55 Quotes by Osho on Love as an Overflow of Awareness
Aug 25, 2025
Osho had some of the most profound and uncompromising philosophies on love. When I was in his community, he taught me that love is something you are. It is a state of being that arises when you are rooted in your own awareness. From that place, love flows naturally, without effort.
Osho also showed me that love is the fragrance of a life lived consciously, the overflow of a heart that is full in itself. In his words, love is the natural flowering that comes when you know yourself, when you have met your own depths.
My favorite quote by Osho on love is:
“Only meditators know what love is.” - Osho
I could fill volumes with his insights on love, but here I’ve gathered the ones that have stayed with me, words that speak of love as an ever-present quality within us, waiting to be lived.
Osho Quotes on Love as Freedom
“The real thing is not a relationship but a state; one is not in love but one is love. Whenever I talk about love remember this: I am talking about the state of love. Yes, relationship is perfectly good, but the relationship is going to be false if you have not attained the state of love. Then the relationship is not only a pretension, it is a dangerous pretension, because it can go on befooling you; it can go on giving you the sense that you know what love is – and you don’t know. Love basically is a state of being; one is not in love, one is love. And that love arises not by falling in love with somebody. That love arises by going in – not by falling but by rising, soaring upwards, higher than you. It is a kind of surpassing. A man is love when his being is silent; it is the song of silence. A Buddha is love, a Jesus is love – not in love with a particular person, but simply love. Their very climate is love. It is not addressed to anybody in particular, it is spreading in all directions. Whosoever comes close to a buddha will feel it, will be showered by it, will be bathed in it. And it is unconditionally so.” - Osho
- "If they are dependent on each other, clinging, possessive, if they don't allow each other to be alone, if they don't allow each other space enough to grow, they are enemies, not lovers; they are destructive to each other, they are not helping each other to find their souls, their beings. What kind of love is this? It may be just fear of being alone; hence they are clinging to each other. But real love knows no fear. Real love is capable of being alone, utterly alone, and out of that aloneness grows a togetherness." - Osho, The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol. 2, Talk/Chapter “Spread the rumor!”
- "But people find it very difficult to be a loving person, so they create a relationship – and befool that way: ‘Now I am a loving person because I am in a relationship.’ And the relationship may be just one of monopoly, possessiveness, exclusiveness.” - Osho, Walk Without Feet, Fly Without Wings and Think Without Mind, Talk #8 (Relationship is a Substitute)
- "If there is passion in love, then love will become hell. If there is attachment in love, then love will be a prison. If love is passionless it will become heaven. If love is without attachment then love itself is the divine.” - Osho
- "Love has both possibilities. You can have passion and attachment in love: then it is as if you have tied a stone around the neck of the bird of love so that it cannot fly. Or as if you have put the bird of love in a golden cage. However precious the cage may be – it may be studded with diamonds and jewels – a cage is still a cage and it will destroy the bird's capacity to fly.” - Osho
- "If you have only known a love full of passion and attachment, then when Jesus says, ‘God is love,’ you will not be able to understand it. When Sahajo starts singing songs of love you will become very uneasy: ‘This makes no sense! I have also loved but I got back only misery. In the name of love I reaped only a crop of thorns, no flowers ever blossomed for me.’ The other love will seem to be imaginary. The love which becomes devotion, which becomes prayer, which becomes liberation, will look like just a play of words.” - Osho
