Why are love and intimacy painful?

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

“Intimacy is growth and is painful”

~ Osho

Question: Why did Osho say that “intimacy is painful” when there is growth in intimacy?

Acharya Prashant (AP): The ego can never really come close. Not to anything, anybody, not to the Truth and not even to itself.

The ego operates in separation. The ego operates in boundaries. The ego operates in duality.

To come close is to reduce the separation, dissolve the boundary and that would be the death of Ego.

Coming close implies, “knowing really”. Knowing what? Knowing just about anything. Doesn’t matter what that thing is. The ‘thing’ does not matter, the knowing matters. The knowing itself is Godliness.

So, Ego will never really want to know. Know what? Know just about anything. Because if one thing is known, really known, intimately known, then everything is known. So, the Ego would have knowledge at best. It would never have the complete knowing that is called ‘Realization’.

Knowledge is digestible to the Ego, Realization is not. Because ‘knowledge’ is incomplete knowing and ‘realization’ is total knowing.