What happens when I feel I don't love or appreciate enough?

Beloved Osho, I feel that I don't love you enough, don't appreciate you enough, am not open enough. I feel like I am trundling along in a creaky old bullock cart, while you are flying by in all your beauty and grace and vastness. Beloved Osho, I am exasperated by my state of retardation. Why is it that I don't respond?

Prem Veena, it is something intrinsic to love that it always feels it is not enough. Only a small love feels enough. The greater the love, the more you are aware of the feeling that "I don't love enough." That is one of the signs of a great love. If somebody comes and says to me, "I love you very much -- I love you totally," then his love is certainly going to be very small. Otherwise to love totally is a tremendous phenomenon; it will change you entirely. So there is no need to be worried that your love is not enough. You want to love more, and if your love is great it will never be enough; it will always be something less than you wanted it to be. And the same is true about appreciation. You say, "I don't appreciate you enough, am not open enough." Just…

Question: BELOVED OSHO, HOW CAN I LOVE BETTER? Indradhanu, love is enough unto itself. It needs no betterment. It is perfect as it is; it is not in any way to be more perfect. The very desire shows a misunderstanding about love and its nature. Can you have a perfect circle? All circles are perfect; if they are not perfect, they are not circles. Perfection is intrinsic to a circle and the same is the law about love. You cannot love less, and you cannot love more -- because it is not a quantity. It is a quality which is immeasurable. Your very question shows that you have never tasted what love is, and you are trying to hide your lovelessness in a desire of, "how to love better." No-one who knows love can ask this question.

Osho, your answer about the heart which was approximately yogi reminded me of the following interchange: wife: "darling, since we married, do you love me more, or less?" husband: "more or less."

To ask about love in terms of more or less is stupid, because love can neither be more nor less. Either it is or it is not. It is not a quantity; it is a quality. It cannot be measured; it is immeasurable. You cannot say more, you cannot say less. The question is irrelevant, but lovers go on asking because they don't know what love is. Whatsoever they know must be something else. It cannot be love because love is not quantitative. How can you love more? How can you love less? Either you love or you don't love. Love surrounds you, fills you totally, or disappears completely and is not there... not even a trace is left behind. Love is a totality. You cannot divide it; division is not possible. Love is indivisible. If you have not come across such love which is indivisible then be alert. Then…

In everything there is a limitation, and when one understands one's limitations there is no problem. One follows the limitations -- one does whatsoever one can do and one enjoys doing it. Otherwise you can be bogged down with your own concepts and become burdened. My suggestion is that for one month you simply drop all concepts about love. Start from abc -- as if you don't know anything about love... and in fact you don't know; in fact nobody knows. Love is not an object of knowledge, nobody can know it. The people who really know it will always say that they don't know and the people who don't know will claim that they know, because the very experience of love is ineffable. So for one month, start from ABC. From this very moment start from abc: enjoy small things and don't hanker for the big.

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.