If you love somebody really, you give him or her perfect freedom - this is a present of the love...~ OSHO ~

If you are alone, you feel lonesome, you feel that you miss the other; your life seems to be only a half. It loses joy, it loses his flowing and blossoming; there remains malnourished. If you are with the other together, there originates a new problem because the other starts penetrating into your sphere. He starts setting to you conditions, he starts requiring things of you, he starts destroying your freedom - and this hurts...

Till present the life-style of the humanity was so demented that you can fulfil only one need. You can be free, but then you leave the image of love... there is nobody who hinders you, there is nobody who interferes, nobody who makes demands, nobody who wants to own you. But then the life gets cold, nearly deadly. The majority of the humanity has decided on the love and has dropped the image of freedom. The people live like slaves. The man has reduced the woman to a thing, to a product; and of course the woman in her own subtle kind has done the same: all husbands stand henpecked.
 The man has degraded the woman to the slave, and the woman has degraded the man to the slave. And of course both hate the slavery, both offer resistance. They are constant in the fight; any small pretext, and the fight begins. But the real fight takes place somewhere else, much deeper; the real fight consists in the fact that they ask for freedom. They cannot say it so clearly, they have forgotten it maybe completely. Since millenniums the people have lived thus. They have seen that her fathers and mothers in the same manner have lived, they saw her grandparents in the same manner live... this is the kind as people live - they have accepted it. Their freedom is destroyed.
 It is, as if we tried to fly with a wing in the sky. Some people have the wing of the love, and some people have the wing of the freedom - both are incapable to fly. Both wings are necessary... - love is a natural need; she is like food. If you are hungry, you feel deeply unwell of course. Without love your soul is hungry; love is soul food. Just as the body food, water, air needs, the soul needs love. But the soul also needs freedom, and it is one of the strangest things that we have not accepted this fact yet. If you love, it is not necessary to destroy your freedom. They can exist both together; there is no contradiction between them. It lies in our stupidity that we have created the contradiction.
 Changes your conditioning in fact of love and freedom: Love the other, but give the other entire freedom. Love the other, but clarifies from the outset that you do not sell your freedom. And if you do not manage this in this local comunity, here with me, you nowhere manage it. This is the beginning of a new humanity.
 Now of course it is only a seed, but soon you will see him growing up into a mighty tree. We experiment with many things. One of the dimensions of our experiment consists in making love and freedom together possible, in making her coexistence possible. Love a person, but does not own him and did not read you own! Exists on freedom and does not lose the love! In addition no need exists. There is no natural hostility between freedom and love; it is a created hostility. It has been natural for centuries in such a way, therefore, you have got used to it; it has become a thing of the conditioning...
 You need to be only a little meditative. Meditation is called, simply the mind to de-conditioning. What has always done the society, must be cancelled. If you are de-conditioning, you can see the beauty of love and freedom together; they are two sides of the same coin. If you love somebody really, you give him or her perfect freedom - this is a present of the love. And if freedom is there, the love answers tremendously strongly. If you give to somebody freedom, you have made the biggest present, and the love comes up like a wave to you...
 Love is a basic need, as basically as freedom, hence, both must be fulfilled. And a person who is of full love and is free, is the nicest what there is in the world. And if two people of such beauty meet, her respect is no respect. It is one itself-cover. It is a constantly fluent stream. It grows constantly to bigger heights. The highest increase of love and freedom is to find out God. In God you find both: immense love, perfect love and absolute freedom.
 A ripe person is a unity, he can also be alone. And if a ripe person gives love, he gives without setting conditions: He gives simply. And if a ripe person gives love, he feels grateful that you have accepted his love, not vice versa. He does not expect that you are grateful for it - no, at all, he does not need your thanks not at all. He thanks you for the fact that you accept his love.
 And if two ripe people love each other, one of the biggest paradoxes happens in the life, one of the nicest phenomena: They are alone together and, nevertheless, completely; they are so much together that they are nearly one. But her oneness does not destroy her individuality; really it still strengthens them: They become even more the individual. Two ripe people who love each other help each other to become freer. There no politics is about to dominate no diplomacy, no aspiration. How can you control the person whom you love?
 Remember, freedom is a higher value than love... If love destroys freedom, it has no value. Love can be dropped; freedom must be saved: Freedom is a higher value. And without freedom you can be never happy - this is not possible. Freedom is a deep wish of every man, every woman - extreme freedom, absolute freedom. One begins to hate everything which is destructive for the freedom...
 I am here to give you freedom. I would like to force nothing upon you. I would like to cripple you in no manner; I would that you are simply be yourself. And if the day comes in which you are regardless of me, you are able to love me - before not. I love you. I cannot change it... I simply love you. If you are not here, this Chuang Tzu lecture hall is fully with my love; it makes no difference. These trees still get my love, these birds still get them. And even if all trees and all birds disappear, this continues no difference - the love flows out. Love is, so love flows out.
 Whenever two people love each other, they should not be during 24 hours together. It is very injurious to them, and more than this, it damages to the love itself. The people kill and destroy her love, while they are too much together, because deeply in her inside is injured a little bit. Everybody needs a certain space for herself, and lovers interfere too much with the life of the other without noticing it. They love, hence, they want to stick, interfere with all and everybody and thus love is destroyed. Love can be exceedingly nice if it is not destroyed. If it is destroyed, she can become the biggest hell which there is.
