Love is spontaneous. It cannot be controlled. You cannot “make” love; you cannot do anything about it. And the more you do, the more you will miss it. You have to allow it to happen. You are not needed for it. Your presence is the hindrance. The more you are absent, the better. When you are not, love happens.
Because of their inability to be absent, modern man and woman have become incapable of love. They are only capable of doing things. The whole modern mind is based on doing. Whatsoever can be done, modern [people] can do more efficiently than any that has ever existed. Whatsoever can be done, we can do more efficiently. We are the most efficient century; we have turned everything into technology–into a problem of how to “do” it. We have developed one dimension and that is the dimension of doing, but in developing this dimension we have lost much.
At the loss of being we have learned how to do things, so that which can be done we do better than anyone–better than any society that ever existed on earth. But when the question of love comes, a problem arises because love cannot be done.
For example, meditation: we have become incapable of it, it cannot be done. Or play: we have become incapable of it, it cannot be done. Or joy, happiness: we have become incapable of them because they cannot be done. They are not acts; you cannot manipulate them. On the contrary, you have to let yourself go. Then joy happens to you, then happiness comes to you, then love enters you, then love takes possession. And because of this possession we have become afraid.
Modern [people], the modern mind, wants to possess everything and not be possessed by anything. [The modern person] wants to be the master of everything, and you can only be the master of things–not of happenings. You can be the master of a house, you can be the master of a mechanical device; you cannot be the master of anything which is alive. Life cannot be mastered; you cannot possess it. On the contrary; you have to be possessed by it. Only then is there contact with it.
Love is life, and it is greater than you. You cannot possess it. I would like to repeat it: love is greater than you; you cannot possess it. You can only allow yourself to be possessed by it; it cannot be controlled. The modern ego wants to control everything, and you become scared of whatsoever you cannot control. You become afraid, you close the door. You close that dimension completely because fear enters. You will not be in control. With love you cannot be in control….
-Osho, The Book of Secrets