- “When God descends on earth. His name is love. Love is an alchemical phenomenon. Even if one heart has flowed towards you, God has reached through that heart. Somebody looked towards you with love; in that moment God looked at you. Watch the eye full of love, the hand full of love, and you will find God throbbing there, because it is always God who loves. To love is to become God, to allow-love to happen is to become God. Whenever you fall from the peak of love, then it is something else: you become possessive; Then you are no more in the grip of God. But whenever you reach to the peak, maybe for a single moment sometimes it happens: when two persons are in absolute harmony, no barrier, no fence even exists between them; they are not throbbing as two centers, they become one center, in that moment, God happens. When love happens, God happens. When God descends on earth. His name is Love.” - Osho
- “My beloved ones, I love you. Love is my message – let it be your message too. Love is my colour and my climate. To me, love is the only religion. All else is just rubbish, all else is nothing but mind-churning dreams. Love is the only substantial thing in life, all else is illusion. Let love grow in you and God will be growing on its own accord. If you miss love you will miss God and all. There is no way to God without love. God can be forgotten – if love is remembered, God will happen as a consequence. It happens as a consequence. It is the fragrance of love and nothing else. In fact there is no God but only godliness. There is no person like God anywhere. Drop all childish attitudes, don’t go on searching for a father. Divineness is, God is not. When I say divineness is, I mean whatsoever is, is full of God. The green of the trees, and the red and the golden – all is divine. This crow crying, and a bird on the wing, and a child giggling, and a dog barking – all is divine. Nothing else exists.” - Osho, This Very Body, The Buddha
- “Never treat any person as a means. Treat everybody as an end in himself, in herself—then you don’t cling, then you are not attached. You love, but your love gives freedom—and, when you give freedom to the other, you are free. Only in freedom does your soul grow. You will feel very, very happy.” - Osho, Love, Freedom, and Aloneness: On Relationships, Sex, Meditation, and Silence (also titled Love, Freedom, Aloneness: The Koan of Relationships)
You can order Osho books, videos and audio books from Osho.com where you can find many of his sacred teachings on love.
Osho Quotes on Love vs. Lust / Love as Respect
- “Love is the opposite of lust: respecting the other as an end unto himself or herself. When you love someone as an end unto himself, then there is no feeling of hurt; you become enriched through it. Love makes everybody rich.” - Osho, Being in Love: How to Love with Awareness and Relate Without Fear
- “People think that they can love only when they find a worthy partner—nonsense! You will never find one. People think they will love only when they find a perfect man or a perfect woman. Nonsense! You will never find them, because perfect women and perfect men don’t exist. And if they exist, they won’t bother about your love. They will not be interested. I have heard about a man who remained a bachelor his whole life because he was in search of a perfect woman. When he was seventy, somebody asked, “You have been traveling and traveling—from New York to Kathmandu, from Kathmandu to Rome, from Rome to London you have been searching. Could you not find a perfect woman? Not even one?” The old man became very sad. He said, “Yes, once I did. One day, long ago, I came across a perfect woman.” The inquirer said, “Then what happened? Why didn’t you get married?” Sadly, the old man said, “What to do? She was looking for a perfect man.” - Osho, Being in Love: How to Love with Awareness and Relate Without Fear
- “An alive and loving person simply loves. Love is a natural function. So the second thing to remember is, don’t ask for perfection; otherwise you will not find any love flowing in you. On the contrary, you will become unloving. People who demand perfection are very unloving people, neurotic. Even if they can find a lover they demand perfection, and the love is destroyed because of that demand. Once a man loves a woman or a woman loves a man, demands immediately enter. The woman starts demanding that the man should be perfect, just because he loves her. As if he has committed a sin! Now he has to be perfect, now he has to drop all his limitations—suddenly, just because of this woman? Now he cannot be human? Either he has to become superhuman or he has to become phony, false, a cheat. Naturally, to become superhuman is very difficult, so people become cheats. They start pretending and acting and playing games. In the name of love people are just playing games. So the second thing to remember is never to demand perfection. You have no right to demand anything from anybody. If somebody loves you, be thankful, but don’t demand anything—because the other has no obligation to love you. If somebody loves, it is a miracle. Be thrilled by the miracle.” - Osho, Being in Love: How to Love with Awareness and Relate Without Fear
