Possessiveness

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…

Osho, I am too possessive in nature. How to get away from this indian male chauvinistic mind? Osho, please help me.

Buddha has introduced a totally new vision of life -- it WAS spiritual. But he was against the Vedas and he was against the whole idea of Hindu gods. And the Hindus of course said, "He is destroying our culture, our religion, our spirituality." In a way they were right -- he was destroying -- because what you think is culture, spirituality, religion, is not so, is not the case. It is only your hypocrisy; it is something false. And unless you see the false as the false you cannot know the real. And Buddha tried hard to make you understand that reality is just the opposite -- opposite to your beliefs about yourself. Hence the Hindus have never been able to forgive him; they destroyed his whole heritage. He was uprooted from India. And you can see it in every way. Their whole idea of spirituality is repressive. When…

Why do I allow women to hold power over me, to accept or reject me? This old rut makes nonsense at heart. I want to get out.

And the day that happens and you start turning in, then you can get out. By getting into yourself to such a depth where you can find your inner woman... it is there. If you are a man, then your conscious is masculine, your unconscious is feminine. If you are a woman, then your conscious is feminine, your unconscious is masculine. Just dive deep into the unconscious. And that is what meditation is all about. Go on loving, go on experiencing the joys and the miseries that love brings. They are all needed to make you ripe and mature. And meanwhile go on meditating. Both these processes, love and meditation, if they continue simultaneously, slowly slowly will make you aware that whatsoever you are finding outside can be found inside in a far better way. And ONCE that happens, then your unconscious and conscious meet, you become ARDHANARISHWAR -- you…

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…