What happens when we are dependent on others?

Beloved Osho, the other day you said that as long as we are dependent on the other, we are bound to hate them. Are you also my "other"? I know that right now I depend on you and I say yes to it with all my heart, but it drives me to tears to think that I should ever hate you because I am dependent on you. Can you please fill my heart with understanding and ease the pain?

Nobody is dependent on me. I am not creating a mob of slaves. My whole effort is just the opposite: to drag you out of the crowd of the slaves and to make you independent individuals. But from your side, I can understand. From your side, you may be thinking you are dependent on me. That is a misunderstanding. You are absolutely free. Free to be with me, free not to be with me, free to be for me, free to be against me -- it is your joy. Don't make it heavy. Keep it light and playful. You love me; hence the fear has arisen that one day you may fall into the opposite and you may start hating me. Don't be worried, because your love is not just love. You love me not for any biological reason, you love me for some spiritual growth. Your love is part…

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…

Osho, in a previous talk you said you prefer shaktipat to be as close to grace as possible. Doesn’t that imply that the method of shaktipat admits gradual refinement and development? In other words, is qualitative progress also possible in the process of shaktipat?

From one who has attained the seventh body, shaktipat becomes the purest—the purest. Yet it is still not grace. The purest state of shaktipat is reached at the seventh body—no further. On that side there is no veil now; for the one in the seventh there is no veil—he is one with the void. But on your side there is a veil. You will still take him to be a person. Your veil will now provide the final obstruction. From his side there is none, but for you he remains a person. The sense of personhood toward the medium is also an obstacle Understand: if I attain the seventh state, it is my affair that I know I am the void—but you? You will know me as a person. And your notion that I am a person becomes the last veil. That veil will fall only when the happening befalls…

A friend has asked, Osho, you say that if someone surrenders himself in every way to the divine—lets himself be absorbed, accepts it—then he attains the divine. Can worldly things also be obtained in the same way?

Don’t try that; you’ll get nothing! To get worldly things you have to employ means, you have to labor, you have to strive, you have to be restless, you have to be mad. The more mad a person is, the more successful he is in the world. A very eminent psychologist has just made a statement. He said that if the minds of the world’s great politicians were tested, they would be found deranged, because their success would be impossible if they were not utterly mad. That psychologist said that the reason for England’s great politician Winston Churchill’s success was that, in childhood, an astrologer told him—and then he got fixated on the notion—that he would not live beyond forty-five. From the day this idea took hold—“I will die at forty-five”—he plunged into competition like a madman. Others, who assumed they would live at least to seventy or eighty, were…

Osho, since I have been here I could not stop thinking that all these sannyasins are with you because they cannot stand on their own feet. They need an omnipotent father who makes all the decisions for them. Then today I felt a very strong sadness and joy when I listened to you. What is going to happen? I am afraid to become dependent on you.

You need not be afraid -- even if you want to become dependent on me, I am not going to accept it. Because I know one thing: that you cannot make anybody dependent on you unless you also become dependent on him or on her. Dependence is not one-way traffic. The person you become dependent upon becomes dependent on you. Slavery is always mutual. And I don't want to be a slave, I don't want to be dependent on anybody. Hence I cannot in any way support you if you want to become dependent on me. It is not possible with me, it is impossible -- because this truth is so fundamental that there are no exceptions to it. You can watch your own life. If you become dependent on your wife, see, the wife has become dependent on you. If you become dependent on a friend, the friend has…