ONE REMAINS in the need of the other to that point, up to that experience, when one enters into one's own innermost core.
Unless one knows oneself one remains in the need of the other. But the need of the other is very paradoxical; its nature is paradoxical.
When you are alone you feel lonely, you feel the other is missed; your life seems to be only half It loses joy, it loses flow, flowering; it remains undernourished. If you are with the other, then a new problem arises because the other starts encroaching on your space. He starts making conditions upon you, he starts demanding things from you, he starts destroying your freedom — and that hurts.
So when you are with somebody, only for a few days when the honeymoon is still there… and the more intelligent you are, the smaller will be the honeymoon, remember. Only for utterly stupid people it can be a long affair; insensitive people it can he a lifelong thing. But if you are intelligent, sensitive, soon you will realize that what you have done. The other is destroying your freedom, and suddenly you become aware that you need your freedom because freedom is of immense value. And you decide never to bother with the other.
Again when you are alone you are free, but something is missing — because your aloneness is not true aloneness; it is only loneliness, it is a negative state. You forget all about freedom. Free you are, but what to do with this freedom? Love is not there, and both are essential needs.
And up to now humanity has lived in such an insane way that you can fulfill only one need: either you can be free, but then you have to drop the idea of love… That's what monks and nuns of all the religions have been doing: drop the idea of love, you are free; there is nobody to hinder you, there is nobody to interfere with you, nobody to make any demands, nobody to possess you. But then their life becomes cold, almost dead.
You can go to any monastery and look at the monks and the nuns: their life is ugly. It stinks of death; it is not fragrant with life. There is no dance, no joy, no song. All songs have disappeared, all joy is dead. They are paralyzed — how they can dance? They are crippled — how they can dance? There is nothing to dance about. Their energies are stuck, they are no more flowing. For the flow the other is needed; without the other there is no flow.
And the majority of humanity has decided for love and dropped the idea of freedom.
OSHO