- “Love is sharing; greed is hoarding. Greed only wants and never gives, and love knows only giving and never asks for anything in return; it is unconditional sharing.” - Osho, Being in Love: How to Love with Awareness and Relate Without Fear
- Love the person, but give the person total freedom. Love the person, but from the very beginning make it clear that you are not selling your freedom.” - Osho
- “And if you have loved a man or a woman, you will want to give the other person as much freedom as possible. If love cannot give freedom, then it is not love.” - Osho - Being in Love: How to Love with Awareness and Relate Without Fear
- "Love has made people fall and love has made people rise high. It all depends on what you have done with love. Love is a very mysterious phenomenon. It is a door – on one side is suffering, on the other side is bliss; on one side is hell, on the other side is heaven; on one side is samsara, the wheel of life and death, on the other side is liberation. Love is a door.” - Osho
- "Love grows only in deep intimacy and trust. If you change persons, from A to B, from B to C, it is as if you are transplanting your being from one place to another. You will never grow roots, the tree will grow fragile and weak. To gain strength deep roots are needed, and to gain roots time is needed. And for love even eternity is not enough, remember, because love can grow and grow and grow... there is no end to it. There is a beginning, but there is no end. So don't take love as a superficial thing. It is not just a relationship. Through love, your whole being has to be discovered. It is sacred.” - Osho
Osho Quotes on Love Originating from Meditation & Awareness
- “Love is a by-product of meditation.” - Osho, The Razor’s Edge, Talk #15 (Meditation – Love – Being?)
- “I teach you to be more conscious. And love will come as you become more conscious: it is a guest that comes, that comes inevitably to those who are ready and prepared to receive it” - Osho, Satyam Shivam Sundaram – Truth Godliness Beauty, Talk #4,
- “Love is a spiritual phenomenon; lust is physical. Ego is psychological; love is spiritual.” - Osho, Being in Love: How to Love with Awareness and Relate Without Fear
- “I also teach you to love yourself first. It has nothing to do with ego. In fact, love is such a light that the darkness of the ego cannot exist in it at all. If you love others, if your love is focused on others, you will live in darkness. Turn your light toward yourself first, become a light unto yourself first. Let the light dispel your inner darkness, your inner weakness. Let love make you a tremendous power, a spiritual force.” - Osho
- “Yes, I would like you to love yourself, because unless you love yourself you cannot love anybody else. You don't know what love is if you have not loved yourself. But before you can love yourself you have to know yourself; hence love is secondary, meditation is primary.” - Osho, The Invitation, Talk #30
- “And the miracle is, if you meditate and slowly, slowly get out of the ego and out of your personality and realize your real self, love will come on its own. You don't have to do anything, it is a spontaneous flowering. But it blossoms only in a certain climate, and that climate I call meditation. In the climate of silence – no-mind, no disturbance inside, absolute clarity, peace and silence – suddenly, you will see thousands of flowers have opened within you, and their fragrance is love.” - Osho, The Invitation, Talk #30
- “Love is a roseflower in your being, but prepare your being. Dispel the darkness and the unconsciousness. Become more and more alert and aware, and love will come of its own accord, in its own time. You need not worry about it. And whenever it comes it is always perfect.” - Osho, Satyam Shivam Sundaram – Truth Godliness Beauty, Talk #4.
