Jealousy

 

 

Question 1

Osho,

I want to tell you that i am totally turned on to you, and it's just far out being with you. i have just one question, maybe it's nothing spiritual but for me it's quite something -- my jealousy. i have been with my boyfriend for two years and we still enjoy being together, but if he goes with other women i freak out. this emotion is so strong that i'm afraid i will destroy this beautiful thing which is between us.

 

Osho, would you please tell me the very roots of jealousy, how i can deal with it, or even go through it? and i also want to say thank you for everything but the words don't express what i feel for you. my heart is beating with love for you.

 

 

Jealousy is one of the most prevalent areas of psychological ignorance about yourself, about others and more particularly, about relationship.

 

People think they know what love is -- they do not know. And their misunderstanding about love creates jealousy. By `love' people mean a certain kind of monopoly, some possessiveness -- without understanding a simple fact of life: that the moment you possess a living being you have killed him.

 

Life cannot be possessed. You cannot have it in your fist. If you want to have it, you have to keep your hands open.

 

But the thing has been going on a wrong path for centuries; it has become ingrained in us so much that we cannot separate love from jealousy. They have become almost one energy.

 

For example, you feel jealous if your lover goes to another woman. You are disturbed by it now, but I would like to tell you that if you don't feel jealous you will be in much more trouble -- then you will think you don't love him, because if you loved him you should have felt jealous. Jealousy and love have become so mixed up.

 

In fact, they are poles apart. A mind that can be jealous cannot be loving, and vice-versa: a mind that is loving cannot be jealous.

 

What is the disturbance? You have to look it as if it is not your question -- somebody else has asked, it is somebody else's problem -- so that you can stand aside and see the whole fabric.

 

The feeling of jealousy is a byproduct of marriage.

 

In the world of animals, birds, there is no jealousy. Once in a while there is a fight over a love object but a fight is far better than to be jealous, far more natural than to be caught up in jealousy and burn your heart with your own hands.

 

Marriage is an invented institution, it is not natural; hence nature has not provided a mind that can adjust to marriage. But man found it necessary that there should be some kind of legal contract between lovers, because love itself is dream-stuff, it is not reliable... it is there this moment and the next moment it is gone.

 

You want to be secure for the coming moment, for your whole future. Right now you are young; soon you will be old and you would like your wife, your husband, to be with you in your old age, in your sickness. But for that, a few compromises have to be made, and whenever there is compromise there is always trouble.

 

This is the compromise that human beings have made: to be secure about the future, to be certain about the tomorrows, to have a guarantee that the woman who loves you is going to love you forever, that it is not a temporary affair....

 

That's why religious people say that marriages are "made in heaven" ... a strange kind of heaven, because if these marriages are made in heaven, then what can you make in hell? They don't show the signs, the fragrance, the freshness, the beauty of heaven. They are certainly disgusting, ugly... they show something of hell certainly. But man settled for marriage because that was the only way to have private property.

 

[....]

 

I am a realist. I don't have any ideal. To me, to understand reality and to go with reality is the only right way for any intelligent man or woman.

 

My understanding is -- and it is based on thousands of experiments -- that if marriage is not such a tight thing, rigid, but is flexible, just a friendship... so that a woman can tell you she has met a beautiful young man and she is going this weekend to be with him -- "And if you are interested I can bring him back with me, you will also love the person." And if the husband can say, not as a hypocrite but as an authentic human being, that "Your joy, your happiness is my happiness. If you have found someone, forget about the house, I will take care. You enjoy, because I know whenever you come back, enjoying a fresh love will make you fresh also. A fresh love will bring fresh youth to you. You go this week, and next week I may have my own program."

 

This is friendship. And when they come home they can talk about what kind of man she met, how he turned out, that it was not that great.... You can tell her about the new woman you have met.... You have a shelter in the home. You can go once in a while into the sky, wild and free, and come back and always your wife is there waiting for you — not to fight but to share your adventures.

 

It simply needs a little understanding. It has nothing to do with religion, but just a little more intelligent behavior.

 

You know perfectly well that howsoever beautiful a man or woman might be, she starts becoming heavy on your nerves sooner or later. Because the same geography, the same topography, the same landscape....

 

Man's mind is not made for monotony; neither it is made for monogamy. It is absolutely natural to ask for variety. And it is not against your love. In fact, the more you know other women, the more you will praise your own woman -- your understanding will deepen. Your experience will be enriching... the more you have known a few men, the more accurately you will be able to understand your own husband.

 

The idea of jealousy will disappear -- you both are free, and you are not hiding anything.

 

With friends we should share everything, particularly those moments which are beautiful -- moments of love, moments of poetry, moments of music... they should be shared. In this way your life will become more and more rich. You may become so attuned to each other that you live your whole life together, but there is no marriage.

 

Jealousy will persist as long as marriage remains the basic foundation of society.

 

Just give the man, with your full heart, absolute freedom. And tell him he need not hide anything: "To hide anything is insulting. That means you don't trust me." And the same has to happen to man, that he can say to his wife: "You are as independent as I am. We are together to be happy, we are together to grow into more blissfulness. And we will do everything for each other but we are not going to be jailers to each other."

 

Giving freedom is a joy, having freedom is a joy. You can have so much joy, but you are turning that whole energy into misery, into jealousy, into fight, into a continuous effort to keep the other under your thumb.

 

[....]

 

Love is the ultimate law. You just have to discover its beauties, its treasures. You have not to repeat, parrot-like, all the great values which make man the highest expression of consciousness on this planet. You should exercise them in your relationship.

 

And this has been my strange experience: if one partner starts moving on the right lines, the other follows sooner or later. Because they both are hungry for love, but they don't know how to approach it.

 

No university teaches that love is an art and that life is not already given to you; that you have to learn from scratch.

 

And it is good that we have to discover by our own hands every treasure that is hidden in life... and love is one of the greatest treasures in existence.

 

But instead of becoming fellow travellers in search of love, beauty and truth, people are wasting their time in fighting, in jealousy.

 

Just become a little alert and start the change from your side -- don't expect it from the other side. It will begin from the other side too. And it costs nothing to smile, it costs nothing to love, it costs nothing to share your happiness with somebody you love.

 

-Osho, “Sermons in Stones, #13, Q1”