Possessiveness

 

 

Love can only be oceanic; it cannot be small. It cannot be small because it cannot be a closed phenomenon. It is an open, wide sky. Love knows no limitations.

 

Love is not attachment. Love is not possessiveness. When love becomes possessive and love becomes attachment it is no more love; it is simply a corpse. The bird has flown; now you are only carrying an empty cage, howsoever decorated. It may be golden, studded with diamonds, but the bird is no more there, the song is no more there.

 

This is one of the most fundamental qualities of love: it is always greater than the lover and the beloved. It is greater than you. You disappear in it. It is not like a thing that you can manipulate; it is a mystery in which you are lost. You become a drop; it is the ocean. And great courage is needed for the drop to disappear into the ocean.

 

To know love and its oceanic experience is to know God. God is nothing else but love in its ultimate flowering.

 

-Osho, "Just Around the Corner, #18"

 

 

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The moment you are in love, immediately your mind starts weaving and spinning about family, how to have a family of one’s own. Why should you need “a family of one’s own”? People possess things and people possess people too. If you possess things, it can be forgiven, but how can it be forgiven when you start possessing people? You say “my wife,” “my husband,” “my child” – what have you done to call this child yours? Who are you? How do you come in? Can you create a child? Can you create a child according to your own desire?

 

A child comes from the unknown, is a gift. You are not the creator, how can you be the possessor? It is not according to you that the child takes shape and form and being. You were longing for a beautiful child and you are hit with a lulu and still you call it “my child.” You have been just a passage in the great play of existence.

 

Just as there are liberation movements, the women’s lib movement, so a new movement should be mounted: the children’s liberation movement. Nobody should be allowed to possess children. Possessiveness should not be allowed: nobody should say “my child.” All children are of the divine. You can only be a caretaker, not more than that. And you should be grateful that you have been chosen to be a caretaker of a new life evolving. That is more than enough. Enjoy the game of it, of being a caretaker of an evolving life, but don’t start possessing.

 

But our minds are possessive. The possessiveness has gone to the very roots, and that has been the greatest hindrance in human growth.

 

When love is possessive it becomes exclusive. Then “This woman is mine, and exclusively mine!” Then she cannot laugh with anybody else, then she cannot hold hands with anybody else, then she cannot look into the eyes of somebody else. What nonsense! Why? Who am I to possess? And how can love be possessive?

 

Love is always inclusive; it can never be exclusive. If I love a woman, I would love to see her happy in a thousand and one ways, with a thousand and one people. I would like her to be happy. That will be my joy. If she is happy dancing with somebody, I should not feel jealous – I love her. How can I feel jealous? I should be thrilled that she is happy. But when you claim that she is your wife, then you cannot allow this. You start crippling her. She starts paralyzing you in revenge. You both become destructive to each other.

 

Love is the greatest creative energy, but up to now it has been a misfortune, the greatest misfortune. People have not been killed because of hatred: people have been killed because of love. Life has become so bitter, not because of anger: it has become so bitter because of love.

 

You fight for the love of a woman or a man; you fight for the love of your family or clan. You fight for the love of your ideology or religion; you fight for the love of your mother-country or father-country, father-land, motherland. You go on fighting for your love! All murders, all killings -- all kinds of sufferings exist because of your so-called love.

 

Something is basically wrong with your love -- your love is a fixated love; it is not a flowing play. It is serious, it is exclusive, it is possessive. It is full of stupidity.

 

One should be able to see all this -- and just seeing it, you start relaxing. You see the point of it and you start relaxing, and a new awareness arises in you.

 

-Osho, "Walk without Feet, Fly without Wings, and Think without Mind, #5, Q1"