When do we come to know love?

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: BELOVED OSHO, HOW CAN I LOVE BETTER? Love is something eternal. It is the experience of the buddhas, not the unconscious people of whom the whole world is full. Only very few people have known what love is, and these same people are the most awakened, the most enlightened, the highest peaks of human consciousness. If you really want to know love, forget about love and remember meditation. If you want to bring roses into your garden, forget about roses, and take care of the rosebush. Give nourishment to it, water it, take care that it gets the right amount of sun, water. If everything is taken care of, in the right time the roses are destined to come. You cannot bring them earlier, you cannot force them to open up sooner, and you cannot ask a roseflower to be more perfect.

Osho, you have titled this series of talks “Sahaj Yoga.” Do “sahaj” and “yoga” not seem mutually opposed?

Anand Maitreya! They don’t just seem opposed, they are opposed. But no ultimate truth of life can manifest without contradiction. Life is made of opposites—darkness and light, day and night, woman and man, negative electricity and positive electricity, birth and death. The very structure of life is woven of opposites. Hence the opposites are not only opposed; they are complementary to each other. If you have labored hard all day, you will be able to sleep deeply. Labor and rest are opposites, yet only the one who has worked can rest deeply—and the one who has not worked cannot. So the opposites are not only opposed, they complete each other. And only the one who has rested deeply at night can rise in the morning and engage in work again. One who has not rested through the night will not be able to work in the morning. Look closely at…

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…

Beloved Osho, I feel we all use the word love like another four-letter word -- not really knowing at all what this state is. Can you please talk about what love really is?

Kendra, you are right. The way people use the word love is exactly like a four-letter word, obscene -- because to call it lust would be offensive. If you say to someone, "I lust for you," you can't expect that that woman is going to have any respect for you. She will say, "Lust? Then get lost!" But if you say, "I love you," then everything is good. And deep in your mind you are simply lusting. It is a biological desire to use the woman but a beautiful word hides the ugly reality. The problem is that people are not aware of what love is, so they are not only deceiving others, they are themselves deceived. They also think it is love. Love needs immense consciousness. Love is a meeting of two souls, and lust is the meeting of two bodies. Lust is animal; love is divine. But unless…