Why do I feel sad when I experience deep love?

When I feel deep love I feel sad at the same time. Why?

A few things more.... The sadness that love brings is very potential, it is very deep, it is very healthy, it is helpful. It will lead you to God. So don't take it negatively, use it. It is a great blessing, that sadness felt in love. It simply shows that your aspiration is beyond the capacity of love, your aspiration is for the ultimate. Love can only give you a momentary satisfaction but not an eternal contentment. Feel grateful that love gave you that one momentary satisfaction and feel grateful that love made you aware of a tremendous sadness inside you. When people are together in love they feel very alone. Nobody else ever feels such aloneness as lovers feel. Can't you remember it? While sitting holding the hand of your beloved on a full moon night, have you not felt it? -- utterly alone. The other is there, you…

Why is love so painful?

Hence people are interested in sex, because sex is not risky. It is momentary, you don't get involved. Love is involvement; it is commitment. It is not momentary. Once it takes roots, it can be forever. It can be a lifelong involvement. Love needs intimacy, and only when you are intimate does the other become a mirror. When you meet sexually with a woman or a man, you have not met at all; in fact, you avoided the soul of the other person. You just used the body and escaped, and the other used your body and escaped. You never became intimate enough to reveal each other's original faces. Love is the greatest Zen koan. Latifa, it is painful, but don't avoid it. If you avoid it you have avoided the greatest opportunity to grow. Go into it, suffer love, because through the suffering comes great ecstasy. Yes, there is…

Osho, why am I extremely sad when there is no reason at all to be sad?

Perhaps for that very reason. When there is a reason for sadness, one can at least understand: well, there is a cause; at least there is a cause, so I am sad. There is a pretext. No one will call you mad. You can say: my wife died, my son went to jail, my shop collapsed, I went bankrupt. Then there is logic to your sadness. With logic, you feel safe. You can say it is perfectly natural to be sad. What else can I do? If your wife died, you too would be sad. If your business went bankrupt, you too would cry. So it isn’t only me who weeps. You can give reasons for your tears. The greatest sadness is when there is no reason at all. Then it becomes absurd. You cannot even say why you are sad. You cannot defend your sadness. You cannot gather arguments…

[A sannyasin says: I am scared and sad because I have to leave you.] That's natural, but no need to be sad. In fact this going away can be used as an opportunity to come closer spiritually rather than physically; and that is real closeness. Real closeness is what love is all about. Physically we can be close and we may not be close at all. That is what is happening all over the world: people are physically close but worlds apart; no communication, no meeting ever happens. People have become almost like parallel lines: running very close but never meeting anywhere. Even those with whom we think we are close -- parents and children, husbands and wives, friends -- even they are just parallel lines. One needs to know that real closeness has nothing to do with space and nothing to do with time either.

Beloved master, why does my sadness feel more real than my happiness? I want so much to be real and authentic, not to wear any masks. But this seems to mean so much rejection by others. Is it possible to be so alone?

When I became a professor in the university, there was a line of beautiful trees. I used to park my car under one tree. And it had always been my privilege -- I don't know why -- that wherever I sat in the common room for the professors, nobody would sit on the chair I used, nobody would sit even by the side of the chair. They thought me a little dangerous. A man who has no friends, a man who has strange thoughts, a man who is against all religions, against all traditions, a man who can oppose single-handedly people like Mahatma Gandhi, who is worshipped by the whole country -- they thought, "It is better to keep away from this man. He can put some idea in your mind, and you may be in some difficulty." I used to park my car under that one tree. Nobody else…