According to Osho, the concept of soulmates is no more useful than marriage; changing labels doesn’t transform relationships. What matters is your own understanding and capacity to love—non‑possessive, giving, and granting freedom. Without inner change, you’ll recreate the same hell. Love is an emperor: it gives unconditionally and rejoices in the other’s happiness.
Changing the name doesn’t fix love; become loving—free, non-possessive, and generous.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: BELOVED OSHO, IS THE CONCEPT OF SOULMATES MORE USEFUL THAN MARRIAGE? Prem Pragyan, one of the most significant things in man's life has been the love affair. Birth is not in your hands, death is not in your hands; and these are the only three great things in life: birth, love, and death. Only love is in your hands, only love gives you the freedom and dignity of being a human being; otherwise, birth and death happen just like any other animal, or any tree. Love should be kept as pure and unpolluted as possible. You are asking, "Is the concept of soulmates more useful than marriage?" Concepts don't matter. What matters is your understanding. You can change the word `marriage' to the word `soulmates', but you are the same.
Question: BELOVED MASTER, CAN "SOULMATES" EVER BE ANYTHING OTHER THAN "CELLMATES"? Ramarshi, even if the soulmates can only be nothing but cellmates, that is a great achievement. They are intimate enemies. Ordinary love is nothing but the other side of the coin: on one side is hate, on the other side is love. And the coin can be turned at any moment -- in the middle of the night. In twenty-four hours it turns many times. There are no soulmates, because to be a soulmate you first have to understand what the soul is; you don't even know that `hey' is for horses! It is so clear that for our experiences of life we have learned only words -- love, soul, friendship -- but we don't know their meaning as experience, only as given in the dictionaries.
Osho, to find a soulmate sounds nice, but almost impossible. Would you please say something more about it? And how can it even come close to finding a master?
IT IS CERTAINLY ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE to find the soulmate -- even if ALL facilities are available. The earth is big, millions and millions of people; and life is very short -- how are you going to find your soulmate? And remember, even if all the facilities are available... right now, no facilities are available. It becomes even more impossible when facilities are not available, when you are prevented in every way from finding the soulmate. But even if you are helped, educated in how to find the soulmate, then too it will be difficult to find them in a small seventy years' life. It rarely happens; it is a rare phenomenon. Man has seven centers. The lowest is the sex center and the highest is the samadhi center, and between these two there are five more centers. It is a ladder. When all the seven centers of a man are…
Question: OSHO, WHAT IS WRONG WITH MARRIAGE? WHY DO YOU SPEAK ALWAYS AGAINST IT? Learn something from marriage. Marriage represents the whole world in a miniature form: it teaches you many things. It is only the mediocre ones who learn nothing. Otherwise it will teach you that you don't know what love is, that you don't know how to relate, that you don't know how to communicate, that you don't know how to commune, that you don't know how to live with another. It is a mirror: it shows your face to you in all its different aspects. And it is all needed for your maturity. But a person who remains clinging to it forever remains immature. One has to go beyond it too. Marriage basically means that you are not able yet to be alone; you need the other.
Question: OSHO, IS THERE ANY SUCH THING AS A REAL MARRIAGE? But now Sagarpriya will follow him; if there is any possibility she will destroy even that. The best thing is to let him go, to say goodbye to him in a nice, beautiful, human way, with no grudge, with no complaint, with no quarreling. If you quarrel too much, if you make such a fuss, then people will start compromising, but compromise cannot fulfill you. And remember, men are so tortured in the outside world, in the office, in the factory, in the shop, everywhere, that at least at home they want peace. For their peace they compromise. Hence almost all husbands become henpecked. And the problem is, no wife can love a henpecked husband, and every wife tries to henpeck her husband! This is how we create misery. In the first place marriage is wrong.