 If you live too much alone, you are bored. There is no excitement - always only you and you and you. It is monotonous, one single tone. You need a change, a little spice. The other brings the change, brings another world in your world, and this is helpful. If you feel, hence, the need for the other, visit him. And if you feel that the need is fulfilled, go back to your own world. If lovers are able to recognise this rhythm of the loneliness and being together, and move constantly between the both if you feel suddenly to be alone, and you go - this I mine with love. If the other person loves you, she respects your need, and if you love them, you respect her need. The alternative is love or no love. If you concede no space other, he becomes bit by bit unhappy and will completely leave. Give him, therefore, a little space, does not stick, and the love affair can become persistent. She can go on and on if the rope is long enough. If the rope is very short, one feels sooner or later locked up, and if this feeling is there once, freedom becomes suddenly more important than love.
 Freedom is not more important than love, but it is felt in such a way if the love itself becomes the prison. If the love overflows constantly at liberty, there is no problem - the respect enriches you every day more. The greater the freedom is in the love, the greater the possibility that it lasts for good and forever. At the moment at which the women understand that this is the way on which love can exist for longer time the flower furthermore can blossom, gives it no problem. The problem originates because they think that you try to escape, and that the love is destroyed, hence, they become timourous and stick even more. The more firmly they hold, the more you catch in to run away - the vicious circle begins. As soon as understanding flows between you, there is no more big problem. We are here to make around each other happy, not unhappily. If you make the other happy, your own luck and the other grows it returns, and this does not stop. This can be reflected on and on in many different kind.
 It is a deeply rooted problem in every man / women respect: The man has more need for freedom than for love, and the woman has more need for love than for freedom. It is not only your problem; it is a problem with every pair in the whole world. The woman does not worry at all about freedom. She is ready to become a slave if she can make only the other also to slave. She is ready to enter every kind of connection if other is also forced to the connection. She is ready to live in a prison if the other is ready to live in a dark cell.
 And the man is ready to sacrifice even the love if she becomes too hazardously for his freedom. He would live with pleasure in the open sky, also alone, this is in order. He would live with pleasure in an affectionate respect, but she is getting dark and to a prison. There lies the difficulty. If both are understanding, to some them to themselves anyhow. He screws off his need for freedom a little, and the woman screws off her need for connection and her acquisitiveness a little; they reach a balance - half / half ones. Then the woman needs fifty percent of love and fifty percent of connection and the man fifty percent of love and fifty percent of freedom. Then there is the possibility of the understanding and planting. If you demand hundred percent of connection, and he demands hundred percent of freedom, then there is constant conflict and quarrelling and grumbling - and this is ugly. And for what that all? You find another. Maybe you find somebody who wants a connection, and maybe he finds somebody who leaves him freedom.
 If you give freedom, it must be unreserved. Whether sex or no sex, this is not the question. If you concede his own space other, you give him totally, without control rope. It is also not a long rope - there is no rope. If you mean a long rope with freedom, it is not freedom. It is a skilful cunning - and it will not help you. You give space and freedom, but you hope on and on that it is not accepted as natural. This is the confusion; therefore, you feel from the balance thrown. We give the other freedom with the image that the other will not use them. Deeply in our inside we hope constantly that the other feels us towards obliged, us will love more. We give freedom, but with a deep, unaware hope that the other will not use of them. If the other uses them, there originates the problem. Give entire freedom. You should well feel with the fact that she feels not guilty. To somebody to make feelings of guilt, is a sin; no other sin amounts to this. She cripples the people, she paralyzes. Say her that she can be free completely and should feel not guilty.
 If you have accepted this once, you have very much a very deep freedom in yourself, because this is a basic law: If you can give other freedom, you have them. And nothing amounts to the freedom. If you give no freedom other, you do not have them, cannot have them. The more you give of it, the more you have of it. The less you give, the less you have of it. It is a two-edged sword - it cuts after two sides. You give to the other freedom, and immediately you are free. You try to build up a captivity, a possession relation round the other, and you are bound, you are a slave; it is mutual. So it simply accepts. If you do this, deep rest about you comes very soon, suddenly freedom is there. She can come at this moment. It is not a question about which one thinks. It is only one flash of the understanding.
 And if she feels drawn from one other what can she do? There one can make nothing. One is a victim so of many desires. Have sympathy with her and say her only, she should give herself about that generally no troubles. Soon you will see that her feeling of guilt will disappear, while you give her more freedom, and then the desire for others also disappears bit by bit. It is a vicious circle. You feel drawn to somebody, and you feel guilty because you have promised to another to remain for good with him. You go against your own promise, against your own ego, your own image. The guiltier you feel, the more you feel drawn. The more you try to suppress a desire, the more incredibly it becomes. The more you offer resistance to him, the more the head fantasizes about that. If the feeling of guilt disappears, it is a good sign; a sign that your lover comes out of the vicious circle. Soon she will see that nobody hinders here, and the whole charm will pass. She will see that there somebody is who loves them so much that he is even ready to love her lover. She will feel a new, even deeper respect with you.
 And this is something what you must understand: You can be close to somebody in two kinds. You can be forced by the law of it, by conscience, feeling of guilt, religion, the police - then you are close to him, but you are not really close to him. You are only physically close to him. There is another nearness which comes from the freedom. Both partners have the freedom to be so far apart as they would want it, but still they choose to be in shape. There is out a choice from perfect freedom. She has a different smell. She is not from this world... them nearly something is from another world. So simply accept it, and accept it with joy. Feel happy about the fact that you could give her such freedom.
 OSHO