Osho discourse on Jealousy, ugliness of jealousy

Question : You speak a lot about the ugliness of Jealousy. Yes, it is quite ugly, but any suggestions to us sufferers of the disease who aren’t Enlightened on how to diminish it?

Osho : First, diminishing it is not going to help. You can diminish it to such proportions that it will almost become invisible, but that is not going to help. Diminishing simply means that you are throwing it into the unconscious and it goes into your basement of being more and more deeply. It becomes invisible. You may not be able to see it, but it will go on working from the back, it will go on pulling your strings from the back. It will become more subtle.

Please don’t try to diminish it. The first thing to remember: rather than diminish it, magnify it so you can see the whole of it. That is the whole process of all the groups going on around here — Gestalt, Encounter, Psychodrama. The whole process is that whatsoever the problem is, please don’t diminish it but magnify it. Bring it totally as it is — even exaggerate it so that you can see every detail of it. Down the centuries in the past, jealousy, anger, sadness, this and that, all have been repressed. The effort was to diminish it.

No, a seed is a diminished tree, but a seed is tremendously powerful. A seed can at any time again produce a tree. The right situation, the right season… and the tree will again sprout. You can diminish your jealousy, it can become just a seed, and you will not be able to see it the tree has disappeared, but it is there.

Diminishing is not the right process. That’s what you have been doing, that’s what you have done to your life: you have diminished everything. And one thing more. When you diminish jealousy, your love will be diminished alongside, because your love and jealousy are so much entangled with each other. If you diminish your sadness, your happiness will be diminished, because your happiness and sadness are so much together. If you diminish your hate, your love will disappear — that’s what has happened. You have been taught not to hate and the total result is that you have become incapable of love.

No, please don’t diminish anything. That is not the way. Rather, magnify, exaggerate, bring it to its total blossoming and then see it — every detail of it, every minute detail of it. In that very awareness, in that very seeing, you will become capable of transcending it and then there will be no need to do anything about it.

The second thing: you say ‘You speak a lot about the ugliness of jealousy. Yes, it is ugly…’. No, you don’t know. You are simply repeating what I have been saying. If you know it is quite ugly, in that very knowing it will disappear. You don’t know. You have listened to me, you have listened to Jesus, you have listened to Buddha and you have gathered opinions.

You don’t know. It is not your own feel that jealousy is ugly. If it is your own feel, why should you carry it? It is not an easy thing, it takes a lot of investment. To be jealous is a very difficult thing: it needs a lot of effort on your part, a lot of involvement. It is so destructive of your own self that if it is ugly and you have known the ugliness of it, you cannot carry it for a single moment. But listening to me you become knowledgeable.

I have heard…
‘You can’t come in here’ the worried mother warned ‘my son is sick.’
‘I want to catch your son’s measles’ the man said ‘because if I kissed the nurse she’d get it. She would kiss the doctor and he’d get it. The doctor would kiss my wife and she’d get it. My wife would kiss the landlord and that’s the guy I’m after.’

It is a great investment, a great effort and a very complex phenomenon. And finally, it may destroy. It may not destroy others — it certainly destroys you; it is suicidal. Not only that it is ugly, it is poisonous; it is suicidal, it is killing yourself every day, slowly, slowly. See the fact of it. Don’t just become knowledgeable. What I say will not become an experience for you unless YOU experience it. And what is the way to experience it? The way is to bring it in front of you. It is hiding behind you.

Don’t just become knowledgeable. What I say will not become an experience for you unless YOU experience it. And what is the way to experience it? The way is to bring it in front of you. It is hiding behind you.

Don’t repress it, express it. Sit in your room, close the doors, bring your jealousy into focus. Watch it, see it, let it take as strong a flame as possible. Let it become a strong flame, burn into it and see what it is. And don’t from the very beginning say that this is ugly, because that very idea that this is ugly will repress it, will not allow it total expression.

Just try to see the existential effect of what jealousy is, the existential fact. No interpretations, no ideologies! Forget Buddhas and work, forget me. Just let the jealousy be there. Look into it, look deeply into it and so do with anger, so do with sadness, hatred, possessiveness. And by and by you will see that just by seeing through things you start getting a transcendental feeling that you are JUst a witness; the identity is broken. The identity is broken only when you encounter something within you.