Question – When i love others it is a tension for me. Only my love toward you gives me a fulfillment, a freshness. Why is that?
Osho – This, too, can become a frustration at any moment because the other still remains the center. Whoever it is… the other must not be the center. If you really feel intimate with me, then remember this: the other must not be the center. The moment your love is not centered on me you will be happy. If your love is centered on me that will only create problems. You will love me and you will find someone else to hate.
This is what happens. If you love your guru, then you will begin to hate and condemn all other gurus. If you love Ram then even Krishna becomes an enemy. If you love Jesus then how can you love Mohammed? You have to create an enemy.
If you love someone – even if you love me and you feel a freshness, a fulfillment – then, too, deep down, the other side will be there. Any moment it can erupt and become destructive. You must be fulfilled within yourself, because only then will there be no frustration. You will feel many things but they will be something separate from you. The center will remain. If you can be with yourself totally, then even if I am not here, even if you cannot find me, even if you forget me completely, the fulfillment will remain, the freshness will remain. Then, when you are centered in your self, you can feel a subtle gratitude toward someone, but that will be a different thing.
Don’t get attached. Don’t think in terms of love, because the very term, as we know it, is bound up with its opposite. It seems difficult to understand. If you love me it seems inconceivable that you could hate me. But it is a common phenomenon. When someone is dreaming he cannot know that what he sees in the dream is just a dream. To him it is a reality; he cannot conceive of how it could be unreal. The same thing happens when someone is in love: he cannot conceive of how he could hate his loved one. But then, when he begins to hate the other, he cannot conceive of how he could have loved.
Those who love and then hate are not real lovers. But the mind goes on supplying reasons. If you love someone and you cannot conceive of how you could hate him or her, then the mind says that this is real love. Then, when you begin to hate the same person, the mind says that although you were a real lover, the other was not worth loving. First you find many reasons and causes and rationalizations for your love, then you find as many rationalizations for your hate.
I have seen this not only with one person but with many people. Sometimes it happens that someone loves me very deeply, then begins to hate me. And when someone loves deeply he can only hate deeply; there is no other way. When he loved me he could not conceive that hate was possible and now that he hates me he cannot conceive how that love was ever possible.
It is easy to move from love to hate, but it is very difficult to move from hate to love. There are many reasons for it. You cannot hate in the beginning; one has to love first. Love is a necessity in order to hate; you cannot hate directly without some love having been there. But then it is very difficult to put the broken mirror back together again. You can love again, but the hate which has preceded the renewed love casts a shadow on it. Something of the hate remains; part of it is carried over. The old fantasy of total love cannot be revived again.
If you love me, then you will feel hurt when I say this. Don’t feel hurt. If you want to move toward selfrealization, if you are trying to find a way toward the ultimate truth, then there will be many times when I will have to hurt you, when I will have to fight against your fallacies. I know that your love can become hate. And just as love has a freshness, hate also has a freshness, an aliveness.
But there is a love, which I call compassion, that can come to you. It can come to you only if you are at your center, no one else. Become more and more centered in yourself. Only if I can help you to do this will I have compassion. My compassion may hurt you sometimes, but that is needed.
So I say to you: anyone who is centered on someone else – whoever that someone else is – will become frustrated in the end. Become more and more free of others. That is why I allow you to come near me, that is my purpose in allowing you to be intimate with me – so that you can become yourself! If I can help you to come to that center in yourself where there is no love and no hate, only then will you be able to have an altogether different relationship with me. Then the quality of that relationship will not be of this world – neither hate nor love. Then you will not feel me as the other, you will feel me as yourself.
And not only with me… you will feel the whole world, the whole universe, as yourself. When one is centered in oneself, one becomes one with the whole universe. But if you are centered in the other, then you will be in trouble – that is a natural consequence. And the natural law never allows any exception. It is absolute, mercilessly absolute.
Source – Osho Book “The Great Challenge”