What will happen if all the disciples disappear and only I am here? Do you think there will be any change? What happens when a flower blooms in the deep forest with nobody to appreciate it, nobody to know its fragrance, nobody to pass a comment and say “beautiful”; nobody to taste its beauty, its joy, nobody to share – what happens to the flower? It dies? It suffers? It becomes panicky? It commits suicide? It goes on blooming, it simply goes on blooming. It does not make any difference; whether somebody passes by or not is irrelevant. It goes on spreading its fragrance to the winds, it goes on offering its joy to God, to the whole.
If I am alone, then too I will be as loving as when I am with you. It is not you who are creating my love. If you are creating my love then, naturally, when you are gone my love will be gone. You are not pulling my love out, I am showering it on you: it is gift-love, it is being-love.
And I don’t really agree with C. S. Lewis and Abraham Maslow, because the first love that they call “love” is not love, it is a need. How can a need be love? Love is a luxury. It is abundance, it is having so much life that you don’t know what to do with it, so you share. It is having so many songs in your heart that you have to sing them; whether anybody listens or not is not relevant. If nobody listens, then also you will have to sing it, you will have to dance your dance.
The other can have it, the other can miss it, but as far as you are concerned it is flowing, it is overflowing. Rivers don’t flow for you, they are flowing whether you are there or not. They don’t flow for your thirst, they don’t flow for your thirsty fields; they are simply flowing there. You can quench your thirst, you can miss; that’s up to you. The river was not really flowing for you, the river was just flowing. It is accidental that you can get the water for your field, it is accidental that you can get water for your needs.
A master is a river, the disciple is accidental. The master is flowing; you can partake, you can enjoy, you can share his being. You can be overwhelmed by him, but he is not for you; he is not flowing for you in particular, he is simply flowing. Remember this. And this I call mature love, real love, authentic love, true love.
When you depend on the other there is always misery. The moment you depend you start feeling miserable, because dependence is slavery. Then you start taking revenge in subtle ways, because the person you have to depend upon becomes powerful over you. Nobody likes anybody to be powerful over them, nobody likes to be dependent, because dependence kills freedom. And love cannot flower in dependence, love is a flower of freedom; it needs space, it needs absolute space. The other has not to interfere with it. It is very delicate.
When you are dependent, certainly the other will dominate you, and you will try to dominate the other. That’s the fight that goes on between so-called lovers: they are intimate enemies, continuously fighting. Husbands and wives – what are they doing? Loving is very rare, fighting is the rule; loving is exceptional. And in every way they try to dominate; even through love they try to dominate. If the husband asks the wife, the wife denies, she is reluctant, she is very miserly. She gives, but very reluctantly; she wants you to wave your tail around her. And so is the case with the husband. When the wife is in need and asks him, the husband says that he is tired. In the office there was too much work – ”really overworked” – and he would like to go to sleep.