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Osho on How can I drop attachments to love that are rooted in ego?

How can I drop attachments to love that are rooted in ego?

When you see that what you call love is merely an egoic attachment, it falls away effortlessly, revealing the pure essence of love that remains.

— Osho
According to Osho, attachments fall away not by method but by mature seeing. When you directly realize that what you call love is egoic attachment—like recognizing fake diamonds—they drop by themselves. The urge to ask 'how' shows secondhand knowledge. Stop borrowing truth; grow your own understanding through alert awareness. From genuine knowing, clinging dissolves and love remains.

Truly see that your ‘love’ is just clinging, and it lets go by itself—so don’t look for a trick, look honestly.

In His Own Words

From the Discourses

Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.

Tao The Three Treasures Vol 4 · Discourse 4
1975-08-26 · Buddha Hall · English

When all I know of love is its attachments, how can I drop them? All I can see is the ego clinging to what it believes is love.

Remain alert, because if love becomes attachment you will never function in your totality. The energy has moved in a wrong way. Don't a]low love to become attachment, remain alert! Allow love absolute freedom, even if sometimes it is painful -- it is. But that pain is also beautiful. When you suffer for freedom, that suffering is good. When you are comfortable because of bondage, that comfortableness is bad. I have heard one story, that one man, a great priest, dreamed one night that he was in a beautiful place, sleeping under a tree, a cool breeze passing, subtle fragrance of flowers, birds singing; he couldn't imagine a more heavenly moment. He looked around -- it was really peaceful, beautiful. He thought in his mind he must be in paradise! But he was feeling hungry, so he thought: But where to get food? I am feeling hungry. Suddenly an angel…
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Theologia Mystica · Discourse 2
1980-08-12 · Buddha Hall · English

Osho, I have dropped all my attachments; but still subtle attachments remain. I am even attached to non-attachment, to no-mind, to no no-mind. I am aware of the subtle ego. How should we go beyond this vicious circle?

Why start it in the first place? I am not telling you to drop attachments, I am telling you to just understand them. That's enough. Just see what your attachments are with no effort to drop them, with no judgment, no evaluation. Just see what they are. Whatsoever they are, they are there. What can you do? -- Just as you have eyes and hands and legs and a certain color of hair and skin, so your attachments are there. Accept them! In that acceptance the revolution begins. The moment you accept your attachments and you start understanding them, with NO idea to drop them... Remember, if there is the idea to drop them behind your understanding, your understanding cannot be profound and total; that idea will be a hindrance. Why drop attachments? God has not dropped the attachment to his world -- why should you drop your attachments to…
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Preetam Chhabi Nainan Basee · Discourse 5
1980-03-15 · Pune · Hindi · English translation

Osho, how can we know whether what we feel for someone is love or attachment?

Deepika, If it is love, the question will not arise at all. If the question arises, it is attachment. It is like someone asking, “Is it light or darkness? How can I know?” If you have eyes, such a question does not arise. Only if you have no eyes can it arise. Only a blind person can ask, “Is it light or dark? Is it day or night?” The blind must ask; he has no eyes of his own and must depend on the eyes of others. Love is the eye of the heart. Love is the heart opening like a lotus. When the flower of love blossoms, it is impossible not to know. It has never happened otherwise; such is the law of life. When the flower of love blooms, you know—inevitably. Even if you try to hide it, you cannot. Not only will you know; others too, who…
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Preetam Chhabi Nainan Basee · Discourse 6
1980-03-16 · Pune · Hindi · English translation

Osho, what is attachment? Why do we become so attached to things, ideas and persons? And is there freedom from attachment?

“So do one thing,” she told the courtesan. “I will pay you whatever you ask. Go to him at midnight. He meditates at midnight—has done so for thirty years. I want to know whether meditation has happened or not before I die. His hut door is only latched; no one ever goes there. Open it and go in. Whatever he says, notice every word and tell me. Go and embrace him—then come back and report. Before I die, I want to be sure that my service was not in vain.” The courtesan went. She opened the door. The monk was startled. He opened his eyes—he had been sitting in meditation—and shouted, “You wicked woman! Why are you here? Get out! What need have you to come at midnight?” But his tongue faltered; his body trembled. The woman had taken her money; she went right in. He cried, “Stay back! Why…
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Vigyan Bhairav Tantra Vol 1 · Discourse 20
1972-12-13 · Woodlands, Bombay · English

You said that love can make you free. But ordinarily we see that love becomes attachment, and instead of freeing us it makes us more bound. So tell us something about attachment and freedom.

Right now you are not. When you say, "When I love someone it becomes an attachment," you are saying you are not, so whatsoever you do goes wrong because the doer is absent. The inner point of awareness is not there, so whatsoever you do goes wrong. First BE, and then you can share your being. And that sharing will be love. Before that, whatsoever you do will become an attachment. And lastly: if you are struggling against attachment, you have taken a wrong turn. You can struggle. So many monks, recluses, sannyasins are doing that. They feel that they are attached to their house, to their property, to their wives, to their children, and they feel caged, imprisoned. They escape, they leave their homes, they leave their wives, they leave their children and possessions, and they become beggars and escape to a forest, to a loneliness. But go and…
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