What happens to love if there is nothing and nobody to recognize and taste it?

The love in me is dependent on the outside world. At the same time I see what you say about being complete within. What happens to love if there is nothing and nobody to recognise and taste it? Who are you without disciples?

The first thing: There are two kinds of love. C.S. Lewis has divided love into these two kinds: 'need-love' and 'gift-love'. Abraham Maslow also divides love into two kinds. The first he calls 'deficiency-love' and the second he calls 'being-love'. The distinction is significant and has to be understood. The 'need-love' or the 'deficiency-love' depends on the other; it is immature love. In fact it is not truly love -- it is a need. You use the other, you use the other as a means. You exploit, you manipulate, you dominate. But the other is reduced, the other is almost destroyed. And exactly the same is being done by the other. He is trying to manipulate you, to dominate you, to possess you, to use you. To use another human being is very unloving. So it only appears like love; it is a false coin. But this is what happens…

When do we come to know love? For me, the more inside I go, the less love I seem to have. I seem to have lost the need to express myself lovingly to others, especially those I've loved in the past, such as a girlfriend, mother, old friends and others.

A teacup is a teacup. You have to use it. It is a utility. You don't look with love. In fact you don't look at your own wife with love. She is also a utility -- a teacup to be used and thrown away. You don't look at your husband with love. The husband is a means. Love is possible only when everything becomes the end. Then even a teacup has the quality of the beloved. Love is not a relationship; love is a fragrance that arises in you when you have reached home. Before that, you can talk about love, you can fantasize about love, you can write beautiful poetries about it, but you will not know what it is. Try to enter within yourself. There will be much difficulty, because your love will start disappearing. It has never been there, so it is good that a false thing…

Question: Second question: Osho, is love life itself? Is it aliveness? What is a well, after all? Merely a window through which the ocean peeks. The well is connected below to the ocean, to endless springs. It is just a little aperture where the ocean has looked out. Do not be afraid. You too are an aperture through which the Divine looks. Do not fear. You are connected. Pour yourself out and you will find you expand. Hold back and you will shrink and rot. And then a vicious circle begins: if you hold back, do not share, do not give love, fear arises—“Everything is already drying up; if I give, I will have even less.” You clamp down even more. The more you hold, the less you have; you keep drying up. Be brave. Give—and see.

Osho, as I feel, love has been very confusing. Personally, sir, I feel society has confused the term “love” with attachments. To me, attachment is the outcome or by-product of human need. May I ask you what love actually is?

Love liberates, makes the other free, allows the other to be a person. Attachment turns the other into an object and possesses so totally that it refuses to recognize that the other has a soul: If I say yes, then yes; if I say no, then no; if I say day, day; if I say night, night! Attachment says, “Only I am; you be erased.” Husbands have made wives into objects, wives have made husbands into objects. Lovers make each other into objects, and the moment an object shows a little movement, a little independence, attachment turns into enmity and pain. Love is a state of consciousness, not a relationship. Attachment is a relationship. And wherever there is relationship, there is need; we relate in order to fulfill a need. Love will, of course, relate—but it is not a relationship. As I said, the lamp’s light falls; if you pass…

Question: YOU, THE FOUNTAIN OF LOVE, OUR SOURCE IS IN THEE. LOVING THY WILL OUR SPIRIT IS FREE. THIS BEAUTIFUL DAY THAT ALL OF US SEE. THE HOPE OF THE WORLD IS LOVE. LOVE is not only the hope af the world, but the only hope. Up to now man has lived an absolutely loveless life. All the societies and the cultures and the religions that have existed on the earth have talked about love, but lived a very loveless existence. Much talk about love has happened in the past, but the structure that societies have created is basically against love. The society is geared for war, and a society that is geared for war can only talk about love but cannot live it. We have come now to the peak of this ugly, stupid structure of hatred.