The first question:

Osho,
Would you talk to us about our living partners – our wives, husbands and lovers. When should we persevere with a partner, and when should we abandon a relationship as hopeless – or even destructive? And are our relationships influenced by previous lives?

Relationship is one of the mysteries. And because it exists between two persons, it depends on both. Whenever two persons meet a new world is created. Just by their meeting a new phenomenon comes into existence which was not there before, which never existed before. And through this new phenomenon both persons are changed and transformed.

Unrelated, you are one thing; related, immediately you become something else. A new thing has happened. A woman, when she becomes a lover is no longer the same woman. A man when he becomes a father is no longer the same man. A child is born, but we miss one point completely – that the moment the child is born the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother never. And a mother is something absolutely new.

Relationship is created by you, but then, in its turn, relationship creates you. Two persons meet, that means two worlds meet. It is not a simple thing but very complex, the most complex. Each person is a world unto himself or herself, a complex mystery with a long past and an eternal future.

In the beginning only peripheries meet. But if the relationship grows intimate, becomes closer, becomes deeper, then by and by centers start meeting. When centers meet it is called love. When peripheries meet it is acquaintance. You touch the person from the without, just from the boundary, then it is acquaintance. And many times you start calling your acquaintance your love. Then you are in a fallacy. Acquaintance is not love.

Love is very rare. To meet a person at his center is to pass through a revolution yourself, because if you want to meet a person at his center you will have to allow that person to reach to your center also. You will have to become vulnerable, absolutely vulnerable, open. It is risky. To allow somebody to reach your center is risky, dangerous, because you never know what that person will do to you. And once all your secrets are known, once your hiddenness has become unhidden, once you are exposed completely, you never know what that other person will do. The fear is there, that’s why we never open.