How can one live meaningfully if attempts to fulfill love always end in misery?

In speaking about love yesterday, you said it is a basic need we should try and fulfill. You also said that it brings repeated misery. How then can one live meaningfully if our attempts to fulfill love always end in misery?

So in the East it has been completely prohibited. When the mother is pregnant love should not be made -- any sexual activity is dangerous for the child, because the child depends for his breathing on the mother. The oxygen is supplied by the mother, and when the mother is in sexual activity, her rhythm of breathing is lost. The continuous rhythm is no more there; the child suffocates, not knowing what is happening. While making sex, more oxygen is absorbed by the mother -- now these are scientific facts -- and when more oxygen is absorbed by the mother, the child cannot get the oxygen. Sometimes even death is possible; the child may die. The child remembers all these things. You also remember all these things; they are there, but because the ego was not there, they have not become a burden on you. An enlightened person remembers things…

If you really want to change your misery you have to go to the root cause. The root cause is that you don't know what love is, so how can you be a lover? How can you share love when you don't know what it is? The root cause is that you are not blissful so when you relate with somebody, in the beginning you manage to act blissfully, but how long can you act? As things settle you start coming back to your normal self because one cannot live continuously acting. Those honeymoon days when you are smiling, when there are songs on your lips, are just days of acting but soon they disappear, you come back to your natural and normal pace. One has to, otherwise it is very tiring; one cannot go on putting on a face for long.

So by and by go whirling, and make it so energy-full, make the energy move so fast, that you cannot keep pace with it, so that the ordinary ego which can control, drops, lags behind, forgotten. First knowledge goes, and then the ego. And the third thing is: dance as if you are deep in love with the universe; as if you are dancing with your lover. Let God be your lover. Dance as if you are not alone; as if He is constantly with you holding your hands. If the first two steps become possible, the third will come automatically. And then all your loneliness will disappear. There is no loneliness, but because we are not in tune with the divine, again and again loneliness comes into our lives.

And Buddha opened himself up to the stars, to the ocean, to the sky, to the trees, to the birds, and he knew life as bliss. It all depends on how you relate to existence. Are you trying to be an egoist? -- then misery, boredom, anguish is going to be your fate. If you meet and merge with existence, if you start destroying the walls and creating bridges... because the same bricks can be used: you can make a wall or you can make a bridge. If you start destroying the walls and making bridges, that is yoga. That is creating as many meeting points as possible -- a multi-dimensional unity with existence, with all its beauty, with all its celebration, with the millions of forms that life has taken. One should be able to relate with trees, with rocks, with animals, with rivers, with mountains.

It is good that Christianity, Judaism and Mohammedanism believe in only one life. Just think of the Buddhists and the Jainas -- they believe in eighty -- four million lives! It needs some guts... even to think of eighty-four million lives. Then how many million love affairs...? And it is certainly a miracle that we have survived and still the wheel is moving. People go on calling it a merry -- go-round, I call it a sorry-go-round! Both are easy: you become fed up with love, you start meditating; you become fed up with meditation you start moving with somebody -- both arc easy. But the real thing is to have a synthesis, to be capable of being alone and at the same time to be capable of sharing your joy, your energies, with somebody.