CHAPTER 11: COUPLES COUNSELING

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‌COUPLES COUNSELING‌

Insights for Living and Growing in Love

Editor’s note: The following selections are taken from the evening meetings where Osho spoke directly with one or both partners in a couple, or with individuals who had come to ask him for insight into their problems in relationships.

When Telepathy Doesn’t Work

It almost always happens that couples don’t make things clear to each other. You hope that the other will understand, and the same is the case with the other: he or she thinks you will understand. Nobody understands! There is no communication, the problems have never been put forward clearly. You have to put things clearly: “I am not interfering with you, you can be who you are—I love you and I will go on loving you—but what about me?” Then some way can be found to work out the difficulties. You can remain together and still you can have your individuality and your freedom. If both partners really love each other, then they will be able to deal with the problem. But what really happens is that we never make things clear to each other. We go on hoping that the other will know telepathically. Nobody knows telepathically! The other is not a clairvoyant, you have to put it exactly: “two plus two is four”—like that. But what happens is that the real problem is not talked about.

Understanding the Need for Space

Create understanding, talk to each other, and understand that sometimes the other needs his space. And this is a problem: it may not happen at the same time for both of you. Sometimes you want to be with your partner, and he wants to be

alone—nothing can be done about it. Then you have to understand and leave him alone. Sometimes you want to be alone but he wants to come to you—then tell him that you are helpless, but you need your space!

Just create more and more understanding. That’s what lovers miss: love they have enough, but understanding none, not at all. That’s why on the rocks of misunderstanding their love dies. Love cannot live alone without understanding. Alone, love is very foolish; with understanding, love can live a long life, a great life—of many joys shared, of many beautiful moments shared, of great poetic experiences. But that happens only through understanding.

Love can give you a small honeymoon, but that’s all. Only understanding can give you deep intimacy. Then, even some day if you separate, the understanding will be with both of you, and that will be a gift of your love to each other. Lovers can separate, but the understanding that has been gained through the other, in the company of the other, will always be with you. That will remain as a gift, there can be no other gift. If you love a person, the only valuable gift that you can give to him is some quantity of understanding.

Dealing with Negative Feelings

Love is always beautiful in the beginning because you don’t bring your destructive energies into it. In the beginning you bring your positive energies into it; both pool their energies positively, the thing goes simply fantastically. But then by and by the negative energies will start overflowing; you cannot hold them back forever. And once you have finished with your positive energy, the honeymoon is over and then comes the negative part. Then hell opens its doors and one cannot understand what has happened. Such a beautiful relationship, why is it on the rocks?

If one is alert from the very beginning, it can be saved. Pour your positive energies into it, but remember that sooner or later the negative will start coming up. And when the negative starts coming in, you have to release the negative energy alone. Go into a room by yourself and release the negative; there is no need to throw it on the other person.

If you want to scream and shout and be angry, go into a room and shut the

door—shout, be angry, beat the pillow. Because nobody should be so violent as to throw things on other people. They have not done anything wrong to you, so why should you throw things on them? It is better to throw all that is negative into the dustbin. If you remain alert, you will be surprised to see that it can be done; and once the negative is released, again the positive is overflowing.

The negative can be released together only much later on in a relationship, when the relationship has become very well established. And then too it should be done only as a therapeutic measure. When the two partners of a relationship have become very alert, very positive, have become consolidated as one being and are able now to tolerate—and not only tolerate but use the other’s negativity

—they have to come to an agreement that now they will be negative together also, as a therapeutic measure.

Then too my suggestion is to let it be very conscious, not unconscious; let it be very deliberate. Make it a point that every night for one hour you will be negative with each other—let it be a game—rather than being negative anywhere, any time. Because people are not so alert—for twenty-four hours they are not alert—but for one hour you can both sit together and be negative. Then it will be a game, it will be like group therapy! After one hour you are finished with it and you don’t carry the hangover, you don’t bring it into your relationship.

The first step: the negative should be released alone. The second step: the negative should be released at a particular time with the agreement that you are both going to release the negative. Only at a third stage can one really become natural, and then there is no need to be afraid to harm the relationship or hurt the other. Then you can be both negative and positive, and both are beautiful, but only at the third stage.

