Does not having experienced true love prevent me from falling in love?

Having never had the opportunity to truly fall in love, to know that surrender, is that keeping me from truly falling in love with you, being in that mad state of love? Is it enough just to feel quiet love, respect -- though not necessarily that odd form of insanity?

Don't be worried. Because you must be comparing yourself with others, that creates the problem. This is YOUR odd kind of insanity. Everybody has his own way of being in love. Never compare it. Somebody may be dancing, may be ecstatic and singing, and somebody else may be sitting silently with closed eyes. Both are mad in their own ways. Don't think that you are not mad and the one who is dancing is mad, because one who is dancing will think, "Are you mad? You have fallen in love and are still sitting with closed eyes? What are you doing there? Dance!" Everybody has his own way of madness also. Just as nobody has the same face as you, nobody has the same eyes as you, nobody has the same fingerprints as you -- nobody has the madness that you have. Everything is unique. Everybody falls in love in…

Question: BELOVED OSHO, HOW CAN I LOVE BETTER? Love is something eternal. It is the experience of the buddhas, not the unconscious people of whom the whole world is full. Only very few people have known what love is, and these same people are the most awakened, the most enlightened, the highest peaks of human consciousness. If you really want to know love, forget about love and remember meditation. If you want to bring roses into your garden, forget about roses, and take care of the rosebush. Give nourishment to it, water it, take care that it gets the right amount of sun, water. If everything is taken care of, in the right time the roses are destined to come. You cannot bring them earlier, you cannot force them to open up sooner, and you cannot ask a roseflower to be more perfect.

Osho, you have titled this series of talks “Sahaj Yoga.” Do “sahaj” and “yoga” not seem mutually opposed?

Anand Maitreya! They don’t just seem opposed, they are opposed. But no ultimate truth of life can manifest without contradiction. Life is made of opposites—darkness and light, day and night, woman and man, negative electricity and positive electricity, birth and death. The very structure of life is woven of opposites. Hence the opposites are not only opposed; they are complementary to each other. If you have labored hard all day, you will be able to sleep deeply. Labor and rest are opposites, yet only the one who has worked can rest deeply—and the one who has not worked cannot. So the opposites are not only opposed, they complete each other. And only the one who has rested deeply at night can rise in the morning and engage in work again. One who has not rested through the night will not be able to work in the morning. Look closely at…

Someone has asked—the second question: Osho, yesterday you said that the other can never make anyone happy. But the joy, the bliss, and the sense of awe one experiences when one is immersed in love with a beloved—what is that?

I have heard: Mulla Nasruddin was sitting with a friend. He told his son, “Go to the cellar and bring the bottle of wine.” The boy went and returned. He had poor eyesight and a condition in which one thing appears as two. He said, “Shall I bring both bottles, or just one?” Nasruddin was troubled: there was only one bottle. If he said in front of the guest, “Bring just one,” the guest might think him stingy. If he said, “Bring both,” where would the boy find a second—there was only one. And if he told the guest, “My son sees double,” it would be needless disgrace; he still had to marry the boy off. So he said, “Do this—bring one and break the other. Smash the one on the left and bring the one on the right; the left one is useless anyway.” The boy went and smashed…

Osho, I have already suffered a lot because of love, and you say—the upward flowering of love is devotion. Master, I don’t want to get into that muck again.

No one in this world belongs to anyone, nor has anyone been born to be anyone’s property; nor should anyone be. It is an insult. No one is anyone’s slave. Love is a flow between two free individuals. Whenever either becomes a slave—if one or both become slaves—the flow stops. And when the flow stops, great pain arises: thorns pierce, wounds appear in life. People suffer “from love,” not because of love, but because in love’s name something else is going on—ego. That is what it is. You will be surprised to know: jealousy arises with persons—and it even arises in situations where there is no reason for jealousy at all. The husband comes home; the wife has waited all day. He sits down to read the newspaper. The wife may snatch it away, tear it up—one can even be jealous of a newspaper: “What is this paper that comes…