People only pretend the game of love, they don’t go into it. They keep a distance from any deep commitment, from any total involvement, because if you really go very close in the world of love, the flame of love is going to burn your ego.
People love – at least they pretend, they believe that they love – because life without love is meaningless. If they don’t love life is meaningless; if they really love the ego disappears. Hence they make a compromise: they go only so far. They don’t go to the deepest core of it, they only touch the surface. They cannot remain without it; without it they are utterly futile. Then life is a desert with no significance, no song. Then life is utterly futile – you only vegetate, you don’t really love, you don’t really live. Loving and living are synonymous.
So people have to at least play the game of love; that keeps them involved. But they don’t really go into it. They keep out of it, because if they really go into it then the ego disappears. Then they are no more, then God is.
The experience of orgasm, of deep orgasmic joy, is the first experience of God. God comes when two lovers meet and merge into each other. When two are no more two, when that union happens, God penetrates you. Then the beyond comes to the earth, the sky meets the earth.
But rarely are you in an orgasmic unity; rarely are you so much in tune with the other that you are ready to sacrifice your ego. In fact, you go on doing the contrary: your love is also an ornament for your ego; your love is also a new treasure to strengthen the ego, to gratify the ego. Rather than destroying it, your games about love go on nourishing. But, the love can only give you glimpses. If you allow the ego to disappear, love will make you available to something of the unknown.
~ Osho
Game of Love