At some point in the first stage you will start feeling that now your anger comes up no longer. You sit before the pillow, and the anger does not come. It will come for months, but one day you will find that it is no longer flowing, it has become meaningless, you cannot be angry alone. Then the first stage is over. But wait for the other person also to feel whether the first stage is over or not. If your partner’s first stage is also complete, then the second stage starts. Then for one or two hours—whether morning or evening, you can decide—you set a time to express your negative feelings, deliberately. Take it as a psychodrama, it is

impersonal. You don’t hit hard—you hit, but still you don’t hit the person. In fact you are simply throwing out your negativity. You are not accusing the other, you are not saying “You are bad” you are simply saying “I am feeling that you are bad.” You are not saying “You insulted me” you say “I feel insulted.” That is totally different, it is a deliberate game; “I am feeling insulted, so I will throw out my anger. You are closest to me so please function as an excuse for me” and the same is done by the other.

A moment will come when again you will find that this deliberate negativity does not function anymore. You sit for one hour together and nothing comes to you, nothing comes to your partner. Then that second stage is over.

Now the third stage, and the third stage is the whole of life. Now you are ready to be negative and positive as those feelings arise; you can be spontaneous.

This is how love becomes relating, becomes a quality of loving, becomes the natural state of your being.

Breaking Out of Old Relationship Patterns

Take twenty-four hours and write down everything that you can remember of how you have been sabotaging your relationships in the past, everything in detail. Look at it from every angle, and then don’t repeat it. It will become a meditation, and whether love remains in a new relationship or not is immaterial. If you can remain aware in it, that will be worth something.

You know well, everybody knows because it is impossible not to know what you do in your relationships. In your saner moments you know well. In your insane moments you forget; that I know. So before these insane moments come, look. Write down all the things you always have done to sabotage your relationships, and keep a copy with you. Whenever something comes up where that old pattern might be repeated, look at it.

One should become alert by and by, and then everything is beautiful. Love is tremendously beautiful but it can become a hell. So first you pinpoint all these things, and then don’t do them. And you will feel so happy, just in being able not to do them, you will feel a certain liberation. Those things are obsessive; they are

like a neurosis, a sort of madness.

And whenever two people are in love they are there to be happy: nobody is there to be unhappy. But this is how everybody goes on being stupid. Sooner or later they start making each other unhappy, and then the whole point is lost. All dreams are shattered and again and again it becomes a wound.

The Feeling of “Something Missing”

Every lover feels that something is missing, because love is unfinished. It is a process, not a thing. Every lover is bound to feel that something is missing, but don’t interpret it wrongly. It simply shows that love in itself is a dynamic thing. It is just like a river, always moving, always moving. In the very movement is the life of the river. Once it stops it becomes a stagnant thing; then it is no longer a river. The very word “river” implies a process, the very sound of it gives you the feeling of movement.

Love is a river; it is not a thing, a commodity. So don’t think that something is missing; it is part of love’s process. And it is good that it is not completed. When something is missing you have to do something, to move. That feeling of “something missing” is a call from higher and higher peaks. Not that when you reach them you will feel fulfilled. Love never feels fulfilled. It knows no fulfillment, but it is beautiful because then it is alive forever and ever.

In and Out of Tune

And you will always feel that something is not in tune. That too is natural, because when two persons are meeting, two different worlds are meeting. To expect that they will fit perfectly is to expect too much, is to expect the impossible, and that will create frustration. Something will always be out of tune. If you fit completely and there is nothing out of tune, the relationship will become stagnant. At the most there are a few moments when everything is in tune, rare moments. Even when they come you may not be able to catch them they are so swift, so rare. They have barely come and they are already gone, just a glimpse. And that glimpse can make you more frustrated, because then you will see more and more that things are out of tune.

This is how it has to be. Make all efforts to create that intuneness, but always be ready if it doesn’t happen perfectly. And don’t be worried about it, otherwise you will fall more and more out of tune. The feeling of being in tune comes only when you are not worried about it. It happens only when you are not tense about it, when you are not even expecting it—just out of the blue. It is a grace, a gift of existence, a gift of love.

Love is not a thing you can do. But by doing other things, love will happen. There are small things you can do—sitting together, looking at the moon, listening to music—nothing directly to do with love.

Love is very delicate, fragile. If you look at it, gaze at it directly, it will disappear. It comes only when you are unaware, doing something else. You cannot go directly, arrowlike. Love is not a target. It is a very subtle phenomenon. It is very shy. If you go direct, it will hide. If you do something direct, you will miss.

