Marriage: The Root of Jealousy

5 min read

Osho,
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. Would you please tell me the very roots of jealousy, how I can deal with it, or even go through it?

“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.”
Sermons in Stones: Jealously – A Byproduct of Marriage #13

Is marriage part of that whole fabric of jealousy?

“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.
“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.”
Sermons in Stones: Jealousy – Byproduct of Marriage #13

Why are all the religions so insistent on marriage?

“Because man wanted the woman to be completely imprisoned, he wrote religious scriptures making her afraid of hell, making her greedy for heaven… if she follows the rules. Those rules exist only for women, not for men. Now it is so clear that to let women live any longer in this poisonous situation of jealousy is against their psychological health.
“And women’s psychological health influences the psychological health of the whole of humanity – man is also born of woman. The woman has to become an independent individual.

The dissolution of marriage will be a great, festive event on the earth – and nobody is preventing you: if you love your wife or your husband you can live for lives together, nobody is preventing you. Withdrawing marriage is simply giving you your individuality back. Now nobody possesses you.

“You are not to make love to a man just because he is your husband and he has the right to demand it. In my vision, when a woman makes love to a man because she has to make love, it is prostitution – not retail, but wholesale!”
Sermons in Stones: Jealousy – A Byproduct of Marriage #13

Can you explain the basis of this confusion between love, sex, and jealousy?

“Jealousy is not a primary thing, it is secondary. It is a secondary part of sex. Whenever you have a sexual urge in your mind, a sexual happening in your being, whenever you feel sexually attracted and related to somebody, jealousy enters because you are not in love. If you are in love, jealousy never enters.
“Try to understand the whole thing. Whenever you are sexually related you are afraid because sex is really not a relationship, it is an exploitation.

If you are attached to a woman or man sexually, you are always afraid that this woman may go to somebody else, this man may move to somebody else. There is no relationship really, it is just mutual exploitation.

“You are exploiting each other, but you don’t love – and you know it so you are afraid.
“This fear becomes jealousy so you may not allow things, you will guard: you will make every security arrangement so that this man cannot look at another woman. Even looking will be a danger signal. This man should not talk to another woman because talking…You feel afraid he may leave. So you will close all the paths, all the ways of this man going to another woman, of this woman going to another man; you will close all the ways, all the doors.
“But then a problem arises. When all the doors are closed, the man becomes dead, the woman dies, becomes a prisoner, a slave – and you cannot love a dead being. You cannot love one who is not free, because love is beautiful only when it is given freely, when it is not taken and demanded and forced.
“First you make security arrangements, then the person dies, becomes like an object. A beloved may be a person; a wife becomes an object. A beloved may be a person; a husband becomes an object to be guarded, possessed, controlled. But the more you control, the more you are killing because the freedom is lost. And the other person may be there for other reasons, but not for love – because how can you love a person who possesses you? He looks like an enemy.
“Sex creates jealousy, but it is a secondary thing.

So it is not a question of how to drop jealousy; you cannot drop it because you cannot drop sex. The question is how to transform sex into love. Then jealousy disappears.”

A Bird on a Wing: The Miracle of Ordinariness #6

How do I discover how to experience this transformation?

“Love is only the jumping board. There is much more ahead of it, which is possible only if two persons remain intimate for a longer period of time. With a new person, you begin again from scratch. And there is no need for a new person, because now it is not the biological or the physical aspect of the person, but you have come into communion spiritually.
“To transform sex into spirituality is my basic approach. And if both are lovers and meditators they will not mind, once in a while, if you visit a Chinese restaurant, or she goes to visit some continental restaurant! It is not a problem. You love the woman; if she is feeling happy once in a while with somebody else, what is wrong in it? You should be happy that she is happy, you love her. Only meditators are capable of dropping jealousies….

Love without meditation is bound to turn into hatred any moment – beware – but love with meditation will become deeper and deeper, more and more intense. And perhaps two persons will feel together so attuned, a kind of at-one-ment, that they would love to be together forever.”

The Last Testament Vol.1: The Fruits Are Ripe #3
END
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