But never say to anybody that love is a duty. It is not. Duty is a false substitute for love. When you cannot love, society goes on supplying duties. They may appear to be love, but inside there is nothing loving in it; on the contrary, it is only social formality. And you become so accustomed to social formalities that you forget completely that there are things which are waiting to happen in your life but you are so occupied that you don’t give space, you don’t allow love to blossom in you.

Hence you don’t know that centering and love are one thing.

Centering is more appealing to the intellectual. Nothing has to be believed; there is nobody else to whom you have to surrender.

It is because of the other that every love affair becomes a tragedy.

In Indian literature there are no tragedies. In my student days I was asking my professors, “Why are tragedies missing in Indian literature?” And not a single teacher or professor was able to say something significant about it.

They simply shrugged their shoulders and they said, “You are strange; you find such questions…I have been in this university for thirty years and nobody has asked.”

I said, “To me it seems very obvious that the question has deep roots in the culture. In all other countries except India there are tragedies – beautiful stories, novels, fiction – but in India they are missing. And the reason is…India is a more ancient land than any other land. It has learned many things from experience, and one of them is: that which should not be, should not be talked about; hence there should be no tragedy.”

Their logic can be understood. If man feels that life is everywhere a comedy, then there is a possibility he might continue deceiving himself. He might never tell anybody his problems – because he thinks nobody has problems; why become a laughingstock? Something is wrong with you – just keep quiet. There is no point in exposing yourself to a cruel society which will simply laugh at you and prove that you are an idiot and you don’t know how to live.

But it is not so simple. It is not a question just of knowing how to live. It is a question first of dropping all that is false in you. The false comes from the outside. And when all that is false is dropped and you are utterly naked before existence, the real will start growing in you. This is the situation which has to be fulfilled for the real to grow, to blossom, and to bring you to the ultimate meaning and truth of life.

It has to be remembered: You can start either from centering – and the moment you are centered you will suddenly find immense love overflowing – or you can start from love. And the moment your love is without any jealousy, without any conditionings, but just a sharing of the dance of the heart, you will experience centering.

They are two sides of the same coin. Centering is a more intellectual, scientific method. Love has a different source in you – your heart. It is more poetic, it is more aesthetic, it is more sensitive, it is more feminine, it is more beautiful. And it is easier than centering.

My suggestion is, first drop all false ideas about love. Let something real grow in you, and centering will be coming, enlightenment will be coming.