Why is love so painful?

Why is love so painful?

Latifa, love is painful because it creates the way for bliss. Love is painful because it transforms; love is mutation. Each transformation is going to be painful because the old has to be left for the new. The old is familiar, secure, safe, the new is absolutely unknown. You will be moving in an uncharted ocean. You cannot use your mind with the new; with the old, the mind is skillful. The mind can function only with the old; with the new, the mind is utterly useless. Hence, fear arises, and leaving the old, comfortable, safe world, the world of convenience, pain arises. It is the same pain that the child feels when he comes out of the womb of the mother. It is the same pain that the bird feels when he comes out of the egg. It is the same pain that the bird will feel when he…

I am confused. When you talked about the two-arrowed love I felt pierced to the heart and a beautiful pain arose in me. Is love painful? Where am I and where do I go from here?

So when you are in love, or when love arises, cooperate with it, don't try resisting. People come to a compromise. Lovers -- I have watched thousands of lovers. Every day they come to me; they bring their problems. But the basic problem that I have been looking at is that lovers by and by come to a compromise. The compromise is: You don't hurt me, I will not hurt you. That's what marriage is. Then people become settled. They become so afraid of pain that they say, "Don't hurt me and I will not hurt you." But then when pain disappears, love also disappears. They exist together. I have heard: The male patient complained to the dentist that he was in terrible pain, but he insisted on saving the tooth. The dentist put on his white coat, adjusted the light on his forehead, started his drill, and said, "Okay,…

Question: Third question: Osho, why is love put to the test by fire? Women have discovered subtle ways to fight with men. If a man gets angry, he hits the woman; if a woman gets angry, she hits herself—bangs her head on the wall. Her method is very Gandhian—nonviolent! She beats the child; poor Lallu gets thrashed. Then Lallu’s father thinks, “What’s the point? The child is being beaten for nothing; better if I had kept quiet to begin with.” Your love is a constant quarrel: the woman trying to dominate the man, the man trying to dominate the woman. That is why the garden of love never comes into bloom. Love has to pass through fire. And when love is purified, it becomes reverence—shraddha. Therefore when you go to a true master, he will test your love in many ways.

Love is nothing but a process of purification. When you love you become aware of jealousy; if you don't love you will never even become aware of jealousy. That's why the so-called saints decide not to love -- because that keeps their jealousy fast asleep. It is there, dormant, and because it is dormant they are not aware of it and nobody else is aware of it. But one is not free of it. It is there, like a seed waiting for its time, and any moment it can sprout; any situation and it can start growing. The potential is there, Love makes you aware of jealousy, of possessiveness, of domination, of ego and a thousand other trips, One can simply drop love and all those things will disappear, but only from your consciousness. They will become part of your unconscious, they will go underground.

OSHO: Love is the most intoxicating phenomenon. It is the wine that wells up within. It is not something chemical that comes from the outside, it is not even part of the body, not part of the mind either. It is the dance of the heart in tune with the whole. Love is your heart in deep harmony with the heart of the universe. Then there is great intoxication. And yet the intoxication does not make you unconscious; on the contrary it makes you more conscious than ever. That's the paradox of love: on one hand one is intoxicated, on the other hand one has never been so aware before. It is an intoxication that makes you wake up. HER SIX-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER: PREM GARIMA, GLORY OF LOVE. NENE BECOMES MA PREM KUNDAN OSHO: It is by passing through the fire of love that one becomes one's real self.