Cooling Passions

If love goes deeper, husbands and wives eventually become brothers and sisters. If love goes deeper, the sun energy becomes moon energy. The heat is gone, it is very cool. And when love goes deeper, a misunderstanding can also happen, because we have become accustomed to that fever, passion, that excitement, and now it looks all foolish. It is foolish! Now if you make love it looks silly; if you don’t make love you feel as if something is missing because of the old habit.

So you will have to understand this coolness that is coming. And of course when you start feeling as one, a fear arises. A fear about what is happening because if the two of you become too much one person you will start forgetting the other. The other can be remembered only as “the other.” Psychologists say that when a child starts learning and the word he first utters is “daddy” it hurts the mother, because she has been taking care of the child and she carried the child for nine months. She is with the child for twenty-four hours, but when the child utters his first word he says “daddy”? The father is just on the periphery and the mother is so close. She feels the child is betraying her!

But there is a reason to it: the mother is so one with the child that he cannot

name her yet—that’s the reason. She is so one with the child that he does not have the feeling that she is the “other.” Daddy is not with the child so much; he comes and goes, in the morning he goes to the office and then he comes back in the evening and sometimes comes and plays with the child, and then he is gone again. He is always on the go, so he can be thought of as the “other.” The mother is always there, so cannot yet think of her as separate. So first he names “daddy” and then, by and by, one day he learns the word “mommy.” The third thing is that he will learn his own name because that is the most difficult thing for the child.

Now he can understand that the mother is also separate. Sometimes he is hungry and she does not come, and sometimes he is wet and she is talking to somebody and doesn’t notice it. He starts feeling that she is “other,” not absolutely one with him. But he is one with himself, so the last thing he learns is his own name.

So when two lovers start becoming one, the fear arises: “Are you losing the other?” In a way you are, because the other will not be felt as the other, hence the idea of brotherly and sisterly love. Why? The brotherly and sisterly love has no excitement; it is a cool thing. It is very cool and calm—no passion, no sensuality, no sexuality.

And another thing is that the brother and sister have not chosen each other; it is a given phenomenon. One day you suddenly find that you are a sister to somebody or a brother to somebody; you have not chosen. Lovers you choose. In choosing a lover there is some ego involved. With a sister, with a brother, there is no ego involved. You have not chosen; it is a gift from existence. You cannot change, you cannot go to a judge and say that you want to divorce your sister and you don’t want to be a brother to her anymore. Even if you decide not to be a brother, you still remain a brother. It doesn’t make any difference what you want, there is no way to change it. It is irrevocable, you cannot revoke it.

When a husband and wife start feeling so much oneness, a fear arises: Have you started taking the other for granted? Has he become a brother or a sister, and so is no longer your choice, no longer involved with your ego, no longer a fulfillment of your ego’s desires? All these fears arise. And in the past you had so much passion for one another, so much heat. You know now that it is foolish, but still, the past habit…. Sometimes one starts feeling that one is missing

something, one feels a sort of emptiness. But don’t look at it through the past. Look at it from the future.

Much is going to happen in this emptiness, much is going to happen in this intimacy—you will both disappear. It will become absolutely non-sexual, all heat will be gone, and then you will know a totally different quality of love. That quality that will arise in you that I call prayerfulness, meditativeness, pure awareness. But that is still in the future, that has not yet happened. You are on the way towards it. The past is gone and the future has not yet come.

This interim period will be a little hard, but don’t think of the past. It is gone and it is gone forever; even if you try you cannot bring it back. It will be so foolish, it will feel so silly. You can drag it back, you can try, but you will fail and that will create more frustration. So don’t even try. Just be loving in a new way. Let this new-moon love happen.

Hold each other, be loving to each other, care, and don’t hanker for the heat because that heat was a kind of madness, it was a frenzy; it is good that it is gone. So you should think yourselves fortunate. Don’t misunderstand it.

That is going to happen to each lover if you really listen to me and go deep. This is the depth you are asking for when you say that you want your love to go deep—this is the depth! The passionate love is a periphery, the compassionate love is at the center. That is the depth.

Just enjoy it: feel blissful, meditate together, dance together. If sex disappears, let it; don’t force it to remain. If sometimes it happens, let it happen; if it disappears, let it disappear.

