love in the beginning is only an unconscious phenomenon; it is biological, it is nothing very precious. Only when you bring your awareness to it, when you become more and more meditative about it, it starts becoming precious, it starts soaring high.
Intimacy with one woman or one man is better than having many superficial relationships.
Love is not a seasonal flower, it takes years to grow. And only when it grows does it go beyond biology, and start having something of the spiritual in it. Just being with many women or many men will keep you superficial — entertained maybe, but superficial; occupied certainly, but that occupation is not going to help in inward growth.
But a one-to-one relationship, a sustained relationship so that you can understand each other more closely, is tremendously beneficial. Why is it so? And what is the need to understand the woman or the man?
The need is because every man has a feminine part in his being, and every woman has a masculine part in her being. The only way to understand it, the easiest way to understand it, the most natural way to understand it is to be in deep, intimate relationship with someone. If you are a man be in a deep, intimate relationship with a woman. Let trust grow so all barriers dissolve. Come so close to each other that you can look deep into the woman and the woman can look deep into you. Don't be dishonest with each other.
And if you are having so many relationships you will be dishonest, you will be lying continually. You will have to lie, you will have to be insincere, you will have to say things which you don't mean — and they all will suspect. It is very difficult to create trust with a woman if you are having some other relationship.
It is easy to deceive a man because he lives through the intellect; it is very difficult, almost impossible to deceive a woman because she lives intuitively. You will not be able to look directly into her eyes; you will be afraid that she may start reading your soul, and so many deceptive things you are hiding, so many dishonesties.
So if you are having many relationships you will not be able to dive deep into the psyche of the woman. And that is the only thing that is needed: to know your own inner feminine part. Relationship becomes a mirror. The woman starts looking into you and starts finding her own masculine part; the man looks into the woman and starts discovering his own femininity.
And the more you become aware of your feminine — the other pole — the more whole you can be, the more integrated you can be. When your inner man and your inner woman have disappeared into each other, have become dissolved into each other, when they are no longer separate, when they have become one integrated whole, you have become an individual.
Carl Gustav Jung calls it the process of individuation. He is right, he has chosen the right word for it. And the same happens to a woman. But playing with many people will keep you superficial, entertained, occupied, but not growing; and the only thing that matters ultimately is growth, growth of integration, individuality, growth of a center in you. And that growth needs that you should know your other part.
The easiest approach is to know the woman on the outside first, so that you can know the woman inside.
Just like a mirror — the mirror reflects your face, it shows you your face — the woman becomes your mirror, the man becomes your mirror. The other reflects your face, but if you are having so many mirrors around you and running from one mirror to another and deceiving each mirror about the other you will be in a chaos, you will go nuts.
OSHO