- “Love is a spiritual experience – nothing to do with sexes and nothing to do with bodies, but something to do with the innermost being. But you have not even entered into your own temple. You don’t know at all who you are and you are asking about love. First be thyself; first know thyself – and love will come as a reward. It is a reward from the beyond. It showers on you like flowers, fills your being. And it goes on showering on you, and it brings with it a tremendous longing to share. That sharing can only be indicated in human language as ‘love’ It does not say much, but it indicates the right direction. Love is a shadow of alertness, of consciousness.” - Osho
- “I teach you to be more conscious. And love will come as you become more conscious: it is a guest that comes, that comes inevitably to those who are ready and prepared to receive it.” - Osho
- “Love needs immense consciousness. Love is a meeting of two souls, and lust is the meeting of two bodies. Lust is animal; love is divine. But unless you know that you are a soul, you cannot understand what love is.” - Osho, The Razor’s Edge, Talk #15
- “I cannot tell you what love is, but I can tell you how to find your soul. That's my whole work: to help you meditate, to help you become more aware, alert, so that slowly, slowly you start seeing that you are not just the body, that you are not just even the mind, that there is something else hidden behind it all, which is your real life. And once you become aware of your real life, your being, you will know that the joy of being is so overflowing that one wants to share it with someone who is receptive, someone who is available, with someone who is ready to open his heart.” - Osho
- “The meeting of two consciousnesses is love.” - Osho
- “Discover your consciousness and you will find what love is. It is an experience, and there is no way to say anything about it, more than that which I have said. The meeting of two consciousnesses merging into each other brings the greatest orgasm the universe allows.” - Osho
- “Once you have reached to the center of your being, you will find love radiating from you. It is not something to be done by you. It will be just as if the sun has risen and the flowers have opened, and the air has become filled with their fragrance.” - Osho
- "Love makes no conditions, no ifs, no buts. Love never says, ‘Fulfill these requirements, then I will love you.’ Love is like breathing: when it happens you are simply love. It does not matter who comes close to you, the sinner or the saint. Whosoever comes close to you starts feeling the vibe of love, is rejoiced. Love is unconditional giving – but only those are capable of giving who have.” - Osho
- “If you eat, eat with love; because what you eat is God. If you walk, walk with love; because you are walking on Earth, sacred ground. If you bathe, do it with deep devotion, with love and respect for your body, since this is not your body, it is the body of God; it is His temple. So the little things in life that had no meaning will begin to have immense value. And when the little things start to have meaning, they are no longer small: you turned them into big things. It's up to you to live a small and insignificant life, or a great life: if you live without love, you will live a very small life. If you live with love, through love, you will have a great life, because love makes everything great. Love is the philosopher stone: anything it touches is turned into gold.” - Osho, Don't look before you leap, Initiation Talks
- “This is going to be the future religion of man, the synthesis between love and meditation.” - Osho
- “Love can be many things, and love is many things. And ordinarily, love is many things except love. To me, love is meditation. So try this: with your lover, be in meditation. Whenever your lover or beloved is present, be in deep meditation. Make this presence of each other a meditative state.“ - Osho, The Book of Secrets
- “Love is a lotus hidden in the mud. The lotus is born out of mud, but you don't condemn the lotus because it is born out of mud; you don't call the lotus muddy, you don't call the lotus dirty. Love is born out of sex, and then prayer is born out of love, and then God is born out of prayer. Higher and higher and higher one goes on soaring.” - Osho
- “When you enter into love, into a deep, intimate world of love, the person disappears, the form disappears, and the lover becomes just a door to the universe. Tantra is the natural way; the loose and the natural is the goal. You need not fight with the current; simply move with it, float with it. The river is going to the sea so why fight? Move with the river, become one with the river: surrender. Surrender is the keyword for Tantra. That’s why Tantra is the path of love. Love is surrender.” - Osho
Osho Quotes on Love as a State of Being
“One of the most mysterious things about man is that he goes on giving things which he doesn't have. You go on giving love and you don't have it in the first place, and you go on asking for love from others who also don't have it – beggars begging from beggars.” - Osho