When the Thrill Is Gone

It is very difficult to be in love for a long time. It needs a great transformation in your being. Only then can you be in love for a long time. The ordinary love is a very momentary thing; it comes and goes, it starts and it ends, it has a beginning and it has an end. So, rather than rationalizing it, just look into the phenomenon that you are no longer in love. It will be hard! It is not that the love is still there but the energy is somehow no longer flowing. How can that happen? Love is the

energy; if love is there, the energy will flow.

Maybe you are in love with your past love, that’s possible. Maybe you are in love with your past memories—how beautiful things were and how the energy was flowing between you, and now it is not flowing. It is a hangover from the past. You are continuously thinking about the past, and you want the present also to be like the past. But it cannot be done. The present is totally different from the past, and it is good that it is different! If it were just a repetition of the past you would be fed up, completely bored.

So both partners have to look into the reality and try to find out the truth. If you are not in love anymore, then one thing can be done: you can be friends. There is no need to force yourselves to be lovers, and love cannot be forced. If you force it, it will be a hypocrisy and it will never satisfy anybody.

So just look into the thing. You have been lovers in the past, so at least you can be friends. Just look into it! Maybe if you decide to be friends, love may start flowing again, because again you will start being free, again you will start becoming individuals, again the security will be gone, again those elements that have destroyed your love will disappear. There is a possibility your love may start flowing again.

Just as you came together one day, now part and just be friends. First your love happened: you were friends, and then you just came together. Love arises out of friendship, and then sooner or later it becomes a relationship but without the friendship, then it dies. If you really want to revive it again—and I am not saying that it is a certainty, nobody can say anything about that, but—there is a possibility that it may revive. Or even if it doesn’t revive, you can revive your loving energies with somebody else, your partner can love somebody else.

Always remember one thing: to be in love is good—that is great virtue. If it is not flowing with one person, then it is better to let it be flowing with somebody else. But don’t get stuck, otherwise you will suffer, you will make your partner suffer, you both will suffer. And the problem is that if you suffer long enough, you will become addicted to your suffering. Then you will start feeling a sort of enjoyment in the suffering itself. You may become masochists, and then it will be very difficult to get out of it. Right now the problem is so great.

Time to Say Good-bye

Talk to your partner, be truthful, and ask your partner also to be truthful. You have loved each other; at least this much you owe to each other, to be truthful, to be absolutely truthful. Put all the cards out on the table and don’t try to hide; because that is not going to help. Only truth helps. Lies never help, they can only postpone the problem, and meanwhile the problem will be getting more and more roots in you. So the sooner the better.

Talk to your partner: be honest, even if it hurts. Tell your partner that it will hurt, but nothing to be worried about. You have been happy together; if it hurts, that too has to be faced. Be absolutely true—no finding of scapegoats, no witch hunting, no rationalization. Just be true. Look into yourself, show your heart, and help the partner also to be true. If love is finished, then be friends, there is no need to force it.

Never betray love. Lovers change. That is not a problem, that should not be a problem; we should not become attached too much to persons. Let there be only one commitment, and that has to be to love itself! Be in love with love, and everything else is secondary.

And be courageous, that courage will help. Otherwise you can both pretend that really you should stay together because of this and because of that, and you will go on being miserable. Never remain in misery for a single moment. Live dangerously because that is the only way to live.

The Agony and Ecstasy of Honesty

It is said that if every person starts saying the truth, then there will be no friendship in the world, no friendship at all: no lovers, no friendship, no marriage, nothing. All these things will simply disappear. Then it will be an encounter group, the whole situation will be an encounter group everywhere, in every situation.

But one can work slowly, particularly in intimate relationships. And if both are willing to go into the depth of sincerity and honesty, it pays. Your love will become deeper; it will have something of the beyond in it. If you can be honest

and yet be together, if you can suffer the agony that honesty brings, then one day the ecstasy that honesty and only honesty can bring also follows.

Fear Is Not Always Wrong

Sometimes your energy needs to be left alone, something is happening within you that needs you to keep to yourself. And when you think of getting involved with somebody there is a hesitation that can feel like fear. But fear is not always wrong, remember. Nothing is always wrong; it depends. People have such ideas that fear is always wrong—it is not. Yes, sometimes it is wrong, sometimes it is not. Nothing is always right, and nothing is always wrong; everything depends on the context.

