Relationships are a togetherness that comes from growth individually and as a couple. Throughout the relationship, each partner builds and builds and builds, but never should the partners feel like they are fixing each other. Love is not something we can be taught, and it is not something we can follow a set of simple steps to achieve; it must be genuine and selfless. Osho believes we cannot learn love because “When you learn something, it means it comes from the outside; it is not an inner growth” (Osho, 69). 

 

When we look at attachment, we often deny its existence in relationships because it has such a negative context historically. What we neglect to see and pay attention to is that we gain such insecure forms of attachment through these ideas of learning and following love, rather than naturally experiencing love and letting it grow in a way that resonates to us naturally, from inside. We, as a society, unknowing romanticize the lack of genuinely-grown love, and instead replace that potential genuine love with feelings of unhealthy attachment to another individual.

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   Love is so much more. We are given the ability to love, and we are naturally able to love others, but we do not always know how. We complicate love and make ourselves crazy from trying to learn the best way to love others and make them love us the same we feel we are loving them. Osho states, “Once the obstacles are removed, and the rocks are thrown away, the flow starts,” and we can begin to fully express genuine love from within ourselves (Osho, 69). The societal idea of love says that by grasping onto someone tightly and calling them 'our own' we are loving, but in actuality, that form of attachment is what makes relationships suffer because it creates pain through fear. We let our ego take over our relationships, and it brings to the surface qualities that we did not necessarily know we had; these can include fear, jealousy, attachment, and more.

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“The more you possess, the more the ego strengthens; without possessions, the ego cannot exist” (Osho, 69-70).

 

When we get rid of these possessions and allow ourselves to be free of distractions in our heart, we can begin to let love come from a place of sincerity without any blindness due to our possessions.

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   After we let all of these distractions go and come back to our center, we realize that “love begins in solitude” and is reflected in us through our meditation (Osho, 71). We often feel that we are completed through other people being in our lives, and it is important to see that this is an unhealthy form of attachment. Each individual, ideally, should feel whole and complete in and of themselves. In solitude we can find independence, autonomy, and self-love. It is only then that we are truly ready to form a healthy relationship with someone else. “When you are absolutely happy in your aloneness… then you are capable of love” (Osho, 71). 

 

We can see that our happiness must come from ourselves, but we often let others define our happiness. To escape this form of desire, we need to let go of the dependency we have on those we rely on the most. We have to understand that we cannot get to know someone if we do not know who we are first. Those who try to create a relationship when they do not know themselves are “bound to be [in] frustration, a failure” (Osho, 83). We have created the desire to be one with another, and this social construct is simply unreasonable; even biologically it is not possible. A relationship is “not of need but of sharing” (Osho, 71). We should give our love partner access to share in our happiness, rather than expect them to create it, and they should allow us to access their happiness. By “unlearning the ways of unlove” we can then gain the power to let our inner self love from the soul (Osho, 72).

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   Our attachment to an unhealthy idea of love has made us detach from a more raw and pure form of love. We are destroying love's beauty by no longer falling in love and letting love come from a place unknown (Osho, 72). When we say we "make love", it is as if we have a power over it, we can manipulate and control it, but that is not how love should be formed, and it is not how love is formed. We act out and try to control and manipulate love because we know that there is the chance that it will leave, but if it is going to leave, then it was never truly love. 

 

According to Osho, one of the largest forms of attachment in the world today is marriage. Although many believe that we are showing our love through this bonding of two people, Osho believes we are taking away the authenticity of love. Osho states, “Marriage is needed because love is missing,” which shows us that through this legal bond to show others our union, we have lost the value in the relationship. We often use marriage to keep someone around, and knowing this is the reason someone is in our life directly identifies why this is not a marriage of love but of attachment and insecurity. We are forcing commitment when “commitment does not have to be brought to it, it is its intrinsic quality” (Osho, 74). While Osho is not saying that marriage should not happen, he is saying that if we feel a need for it, then it is not healthy for us.

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  Another concept Osho explores is lust. Lust is typically used as a negatively-oriented term to express the desire for sexual interaction within another person, but a definition of lust that many people do not recognize is simply that lust is “an intense longing” (Merriam-Webster).  While lust can have a negative connotation, Osho does not ascribe a negative connotation to it, and instead describes it as one part of a large part of genuine love. “Love is the lotus, [and] lust is the mud the lotus arises out of” (Osho, 74). Lust as an intense longing is a part of love. We should desire our partners. That desire is a healthy part of being human. However, we should not have unhealthy attachments to our desire, or to our partners.

 

Perhaps Osho's biggest thesis is the idea that equal parts of togetherness and being alone are necessary in a relationship in order for it to thrive. Without both a healthy togetherness and a healthy acceptance of being alone, the relationship is not complete. Osho explains it as:​

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   “It is as if we are trying to fly in the sky with one wing. A few people have the wing of love and a few people have the wing of freedom – both are incapable of flying. Both wings are needed” (87).

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   We are constantly battling with ourselves to decide if we should make ourselves better or make others better, and with Osho’s idea of freedom, we cannot even try to think of this kind of support until we are able to support ourselves fully through self-freedom and self-love. We cannot be “afraid to be free, because freedom is risky” (Osho, 89). If we need to be afraid, then be afraid that we someday may not be free. It is worse to live in a bubble that is containing ourselves. With freedom, we can find love within ourselves, which will allow us to create love with someone else.

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Reference

Osho. Love, Freedom, and Aloneness. St. Martin's Griffin, 2003.