How do you know if someone really loves you?

There are three layers of the human individual: his physiology, the body; his psychology, the mind; and his being, his eternal self. Love can exist on all the three planes, but its qualities will be different. On the plane of physiology, body, it is simply sexuality. You can call it love, because the word ‘love’ seems to be poetic, beautiful. But ninety-nine percent of people are calling their sex, love. Sex is biological, physiological. Your chemistry, your hormones — everything material is involved in it. You fall in love with a woman or a man. Can you exactly describe why this woman attracted you? Certainly you cannot see her self, you have not seen your own self yet. You cannot see her psychology either, because to read somebody’s mind is not an easy job. So what have you found in the woman? Something in your physiology, in your chemistry, in your hormones, is attracted to the woman’s hormones, her physiology, her chemistry. This is not a love affair; this is a chemical affair. Just think: the woman you have fallen in love with goes to our doctor, gets her sex changed, starts growing a beard and mustache. Will you be still loving her? Nothing has changed, only chemistry, hormones. Where has your love gone? Only one percent of people know a little bit deeper. Poets, painters, musicians, dancers, singers have a sensitivity that they can feel beyond the body. They can feel the beauties of the mind, the sensitivities of the heart, because they live on that plane themselves. Remember it as a ground rule: Wherever you live, you cannot see beyond that. If you live in your body, if you think you are only your body, you can be attracted only to somebody’s body. This is the physiological stage of love. But a musician, a painter, a poet, lives on a different plane. He does not think, he feels. And because he lives in his heart, he can feel the other person’s heart. That is ordinarily called love. It is rare. I am saying only one percent perhaps, once in a while. Why are many people not moving to the second plane because it is tremendously beautiful? But there is a problem: anything very beautiful is also very delicate. It is not hardware, it is made of very fragile glass. And once a mirror has fallen and broken, then there is no way to put it together. People are afraid to get so much involved that they reach to the delicate layers of love, because at that stage love is tremendously beautiful but also tremendously changing. Sentiments are not stones, they are like roseflowers. It is better to have a plastic roseflower, because it will be there always, and every day you can give it a shower and it will be fresh. You can put some French perfume on it. If its color fades you can paint it again. Plastic is one of the most indestructible things in the world. It is stable, permanent; hence people stop at the physiological. It is superficial, but it is stable. Poets are known, artists are known to fall in love almost every day. Their love is like a roseflower. While it is there it is so fragrant, so alive, dancing in the wind, in the rain, in the sun, asserting its beauty. But by the evening it may be gone, and you cannot do anything to prevent it. The deeper love of the heart is just like a breeze that comes into your room, brings its freshness, coolness, and then it is gone. You cannot catch hold of the wind in your fist. Very few people are so courageous as to live with a moment-to-moment, changing life. Hence, they have decided to fall into a love on which they can depend. I don’t know which kind of love you know — most probably the first kind, perhaps, the second kind. And you are afraid that if you reach your being, what will happen to your love? Certainly it will be gone — but you will not be a loser. A new kind of love will arise which arises only perhaps to one person in millions. That love can only be called lovingness. The first love should be called sex. The second love should be called love. The third should be called lovingness — a quality, unaddressed — not possessive and not allowing anybody else to possess you. That loving quality is such a radical revolution that even to conceive it is very difficult. Journalists have been asking me, “Why are there so many women here?” Obviously, the question is relevant, and they are shocked when I answer them. They were not expecting the answer. I have said to them, “I am a man.” They looked at me, unbelieving. I said, “It is natural that many more women will be here, for the simple reason that whatsoever they have known in their life before was either sex, or in rare cases, perhaps a few moments of love. But they have never come to know the taste of lovingness.” I have told these journalists, “Even the men you see here have grown many feminine qualities in them which have been repressed in the outside society.” From the very beginning a boy is told, “You are a boy, not a girl. Behave like a boy! Tears are okay for a girl, but not for you. Be manly.” So every boy goes on cutting his feminine qualities. And all that is beautiful is feminine. So finally what is left is just a barbarous animal. His whole function is to reproduce children. The girl is not allowed to have anything with manly qualities. If she wants to climb a tree she will be stopped immediately, “This is for boys, not for girls!” Strange! If the girl has the desire to climb the tree, that is enough proof that she should be allowed. All old societies have created different clothes for men and for women. This is not right; because each man is also a woman. He has come from two sources: his father and his mother. Both have contributed to his being. And each woman is also a man. We have destroyed both. The woman has lost all courage, adventure, reasoning, logic, because those are thought to be the qualities of a man. And the man has lost grace, sensitivity, compassion, kindness. Both have become half. This is one of the greatest problems we have to solve — at least for our people. My sannyasins have to be both: half man, half woman. That will make them richer. They will have all the qualities that are available to human beings, not only half. At the point of being, you simply have a fragrance of lovingness. The journalists have asked me, “Do you love Sheela?” I said, “Of course. But I love so many women that I don’t know even their names. And not only women — I love so many men, because they are also half woman.” In one million sannyasins around the world, I cannot point to a single person and say, “This is the person I love.” I can simply say, “I love.” Whoever is ready to receive my love...it is available. So don’t be afraid. Your fear is right: what you think of as love will be gone, but what will come in its place is immense, infinite. You will be able to love without being attached. You will be able to love many people because to love one person is to keep yourself poor. That one person can give a certain experience of love, but to love many people.... You will be amazed that every person gives you a new feeling, a new song, a new ecstasy. Hence, I am against marriage. In my vision, marriages in the commune should be dissolved. People can live together their whole life if they want, but that is not a legal necessity. People should be moving, having as many experiences of love as possible. They should not be possessive. Possessiveness destroys love. And they should not be possessed, because that again destroys your love. All human beings are worthy of being loved. There is no need to be tethered to one person for your whole life. That is one of the reasons why all the people around the world look so bored. Why can’t they laugh like you? Why can’t they dance like you? They are chained with invisible chains: marriage, family, husband, wife, children. They are burdened with all kinds of duties, responsibilities, sacrifices. And you want them to smile and laugh and dance and rejoice? You are asking the impossible. Make people’s love free, make people non-possessive. But this can happen only if in your meditation you discover your being. It is nothing to practice. I am not saying to you, “Tonight you go to some other woman just as a practice.” You will not get anything, and you may lose your wife. And in the morning you will look silly. It is not a question of practicing, it is a question of discovering your being. With the discovery of being follows the quality of impersonal lovingness. Then you simply love. And it goes on spreading. First, it is human beings, then soon animals, birds, trees, mountains, stars. A day comes when this whole existence is your beloved. That is our potential. And anybody who is not achieving it is wasting his life. Yes, you will have to lose a few things, but they are worthless. You will be gaining so much that you will never think again of what you have lost. A pure impersonal lovingness which can penetrate into anybody’s being — that is the outcome of meditativeness, of silence, of diving deep within your own being. I am simply trying to persuade you. Don’t be afraid of losing what you have. OSHO