Right now your fear is perfectly right. It simply says to you “Don’t get involved.” It is not the fear of the new, not at all; that is a misinterpretation. It is simply fear that if you get entangled in somebody else’s energy, you will lose the centering which is growing within you. You are becoming more centered, you are settling more in your being. You are coming to terms with your aloneness, and if you fall into a relationship, that will be dragging yourself out. When your movement is inwards, a relationship will take you out and that can create a contradiction. Hence the fear. The fear is really helpful in this case; it is showing you not to be foolish.

Remain alone. When the fear disappears, move into relationship; then it will be perfectly right. It will disappear—when its time is gone, when you have settled, when the energy is exactly as it should be inside you, then you can afford to go out. First one has to settle inside, then it is easy to go outside and it is not a distraction. In fact it becomes an enhancement of the inner because of the contrast. It becomes a little holiday from the inner, but you always come back. Then it is not destructive, it is creative. Then love helps meditation.

So simply wait. Listen to your fear and don’t repress it. It will disappear on its own. When the energy is ready to go out, you will suddenly see one day that you are moving with somebody and there is no fear at all, your whole being is with you. When that happens, then move into relationship. Till then, avoid it.

Haunted

There is no need to forget! Go on remembering! You are trying to forget your lost lover—who can forget by trying? The more you try to forget, the more you remember, because even to forget you have to remember! Don’t try to forget. Make it a meditation. Whenever you remember your old partner just close your eyes and remember the person as deeply as you can, and soon you will forget.

Imperfect Fit

Only two dead things can fit with each other totally. Life asserts itself, struggles, fights, clamors to be taken note of, tries to dominate. Life is a will to power, hence there is conflict. It is intrinsic to life itself. And nobody wants to be dominated; everybody wants to dominate. Relationship exists between these two.

A relationship is a miracle. It should not happen really, scientifically it should not happen. It happens because we are not yet scientific. And it is good that we are not yet scientific; and we are never going to be absolutely scientific. Something illogical will always remain in the heart of man. That keeps the flame of humanity alive; otherwise man becomes a machine. Only machines are utterly adjusted; a machine is never maladjusted.

So this is the problem facing every couple: when there is total conflict, all is destroyed. There is no bridge between you and the other; a relationship doesn’t exist. If there is total adjustment, again the relationship disappears because there is no more flow, there is no more hope. Just between the two, exactly in the middle between adjustment and conflict, a little bit of adjustment, a little bit of conflict—and they go together. They look contradictory but they are complementary.

If one can remember that, one remains sane; otherwise a relationship can drive you insane. There are moments when it drives people insane, when it is too much to bear. So never ask for absolute adjustment. Just a little bit is more than enough. Feel grateful for that, and let the relationship remain a flow. Be together, but don’t try to become one. Be together, but don’t become absolutely unconnected. Remain two and yet in contact. That’s what I mean by the middle.

And be a little more alert. One has to be a little more conscious when one is moving in love, and one has to be careful about the other. Whatsoever you do affects that person.

Give and Take

If in a relationship one person goes on giving and the other goes on taking, both suffer. Not only the giver—because the giver feels cheated—but the person who is the receiver is also suffering because he cannot grow unless he is allowed to give. He becomes a beggar and his self-image falls low. He needs to be strengthened and he needs to be given an opportunity where he can also give. Then he feels human; he feels confident.

Not Just Sex

Be very watchful, be loving, and if sometimes sex happens as part of love, then there is nothing to be worried about. But it shouldn’t be the focus. The focus should be love. You love a person, you share his being, you share your being with him, you share the space.

That is exactly what love is: to create a space between two persons, a space which belongs to neither or belongs to both—a small space between two persons where they both meet and mingle and merge. That space has nothing to do with physical space. It is simply spiritual. In that space you are not you, and the other is not the other. You both come into that space and you meet. That is what love is. If it grows, then that common space becomes bigger and bigger and bigger and then both the partners are dissolved into it.

So sometimes if you share space with somebody, a husband or friend or anybody, and sex happens as a spontaneous phenomenon—not something brooded upon, not something sought after, not something that you were planning

—then it is not sexual.

There is a sort of sex which is not sexual at all. Sex can be beautiful but sexuality can never be beautiful. By “sexuality” I mean cerebral sex—thinking about it, planning it, managing, manipulating and doing many things, but the

basic thing remains deep down in the mind that one is approaching a sex object.