“Love first has to happen in the deepest core of your being. It is the quality of being alone, happily alone, joyously alone. It is the quality of being a no-mind, of being silent. Contentless consciousness is the space, the context, in which love arises in you.” - Osho
- "One can be in deep love and yet be alone. In fact, one can be alone only when one is in deep love. The depth of love creates an ocean around you, a deep ocean, and you become an island, utterly alone. Yes, the ocean goes on throwing its waves on your shore, but the more the ocean crashes with its waves on your shore, the more integrated you are, the more rooted, the more centered you are. Love has value only because it gives you aloneness. It gives you space enough to be on your own.” - Osho
- "But you have an idea of love; that idea is creating trouble – not love itself, but the idea. The idea is that, in love, lovers disappear into each other, dissolve into each other. Yes, there are moments of dissolution – but this is the beauty of life and all that is existential: that when lovers dissolve into each other, the same are the moments when they become very conscious, very alert. That dissolution is not a kind of drunkenness, that dissolution is not unconscious. It brings great consciousness, it releases great awareness. On the one hand they are dissolved – on the other hand for the first time they see their utter beauty in being alone. The other defines them, their aloneness; they define the other. And they are grateful to each other. It is because of the other that they have been able to see their own selves; the other has become a mirror in which they are reflected. Lovers are mirrors to each other. Love makes you aware of your original face.” - Osho
- "Hence, it looks very contradictory, paradoxical, when stated in such a way: ‘Love brings aloneness.’ You were thinking all along that love brings togetherness. I am not saying that it does not bring togetherness, but unless you are alone you cannot be together. Who is going to be together? Two persons are needed to be together, two independent persons are needed to be together. A togetherness will be rich, infinitely rich, if both the persons are utterly independent. If they are dependent on each other, it is not a togetherness – it is a slavery, it is a bondage. - Osho
- “You have to remember that freedom is the highest value and if love is not giving you freedom then it is not love. Freedom is a criterion: anything that gives you freedom is right, and anything that destroys your freedom is wrong. If you can remember this small criterion your life, slowly, will start settling on the right path about everything: your relationships, your meditations, your creativity, whatever you are.” - Osho
- “Only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of the other person—without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not give by the other.” - Osho
- “Two lovers can be transformed so deeply that all their seven centres can start meeting. Tantra is the science of turning ordinary lovers into soul mates. It can transform the whole earth; it can transform each couple into soul mates. It is one of the greatest treasures that is lying there, unused. The day humanity uses it, the earth will become aglow with a new love.” Osho, Philosophia Perennis, Vol 1
- “Love is prayer groping towards God. Love is poetry born out of the sheer joy of being. Love is song, dance, celebration: a song of gratitude, a dance of thankfulness, celebration for no reason at all... for this tremendous gift that goes on showering on us, for this whole universe, from the dust to the divine.” - Osho
- “Love is the first step towards God - hence it appears mad to those who are hung up in their heads. And because people don't understand the whole mystery of love, because they try to understand it through the mind.... It can be understood only through the heart. Remember: all that is great is available to the heart. The heart is the door to all great values of life, to all ultimate values.” - Osho
- “Become a temple of love. If you can do that much then the remaining can be left to God. A single step in love from your side, and God walks at least one thousand step towards you. Let love become your secret mantra. Not that you have to repeat "Love, love, love". . .you have to live it, in all kinds of situations, circumstances, good and bad, in failure and success. But never lose track of love. That small thread of love should always be remembered. In no circumstances should it be forgotten. That is your work. And soon something of tremendous importance is going to happen; it is already on the way.” - Osho
- “Love is the greatest alchemy in the world. It transforms small things into great, into precious experiences. This is one of the mysteries of life, that life is how you see it. It depends on your eyes. If you have the eyes of a poet the same trees are greener, livelier; they have a message, they whisper things into the ears of the poet. All depends on you. Your whole life experience goes on growing with your growing consciousness. As your consciousness becomes more and more juicy, life becomes more and more divine. Love can create paradise here now. My whole teaching is love more, to the point when you yourself become just a source of love, and nothing else.” - Osho
