Possessiveness

Osho on Possessiveness - Only things can be possessed; beings cannot be possessed

Question: Please talk about Possessiveness.
Osho: 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. The more you try to possess a person, the more that person tries to become independent of you, because every person has a birthright to be free, to be himself or herself. You are trespassing on the privacy of the person, which is the only sacred place in the whole world. Neither Israel is sacred, nor is Kashi sacred, nor is Mecca sacred.

The only sacred space in the true sense is the privacy of a person -- his or her independence, the beinghood. If you love a person you will never trespass. You will never try to be a detective, to be a Peeping Tom, peeping into the privacy of the other person. You will respect the privacy of the other person. But just look at the so called lovers -- husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends. All they are doing, around the clock, is finding ways to trespass, to enter into the private world of the other person.

They don't want the other person to have any privacy. Why? If the person has independence, privacy, individuality, they are afraid. The person tomorrow may not love them -- because love is not something stagnant. It is a moment, it is nothing to do with permanency. It may continue for eternity, but basically love is a phenomenon of the moment. If it happens again in the next moment you are blessed. If it does not happen you should be thankful that at least it did happen before. Remain open: perhaps it may happen again -- if not with this person, then with another person. The question is not persons, the question is of love. Love should remain flowing, it should not be stopped. But in their stupidity people start thinking, "If this person goes out of my hands then I am going to starve my whole life without love." And he does not know that by trying to hold this person permanently in his captivity, he will starve. He will not get love. You cannot get love from a slave.

You cannot get love from your possessions; from your chair, table, house, your furniture, you cannot get love. You can get love only from a free agent whose uniqueness is respected by you, whose freedom is respected by you. It is out of the freedom of the other that this moment of love has happened. Don't destroy it by trying to possess, by trying to hold, by creating a legal bondage, a marriage. Let the other be free, and remain free yourself. Don't let anybody else possess you either. To possess or to be possessed, both are ugly.

If you are possessed you lose your very soul. Lovers love only while they are not yet in a fixed relationship. As the relationship settles, love disappears. Once the relationship is fixed, instead of love, something else takes place: possessiveness. They still go on calling it love, but you cannot deceive existence. Just by calling it love you cannot change anything. It is now hate, not love. It is fear, not love. It is adjustment, not love. It is compromise, not love. It can be anything -- but not love.

The deeper you try to understand, the more it will become clear to you that love and hate are not two things. It is just a linguistic mistake to call them love and hate. In the future, at least in psychological treatises and books, they will not be using "and" between the two. In fact it is better to make one word, "lovehate." They are two sides of the same coin.

What is love?

Question : What is Love? Osho : It depends. There are as many loves as there are people. Love is a hierarchy, from the lowest rung to the highest, from sex to superconsciousness. There are many many layers, many planes of love. It all depends on you. If you are existing on the lowest rung, you will have a totally different idea of love than the person who is existing on the highest rung. Adolf Hitler will have one idea of love, Gautam Buddha another; and they will be diametrically opposite, because they are at two extremes.

At the lowest, love is a kind of politics, power politics. Wherever love is contaminated by the idea of domination, it is politics. Whether you call it politics or not is not the question, it is political. And millions of people never know anything about love except this politics -- the politics that exists between husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends. It is politics, the whole thing is political: you want to dominate the other, you enjoy domination. And love is nothing but politics sugar-coated, a bitter pill sugar-coated.

You talk about love but the deep desire is to exploit the other. And I am not saying that you are doing it deliberately or consciously. People are falling in love with horses, dogs, animals, machines, things. Why? Because to be in love with human beings has become an utter hell, a continuous conflict -- nagging, always at each other's throats. This is the lowest form of love. Nothing is wrong with it if you can use it as a steppingstone , if you can use it as a meditation.

If you can watch it, if you try to understand it, in that very understanding you will reach another rung, you will start moving upwards. Only at the highest peak, when love is not a relationship any more, when love becomes a state of your being, the lotus opens totally and great perfume is released -- but only at the highest peak. At its lowest, love is just a political relationship. At its highest, love is a religious state of consciousness. I love you too, Buddha loves, Jesus loves, but their love demands nothing in return.

Their love is given for the sheer joy of giving it; it is not a bargain. Hence the radiant beauty of it, hence the transcendental beauty of it. It surpasses all the joys that you have known. When I talk about love, I am talking about love as a state. It is unaddressed: you don't love this person or that person, you simply love. You are love. Rather than saying that you love somebody, it will be better to say you are love. So whosoever is capable of
partaking, can partake.

Whosoever is capable of drinking out of your infinite sources of being, you are available -- you are available unconditionally. That is possible only if love becomes more and more meditative. `Medicine' and `meditation' come from the same root. Love as you know it is a kind of disease: it needs the medicine of meditation. If it passes through meditation, it is purified. And the more purified it is, the more ecstatic.

Nancy was having coffee with Helen.
Nancy asked, "How do you know your husband loves you?"
"He takes out the garbage every morning."
"That's not love. That's good housekeeping."
"My husband gives me all the spending money I need."
"That's not love. That's generosity."
"My husband never looks at other women."
"That's not love. That's poor vision."
"John always opens the door for me."
"That's not love. That's good manners."
"John kisses me even when I've eaten garlic and I have curlers in my hair."
"Now, that's love."

Everybody has their own idea of love. And only when you come to the state where all ideas about love have disappeared, where love is no more an idea but simply your being, then only will you know its freedom. Then love is God. Then love is the ultimate truth. Let your love move through the process of meditation. Watch it: watch the cunning ways of your mind, watch your power-politics. And nothing else except continuous watching and observing is going to help.

When you say something to your woman or your man, look at it: what is the unconscious motive? Why are you saying it? Is there some motive? Then what is it? Be conscious of that motive, bring it to consciousness -- because this is one of the secret keys for transforming your life: anything that becomes conscious disappears. Your motives remain unconscious, that's why you remain in their grip. Make them conscious, bring them to light, and they will disappear.

It is as if you pull up a tree and bring the roots to the sunlight: they will die, they can exist only in the darkness of the soil. Your motives also exist only in the darkness of your unconsciousness. So the only way to transform your love is to bring all the motivations from the unconscious into the conscious. Slowly slowly, those motives will die. And when love is unmotivated, then love is the greatest thing that can ever happen to anybody. Then love is something of the ultimate, of the beyond.

That is the meaning when Jesus says, "God is love." I say to you: Love is God. God can be forgotten, but don't forget love -- because it is the purification of love that will bring you to God. If you forget about God completely, nothing is lost. But don't forget love, because love is the bridge. Love is the process of alchemical change in your consciousness.