When you look to a person through the eyes of this kind of sexuality, you reduce the other to an object. The other is no longer a person, and the whole game is only of manipulation. You are going to land in bed sooner or later. It depends how much you play with the idea and how much both of you prolong the foreplay. But if in the mind the end is just sex, then it is the sexuality I am talking about. When the mind has nothing to do with sex, then it is pure, innocent sex. It is virgin sex.

That sex can sometimes be even purer than celibacy, because if a celibate continuously thinks of sex, then it is not celibacy. When a person moves in a deep love relationship with somebody, not thinking about sex, and it happens because you share so totally that sex also comes in, then it is okay and nothing to worry about. Don’t create guilt about it.

Stormy Weather

In a single moment, a person can change completely. She was so happy and she can become so unhappy. Just a moment before she was ready to die for you, and just a moment afterwards she is ready to kill you. But this is how humanity is. It gives depth, it gives surprises, it gives salt. Otherwise life would have been very tedious.

It is all beautiful. These are all notes of a great harmony. And when you love a person, you love that harmony and you accept all that makes that harmony. Sometimes it is raining, sometimes the sky is cloudy and dark, and sometimes it is full of sunlight and the clouds have disappeared. Sometimes it is very cold, and sometimes it is very hot. In just the same way, the human climate goes on changing, everything goes on changing. When you love a person, you love all these possibilities. Infinite are the possibilities, and you love all the shades and nuances.

So be true and help your partner also to be true. Then love becomes a growth. Otherwise love can become a poisonous thing. At least don’t corrupt love. It is not corrupted by hatred, remember; it is corrupted by falsity. It is not destroyed by anger, never, but it is destroyed by an inauthentic persona, a false face.

Love is possible only when there is freedom to be oneself without any guarding, without any reserve. One is simply flowing. What can you do? When you feel hateful, you are hateful. When the clouds are there and when the sun is shining, what can you do? And if the other understands and loves you, they will accept; they will help you to come out of the clouds because they know that this is just a climate, and it comes and goes. These are just moods, passing phases, and behind these passing phases is the reality, the spirit of the person, the soul. And when you accept all these phases, by and by glimpses of the real soul start happening to you.

Sweet Sorrow

Aloneness has in it both a sort of sadness, a sort of sorrow, and yet a very deep peace and silence. So it depends on you how you look at it.

When you are separated from your lover, look at it as a great opportunity to be alone. Then the vision changes. Look at it as an opportunity to have your own space. It becomes very difficult to have one’s own space, and unless you have your own space, you will never become acquainted with your own being, you will never come to know who you are. Always engaged, always occupied in a thousand and one things—in relationship, in worldly affairs, anxieties, plans, future, past—one continuously lives on the surface.

When one is alone one can start settling, sinking in. Because you are not occupied you will not feel the way you have always been feeling. It will be different, and that difference can feel strange.

And certainly when one is separated one misses one’s lovers, beloveds, friends, but this is not going to be forever. It is just a small discipline. And if you love yourself deeply and go down into yourself, you will be ready to love even more deeply because one who does not know oneself cannot love very deeply. If you live on the surface, your relationship cannot be of the depths. It is your relationship, after all. If you have a depth, then your relationship will have a depth.

So take this opportunity as a blessing and move into it. Enjoy it. If you become too sorrowful, the whole opportunity is wasted.

And it is not against love, remember. Don’t feel guilty. In fact it is the very source of love. Love is not what is ordinarily known as love. It is not that. It is not a stew of sentimentality, emotions, feelings. It is something very deep, very foundational. It is a state of mind, and that state of mind is possible only when you penetrate your own being, when you start loving yourself. That is the meditation when one is alone: to love oneself so deeply that for the first time you become your own love object.

So in these days when you are alone, be a narcissist; love yourself, enjoy yourself! Delight in your body, in your mind, in your soul. And enjoy the space that is empty around you and fill it with love. The lover is not there—fill it with love! Spread your love around your space, and your space will start becoming luminous; it will glow. And then for the first time you will know, when your lover comes close to you, that now it is a totally different quality. In fact you have something to give, share. Now you can share your space because you have your space.

Ordinarily people think that they are sharing, but they don’t have anything to share—no poetry in their heart, no love. In fact when they say they want to share, they don’t want to give, because they don’t have anything to give. They are in search of getting something from the other and the other is also in the same boat. He is searching to get something from you, and you are searching to get something from him. Both are in a way trying to rob the other of something. Hence the conflict between lovers, the tension; the continuous tension to dominate, to possess, to exploit, to make the other a means for your pleasure; somehow to use the other for your gratification. Of course we hide in beautiful words. We say, “We want to share,” but how can you share if you don’t have?

