What causes fluctuating feelings of love, hate, and indifference towards the same person?

Why do I love, then hate and then show indifference to the same person?

Tushara, what you call love is just sex. Call it sex, don't call it love. And it will be good to call it sex because then you know it is sex. There is no need to pretend. If you don't pretend, it will not turn into hate. If you pretend that it is love and it is not, sooner or later you will see it is turning into hate. If you don't pretend, if you call it simply sex, you will be grateful to the other, you will not hate the other. And it will never become indifference; you will always feel thankful. But calling it by a big name, 'love', creates the whole trouble. Then the problem arises -- why does it turn into hate? Love never turns into hate. Love goes on becoming more and more love. Love ultimately becomes prayer and God. But this is not love.…

I have just recently been helped to discover that nobody is perfect and to let go of my fantasy of a perfect person. Now I am left with my feelings of loving and hating the same person and I find it difficult to live with such intense, seemingly polar opposites in myself. Anything to do?

It is said about Nero that he was so much obsessed with food that he had four doctors following him wherever he would go. And those four doctors' duty was to make him vomit. He would eat too much and the doctors would make him vomit, and then he would eat too much again -- immediately. To make it possible for him, so he could eat many times in a day, the only way was to help him vomit. Now this is madness. And how can you enjoy food when you are continuously vomiting? It is nauseating, the very idea is nauseating. And when you digest it you will throw your whole system into a chaos. It is the mind being destructive to the body. When you eat, enjoy it totally. But then there is a need for six to eight hours' fast -- only then does the hunger arise…

[A sannyasin asks about his relationship which is bringing up some hatred and aggression on both sides.] Mm, it's natural. When you allow love to come out, hate will also come out. That's why many people repress their love -- because they have been taught to repress their hate and they are both aspects of the same energy. They are not two; they are one. So when love comes up, hate will also, and if you repress hate, love will be repressed simultaneously. ... If you understand, you will not think in terms of wanting or not wanting. It is a fact. Your wanting or not wanting does not make any difference. One has to accept it, one has to accept whatsoever is. What can you do? If you repress hate -- and your dislike will repress it -- then immediately love will be repressed.

Osho, the famous psychologist Erich Fromm has said that after peering into the human mind I am astonished that in human society there are even acts of friendship, love, and charity. Kindly tell us which among human tendencies is more fundamental and stronger—love or hatred, violence or nonviolence, pleasure or pain?

So let us not begin with a wrong question. Wherever you see an extreme in life, understand that in the middle there will be a bridge as well. Is the night anywhere separate from the day? Is death anywhere separate from life? Death does not happen outside life; it happens within life. You do not die before death comes; you remain alive. When death comes, it finds you alive. It is not that first you die and then death comes. Death is within life, not outside it. And death is not even opposed to life. When you move aside, you make space for someone else—someone else can live. An old person dies, and a child can be born. Old leaves fall and new leaves sprout. If the old leaves do not fall, the new leaves will not appear. Think a little like this: had your elders not died, you could…

You wanted to become rich because you were poor. The whole desire to become rich was because of your poverty. Now you are rich you don't care. Or think of it in another way. You are hungry so you are obsessed with food. But when you are feeling well and your stomach is full, who bothers, who thinks about food? The same happens with your so-called love. You are chasing a woman and the woman goes on withdrawing herself, escaping from you. You become more and more heated up and then you chase her more. And that's part of the game. Every woman knows intrinsically that she has to escape so the chase is continued for longer. Of course she is not to escape so much that you forget all about her. She has to remain in view, alluring, fascinating, calling, inviting -- and yet escaping.