According to Osho, envy is simply passive jealousy—only a difference of degree, not of kind. Envy ripens into jealousy at any moment; both spring from comparison and ego, distracting the seeker from inwardness. For spiritual growth, they must be dropped entirely, because love cannot exist alongside them. A real meditator stops looking at others, turns within, and surrenders the ego’s hunger for power.
Envy is a softer jealousy, and both come from comparing yourself to others; to grow, stop comparing and look inside with love.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
What is jealousy and why does it hurt so much?
You know your interiority, and only you know it, nobody else. And you know everybody's exterior, and their exterior people have made beautiful. Exteriors are showpieces and they are very deceptive. There is an ancient Sufi story: A man was very much burdened by his suffering. He used to pray every day to God, "Why me? Everybody seems to be so happy, why am only I in such suffering?" One day, out of great desperation, he prayed to God, "You can give me anybody else's suffering and I am ready to accept it. But take mine, I cannot bear it any more." That night he had a beautiful dream -- beautiful and very revealing. He had a dream that night that God appeared in the sky and he said to everybody, "Bring all your sufferings into the temple." Everybody was tired of his suffering -- in fact everybody has prayed…
Osho, what is jealousy? Does our jealousy show that we are very far from aloneness?
This was my routine, that I would always go to the examination fifteen minutes late. This I followed my whole career in school, in college, at university; I would go fifteen minutes late. It was well known. The examiner knew that my seat had to be kept empty; I would be coming, but exactly fifteen minutes late. And I would leave the examination hall fifteen minutes before everybody else, before the end. The time allowed was three hours and I could see that the examination could be managed in two and a half hours; there was no need to waste half an hour more there. The teacher, who was there looking after the students to see that they were not copying and not doing some mischief, that somebody was not concealing a book, would say, "There is no hurry; there are fifteen minutes left. Why are you finishing?" I would…
After hearing you for the last nine days and undergoing morning and evening meditations in your ashram, I came to the conclusion that I envy vivek, but I am not jealous of her. I feel she is holding the'parampada' of beloved disciple in the ashram. How to reach that stage?
MIND functions in such strange ways. You have been here to meditate; it has nothing to do with anybody else. In fact, a real meditator will not look at what is happening to others. A real meditator will be going inwards. It is said about Bayazid that he lived with his Master for twelve years, and he passed the same hall every day to come to the Master. One day the Master said to Bayazid, "You go back to the hall. There, in the cupboard, one book is Lying -- you bring that book." Bayazid said, "I will go, because I have never seen that there is a cupboard." The Master said, "You have been coming to see me continuously, every day, for twelve years, and you have to pass that hall every day; you have not looked around?" He said, "I was coming to you, Master. I am not…
Osho, how can I take sannyas? I cannot get jealousy, ego, anger—anything at all—out of my mind. And you keep appearing before me day and night in dreams! What should I do?
Why does jealousy arise? Because someone seems to be getting ahead of you. Someone has bought a better sari, more beautiful jewelry, built a new house, gathered more money in a safe. Jealousy is born because your ego is bruised. A fire flares up inside, smoke begins to rise. You climb onto your own funeral pyre. Anxiety is born inside you. Anger means someone blocks your ego. You set out on a journey of conquest and someone stands in your way, a stone falls in your path because of someone, someone shoves you aside—someone becomes an obstacle. Anger erupts. Anger and jealousy are not very different—two sides of the same coin. Anger is a bit crude; jealousy a bit more civilized. I have heard a Rajasthani tale. A proud Rajput, full of swagger, would twirl his moustache all day long. His arrogance was such that he never allowed anyone else…
Deva means divine, nirmoh means non-possessiveness -- divine non-possessiveness. And one of the greatest problems for the human mind is how to drop possessiveness, because the human mind feeds on possessiveness. It wants to possess more and more, it wants to possess everything. The more it possesses, the more it feels secure. So it hankers for money, it hankers for prestige, power. Even in relationship it starts possessing people. And to possess a person is to destroy him, because the moment you possess a person, the person is reduced to a thing. One should not even possess things, but people are even possessing persons. That's why in the world you see so many robots: they have all been reduced to machines, things. The day the child is born the parents start possessing him; they cripple, they destroy. Then the church possesses the child; immediately he is to be baptized.