You meet people of the same plane. So the first thing to remember is: a relationship is bound to be bitter if it has grown out of unhappiness. First be happy, be joyful, be celebrating, and then you will find some other soul celebrating and there will be a meeting of two dancing souls and a great dance will arise out of it.

 

Don’t ask for a relationship out of loneliness, no. Then you are moving in a wrong direction. Then the other will be used as a means and the other will use you as a means. And nobody wants to be used as a means! Every single individual is an end unto himself. It is immoral to use anybody as a means. First learn how to be alone. Meditation is a way of being alone.

 

And if you can be happy when you are alone, you have learned the secret of being happy. Now you can be happy together. If you are happy, then you have something to share, to give. And when you give you get; it is not the other way. Then a need arises to love somebody. Ordinarily the need is to be loved by somebody. It is a wrong need. It is a childish need; you are not mature. It is a child’s attitude.

 

A child is born. Of course, the child cannot love the mother; he does not know what love is and he does not know who is the mother and who is the father. He is totally helpless. His being is still to be integrated; he is not one piece; he is not together yet. He is just a possibility. The mother has to love, the father has to love, the family has to shower love on the child. Now he learns one thing: that everybody has to love him.

 

And he never learns that he has to love. Now the child will grow, and if he remains stuck with this attitude that everybody has to love him, he will suffer his whole life – his body has grown, but his mind has remained immature. A mature person is one who comes to know the other need: that now I have to love somebody. The need to be loved is childish, immature.

 

The need to love is mature. And when you are ready to love somebody, a beautiful relationship will arise; otherwise not. ”Is it possible for two people in a relationship to be bad for each other?” Yes, that’s what is happening all over the world. To be good is very difficult. You are not good even to yourself. How can you be good to somebody else? You don’t even love yourself! How can you love somebody else? Love yourself, be good to yourself.

 

And your so-called religious saints have been teaching you never to love yourself, never to be good to yourself. Be hard on yourself! They have been teaching you be soft towards others and hard towards yourself. This is absurd.

 

I teach you that the first and foremost thing is to be loving towards yourself. Don’t be hard; be soft. Care about yourself. Learn how to forgive yourself – again and again and again – seven times, seventy-seven times, seven hundred seventy-seven times. Learn how to forgive yourself. Don’t be hard; don’t be antagonistic towards yourself. Then you will flower.

 

And in that flowering you will attract some other flower. It is natural. Stones attract stones; flowers attract flowers. And then there is a relationship which has grace, which has beauty, which has a benediction in it. And if you can find such a relationship, your relationship will grow into prayer… your love will become an ecstasy… and through love you will know what God is.

 

- Osho, “Ecstasy: The Forgotten Language, #2”