hold of the beggar, and many people followed him — ‘What is going to happen?’ They could not believe that Baal Shem could do that, but he ran. In the marketplace, he found the beggar. He caught hold of him and said, ‘Wait! Listen to me! That ring is very costly. It can fetch almost one hundred gold coins. Don’t allow anybody to cheat you.’ That’s all that he did, and he went back.
You cannot understand the gesture of love. Everybody in the neighborhood thought that he was going to take hold of that beggar and take the ring back. The wife was very happy when he ran; she also thought so. Because we live in such a loveless heart, we cannot understand the gesture of love.
Existence is freedom. It is not determined beforehand. It is not predestined. If it were predestined, then all meaning would be lost. Life is not a drama, but you can take it as a drama. If you take it as a drama, you transcend life. But remember, life is not a drama; life is total freedom. Nobody can predict what is going to happen the next moment, because the next moment comes as if out of the blue, totally free and fresh. If it could be predicted, then all meaning would be lost.
Jesus is not saying that he believes in fate. Jesus is not saying that he believes that life is absolutely determined, every bit of it, no. Then why does he say this: ‘But all this was done that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled’? This is a gesture of love. He is trying to create a situation in which Judas should not feel guilty. He is creating a situation in which the multitudes which have come to take over, to make him prisoner, should not feel guilty. He is saying that it has to be so, so it is happening; nobody is at fault. He is making everybody free of fault.
This is a love gesture; tremendously loving and caring about people. His last words on the cross were again the same: ‘Father, forgive them, because they don’t know what they are doing.’
Osho: Come Follow To You, Vol 4 Chapter #7 Chapter title: The Ego is the Judas (excerpts)
ये मोहब्बत की कहानी नहीं मरती लेकिन
लोग किरदार निभाते हुए मर जाते हैं ………….अब्बास ताबिश
ye mohabbat kī kahānī nahīñ martī lekin
log kirdār nibhāte hue mar jaate haiñ ……………Abbas Tabish
This love story never dies, but the people playing the roles pass away.
Just as life unfolds moment by moment, unbound by predetermined scripts, so does love – unconfined by definitions, labels, or expectations. It is in its namelessness, its undefinable quality, that love retains its sanctity and beauty. Let love, like life, remain free and untainted – just as the song reminds us, “Pyar ko pyar hi rahene do koi naam na do.” True freedom, whether in existence or in love, is found in its refusal to be confined.
The soulful melody is from the film “Khamoshi” (1969), sung by Lata Mangeshkar, written by Gulzar and composed by Hemant Kumar.
HAPPY Valentines Day!!! (14th February 2026).
हम ने देखी है इन आँखों की महकती खुशबू हाथ से छूके इसे रिश्तों का इल्ज़ाम न दो सिर्फ़ एहसास है ये रूह से महसूस करो प्यार को प्यार ही रहने दो कोई नाम न दो हम ने देखी है ... प्यार कोई बोल नहीं, प्यार आवाज़ नहीं एक खामोशी है सुनती है कहा करती है ना ये बुझती है ना रुकती है ना ठहरी है कहीं नूर की बूँद है सदियों से बहा करती है सिर्फ़ एहसास है ये, रूह से महसूस करो प्यार को प्यार ही रहने दो, कोई नाम ना दो हम ने देखी है ... मुस्कराहट सी खिली रहती है आँखों में कहीं और पलकों पे उजाले से छुपे रहते हैं होंठ कुछ कहते नहीं, काँपते होंठों पे मगर कितने खामोश से अफ़साने रुके रहते हैं सिर्फ़ एहसास है ये, रूह से महसूस करो प्यार को प्यार ही रहने दो, कोई नाम ना दो हम ने देखी है ...