Osho – Love cannot live alone without understanding

[A sannyasin asks about relationships, her marriage, and whether becoming enlightened is more important.]

Osho – Love is crazy, so you cannot make it sane. Love is insane — and that is the whole beauty of it! It is not rational, it is not even reasonable. And this happens to everybody: sometimes you feel like being in it and sometimes you don’t feel like being in it. Sometimes you want to go away from the love object and sometimes you want to dissolve into the love object. Both are right — you are not to choose between these two. They are both together, two aspects of the same phenomenon.

You have to understand; it is not a question of choice, just a question of understanding. It is like day and night together. You cannot always be in love — that is difficult. Impossible! Sometimes one needs rest from love too.

So both these things will come up and down. Sometimes you are deeply in love and you don’t bother about freedom. Sometimes you need your space and you think about freedom, and you don’t bother about love. But both are true; one has to come to an understanding.

So if you are living with [him], create understanding, talk to each other, and understand that sometimes he needs his space. And this is a problem: it may not happen at the same time to both of you.

Sometimes you want to be with him and he wants to be alone — nothing can be done about it. Then you have to understand and leave him alone. Sometimes you want to be alone but he wants to come to you — then tell him that you are helpless!

So just create more and more understanding. That’s what lovers miss: love they have enough, but understanding none, not at all. That’s why on the rocks of misunderstanding their love dies. Love cannot live alone without understanding. Alone, love is very foolish; with understanding, love can live a long life, a great life — of many joys shared, of many beautiful moments shared, of great poetic experiences. But that happens only through understanding.

Love can give you a small honeymoon, but that’s all. Only understanding can give you deep intimacy. And each honeymoon is followed by depression, anger, frustration. Unless you grow in understanding, no honeymoon is going to be of any help; it is just like a drug.

So try to create more understanding with [him] too. And even some day if you separate, the understanding will be with you, will be with him, and that will be a gift of your love to each other. Lovers can separate, but the understanding that has been gained through the other, in the company of the other, will always be with you. That will remain as a gift — there can be no other gift. If you love a person, the only valuable gift that you can give to him is some quantity of understanding.

Source – Osho Book “From Madmen Only (Price of Admission: Your Mind)”