Osho Quotes on Unconditional Love / Love Without Perfection
“Knowing one’s original face is the beginning of a life of love, of a life of celebration. You will be able to give so much love—because it is not something that is exhaustible. It is immeasurable, it cannot be exhausted. And the more you give it, the more you become capable of giving it. The greatest experience in life is when you simply give without any conditions, without any expectations of even a simple thank-you. On the contrary, a real, authentic love feels obliged to the person who has accepted his love. He could have rejected it. When you start giving love with a deep sense of gratitude to all those who accept it, you will be surprised that you have become an emperor—no longer a beggar asking for love with a begging bowl, knocking on every door. And those people on whose doors you are knocking cannot give you love; they are themselves beggars. Beggars are asking each other for love and feeling frustrated, angry, because the love is not coming. But this is bound to happen. Love belongs to the world of emperors, not of beggars. And a man is an emperor when he is so full of love that he can give it without any conditions.” - Osho
- “When you say to a woman or a man, “I love you,” you are simply saying, “I cannot be deceived by your body, I have seen you. Your body may become old but I have seen you, the bodiless you. I have seen your innermost core, the core that is divine.” Liking is superficial. Love penetrates and goes to the very core of the person, touches the very soul of the person.” - Osho
- “The ordinary love is a demand, the real love is a sharing. It knows nothing of demand; it knows the joy of giving.” - Osho, Love, Freedom, and Aloneness: On Relationships, Sex, Meditation, and Silence (also known as The Koan of Relationships)
- “Only meditators know what love is.” - Osho, The Razor’s Edge, Talk #15, in the Osho Online Library.
- “Become individuals, that’s the first thing. The second thing is, don’t expect perfection and don’t ask and don’t demand. Love ordinary people. Nothing is wrong with ordinary people. Ordinary people are extraordinary! Each human being is so unique; have respect for that uniqueness. Third, give, and give without any condition—then you will know what love is. I cannot define it. I can show you the path to grow it. I can show you how to put in a rosebush, how to water it, how to give fertilizers to it, how to protect it. Then one day, out of the blue, comes the rose, and your home is full of the fragrance. That’s how love happens.” - Osho
- "Be a loving person rather than in a love relationship – because relationships happen one day and disappear another day. They are flowers; in the morning they bloom, by the evening they are gone.” - Osho
- “Real love is considerate but has no concern.” - Osho, Love, Freedom, and Aloneness: On Relationships, Sex, Meditation, and Silence (also known as The Koan of Relationships)
FAQ
What are some Osho quotes on love?
There are many quotes by Osho on love that reveal it as a spiritual phenomenon, an essence at the very center of our being, not dependent on a particular person. Osho often said that only those people who can be alone, rooted in their innermost being, are capable of love without possession. One of his well-known lines captures this beautifully: “Love the person without possessing the person. Give the other absolute freedom and you will know what real love is.” He described love as a very harmonious dialogue between two whole beings, a purest love that springs from the deepest core of the real self.
What was Osho's famous quote?
Among the most cited Osho quotes on love is the one about the flower: “If you love a flower, don’t pick it up. If you pick it, it dies and it ceases to be what you love. So if you love a flower, let it be. Love is not about possession.”
This reflects Osho’s existential truth that love is the freedom to let another grow. He believed love basically arises in such a way that it protects the other’s wholeness. In his teachings, this freedom is essential for a healthy love that lets the other expand like “the bigger the tree, the further shores its shade will reach.”
What is true love according to Osho?
For Osho, true love is not an action but a state, love arises when one is fully aware, deeply present, and in touch with the innermost being. He taught that when a human being drops the false center and lives with absolute clarity, love becomes a by-product of self awareness. This is why he called it the purest love, a love that allows the other absolute freedom, remains deeply rooted like a silent lake, and yet moves toward the whole world in compassion.
Osho also linked true love to no mind, saying that when you sit silently, watch existence, and enter your own temple, you begin to love one’s totality, the own life, the own past, the own unconsciousness, even all the dualities of your nature. From this space, love creates a very harmonious dialogue with the whole existence, and you experience what he called the ultimate realization: love as the very climate of being alive.
*The photos of Ma Ananda Sarita featured in this article were taken by Eliwira Miezal photographer and wardrobe/prop stylist.