So enjoy this space, aloneness. Don’t fill it with past memories and don’t fill it with future imagination and fantasy. Let it be as it is—pure, simple, silent. Delight in it; sway, sing, dance. A sheer joy of being alone.

And don’t feel guilty. That too is a problem because lovers always feel guilty. If they are alone and they are happy, they feel a certain guilt. They think, “How can you be happy when your lover is not with you?”—as if you are cheating the person. But if you are not happy when you are alone, how can you be happy when you are together? So it is not a question of cheating anybody. In the night, when nobody is looking at the rosebush, it is preparing the rose. Deep down in

the earth, the roots are preparing the rose. Nobody is looking there. If the rosebush thinks, “I will show my roses only when people are around,” then it will not have anything to show. It will not have anything to share, because whatever you can share has first to be created, and all creativity arises out of the depths of aloneness.

So let this aloneness be a womb, and enjoy and delight in it; don’t feel that you are doing something wrong. It is a question of attitude and approach. Don’t give it a wrong interpretation. It need not be sorrowful. It can be tremendously peaceful and blissful. It depends on you.

The Fire Test of Truth

No relationship can truly grow if you go on holding back. If you remain clever and go on safeguarding and protecting yourself, only personalities meet, and the essential centers remain alone. Then just your mask is related, not you. Whenever such a thing happens, there are four persons in the relationship, not two. Two false persons go on meeting, and the two real persons remain worlds apart.

Risk is there. If you become true, nobody knows whether this relationship will be capable of understanding truth, authenticity; whether this relationship will be strong enough to stand in the storm. There is a risk, and because of it, people remain very guarded. They say things which should be said; they do things which should be done. Love becomes more or less like a duty. But then the reality remains hungry, and the essence is not fed. So the essence becomes more and more sad. The lies of the personality are a very heavy burden on the essence, on the soul. The risk is real, and there is no guarantee for it, but I will tell you that the risk is worth taking.

At the most, the relationship can break, at the most. But it is better to be separate and to be real rather than being unreal and together because then it is never going to be satisfying. Benediction will never come out of it. You will remain hungry and thirsty, and you will go on dragging, just waiting for some miracle to happen.

For the miracle to happen you will have to do something, and that is start

being true, at the risk that maybe the relationship is not strong enough and may not be able to bear it. The truth may be too much, unbearable, but then that relationship is not worthwhile. So that test has to be passed.

Once you are true, everything else becomes possible. If you are false—just a facade, a painted thing, a face, a mask—nothing is possible. Because with the false, only false happens; with the truth, truth.

I understand your problem. That is the problem of all lovers: that deep down they are afraid. They go on wondering whether this relationship will be strong enough to bear truth. But how can you know beforehand? There is no a priori knowledge. One has to move into it to know it.

How are you to know, sitting inside your house, whether you will be able to withstand the storm and the wind outside? You have never been in the storm. Go and see. Trial and error is the only way—go and see. Maybe you will be defeated, but even in that defeat you will have become stronger than you are right now.

If one experience defeats you, and another, and another—by and by, the very going through the storm will make you stronger and stronger and stronger. A day comes when one simply starts delighting in the storm, one simply starts dancing in the storm. Then the storm is not the enemy. That too is an opportunity—a wild opportunity—to be.

Remember, being never happens comfortably; otherwise it would have happened to all. It cannot happen conveniently; otherwise everybody would have their own, authentic being without any problem. Being happens only when you take risk, when you move into danger. And love is the greatest danger there is. It demands you totally.

So don’t be afraid, go into it. If the relationship survives truth, it will be beautiful. If it dies, then too it is good because one false relationship has ended, and now you will be more capable of moving into another relationship—truer, more solid, more concerning the essence.

Never Ask for Sympathy

Just be happy. A relationship is not as important as your being happy. And if you are happy, who bothers about a relationship?

A relationship is not creative, it simply reflects what is the case. It is like a mirror: if there is something to be reflected, the mirror reflects. If there is nothing to reflect, the mirror cannot create anything; it is passive. So always remember to be happy, enjoying, and if something comes by the way, good. And it is going to come, because a happy person has to share. But he has to wait a little, because a happy person attracts only another happy person.

