Is possessiveness just another form of love?

Osho, in one discourse you said that for men the “I-sense” and for women the “mine-sense,” that is, possessiveness, are obstacles. Isn’t possessiveness just another form of love? Must I really drop such a loving quality, which has overtaken my life? And then will I have to live dry and arid? Please guide me.

Kashmeera, you are right. If I were producing monks of the old style, your statement would be absolutely right—that then life would become dry and arid. But I am talking of a very different sannyas: a renunciation that does not run away from love, rather awakens to the truth of love; a renunciation that does not accept love as merely momentary, but embraces it as its eternal truth; that does not flee the world or flee love, but drops the ego. For sorrow does not come from love; from love comes joy, even if momentary. Yes, when love goes and the ego becomes strong, then sorrow comes. This is a subtle process; you will understand only if you look carefully. Sorrow never comes from love. Sorrow comes from ego, from attachment, from possessiveness, from the sense of I. Therefore in the beginning, love relations are very pleasant and delightful. The…

A nun who was searching for enlightenment made a wooden statue of buddha and covered it with gold leaf. It was very pretty and she carried it with her wherever she went. Years passed, and still carrying her buddha, the nun settled down in a small country temple where there were many statues of buddha each having its own shrine. The nun burned incense before her golden buddha each day, but not liking the idea of her perfume straying to the other statues, she devised a funnel through which the smoke would ascend to her statue only. This blackened the nose of the golden statue and made it especia

Somewhere, something seems to have gone deeply wrong -- in the very roots. This is not love; otherwise, fear disappears -- the more you love, the less you fear. When love really comes to its totality there is no fear. But in possessiveness, fear goes on growing more and more, because when you possess a person you are always afraid he may leave you, he may go away -- and the doubt is always there. The husband is always doubting that the wife may love somebody else. They become spies on each other, and they cut each other's freedom so there is no possibility. But when you cut freedom, when you cut the possibility of the unknown, life becomes dead, stale. Everything becomes flat, meaningless, a boredom, a monotone. And the more it happens, the more you become possessive. When life is ebbing, when the love is going, when something…

Osho, isn’t love inherently laced with attachment and possessiveness?

Rabi‘a, a woman mystic, was sitting in her house. A fakir named Hasan was her guest. Morning came; the sun rose. Hasan went outside and called loudly, “Rabi‘a, what are you doing inside? Come out and see how beautiful the sun is—behold God’s creation!” Rabi‘a said, “Hasan! Better you come inside—for you are seeing God’s creation outside; within I am seeing the One Himself.” Creation is beautiful. But will you compare it with the Creator? A song is beautiful; it carries a slight hint of the singer’s soul. These carvings all around are beautiful, but they are a tiny work of the artist. The artist is not exhausted in the paintings, nor is the Creator finished in the creation. From that Creator infinite creations can arise, and still He remains as He is—unchanged. The Ishavasya says: “From the Full, the Full is taken, yet the Full remains.” From that God,…

Unless this needy love is dropped and a totally new love arises in you -- love that knows how to give, love that enjoys giving; not the love of a child but the love of a mature person -- you will remain possessive. You will turn the other into a thing, you will reduce her to the thing, and when you reduce the other, the other reduces you. The so-called love affairs are almost like enmity. They are not love -- no friendship, not at all. Each is just trying to exploit the other. It is a mutual arrangement of exploitation: 'I will exploit you, so I have to allow myself to be exploited by you.' Love can be defined... they have in China a very ancient definition -- it is: 'Scratching the other's back so that the other can scratch your back.' That's all.

Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHY DO I CLING TO MY MISERY? WHY CAN I NOT DROP IT? Let me repeat, there is nothing worse than this that you can do, that you are capable of: reducing a being to a thing. And that's what possession is. Only things can be possessed; beings cannot be possessed. You can have a communion with a being. You can share your love, your poetry, your beauty, your body, your mind. You can share but you cannot do business. You cannot bargain. You cannot possess a man or a woman. But everybody is trying to do that all over the earth. The result is this madhouse we call the planet earth. You try to possess -- it is naturally impossible, it cannot happen in the very nature of things. Then there is misery.