If you are unhappy, you will attract many people, because they are also unhappy and something fits. There is a messiah, a therapist in everybody. So when you are in misery somebody comes and sympathizes and feels very good, high. Somebody is in misery and he is the one to help; he feels very egoistic about it. So that’s how people become interested in each other. Somebody is in pain, somebody is in suffering; that person will attract many sympathizers, lovers, friends.

They will be of many sorts. They may be sadists who are interested in others being miserable. A great majority of sadists exists in the world! Or, they may be just on their ego trips. Any unhappy person helps them to feel happy in comparison, relatively speaking, so they always like to have unhappy people around them. That is the only way they know.

Remember, sympathy is not love, and if somebody is sympathetic to you, beware! It is not love, and the sympathy will remain only as long as you remain in misery. Once you become happy, the sympathy will disappear, because sympathy cannot go uphill. It is just like water flowing downhill; it goes towards people who are more unhappy than you. Sympathy never rises, it cannot rise. It has no pumping system; your sympathy cannot move towards a higher person than you.

So never ask for sympathy, because that is corrupting to you and to the other also. And if you become settled with sympathy and you start thinking that this is love, you have settled with something like a false coin. It just gives one the feeling of love; it is not love.

True love is not sympathetic. True love is empathetic. It is empathy, not

sympathy. Sympathy means, “You are miserable, and I would like to help you. I remain outside. I give you my hand. I am not affected by you. In fact deep down I enjoy it. I relish it that one person is giving me the opportunity to feel so high.” This is violent.

Empathy is totally different. Empathy means, “I feel just as you are feeling. If you are miserable, I feel your misery. It touches me, it affects me. Not as an outsider but as if I am part of your being.”

Love is empathy, it is not sympathy at all.

So remember this, and resist the temptation to ask for sympathy. That temptation is there, because when one feels that love is not happening, one starts settling for less. One starts moving around in sadness and asking for sympathy in subtle ways. Never ask that. That is the greatest degradation that can happen to a human being. Never do that. Be happy.

It will take a little time for the love to happen, because most people are sadists, miserable themselves and trying to prove that they are messiahs, helpers, solving other people’s miseries. But if you are happy, you will attract somebody who is not caught up in all these neurotic trips; who is simply happy and would like to share with you.

And this is the beauty of it: if you are happy and a relationship happens, you feel good, you share, but you are not dependent on it. You don’t become a slave, you don’t become addicted to it, because you can be happy without it.

A good relationship is a sharing; there is no dependence. Both partners remain totally free and independent. Nobody possesses, there is no need. It is a free gift. I have so much, so I give it to you. There is no need, I can be alone and perfectly happy. When two persons are in love and both can be alone and happy, then a tremendously beautiful love happens, because they are not hindering each other in any way in their growth.

Be Aware in the Moment

Whenever there is a change, any sort of change, things will come into focus

more clearly. When change disturbs you, all your inner disturbances are stirred up. When you are both feeling disturbed, and both are trying to throw the responsibility on the other, just try to see it. Inside yourself, try to see it; the other is never responsible. Remember that as a mantra: The other is never responsible.

Just watch it, just watch it. And if you become wise in the moment, there will be no problem. Everybody becomes wise only when the moment is gone, and retrospective wisdom is worthless. When you are picking on something in the other person, at that very moment become aware, and let your awareness function. Immediately you will drop it.

But when you have done everything, and fought and nagged and bitched, and then later on you become wise and see that there was no point in it, it is too late. It is meaningless, you have done the harm. This wisdom is just pseudo-wisdom. It gives you a feeling as if you have understood. That is a trick of the ego. This wisdom is not going to help. When you were doing the thing, at that very moment, simultaneously, the awareness should arise and you should see that it is useless.

If you can see it when it is there, then you cannot do it. One can never go against one’s awareness, and if one goes against it, that awareness is not awareness. Something else is being mistaken for it.

So remember, the other is never responsible for anything. It is something boiling within you. And of course the one you love is closest to you. You cannot throw it on some stranger passing on the road, so the closest person becomes the place where you go on throwing and pouring your nonsense. But that has to be avoided, because love is very fragile. If you do it too much, if you overdo it, love can disappear.

The other is never responsible. Try to make this such a permanent state of awareness in you that whenever you start finding something wrong with the other, you will remember it. You will catch yourself red-handed, and drop it then and there.

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