The Essential Core Of Human Consciousness

Osho, Book of Wisdom

Man's greatest longing is for freedom. Man is a longing for freedom. Freedom is the very essential core of human consciousness: Love is its circumference and freedom is its center. These two fulfilled, life has no regret. And they both are fulfilled together, never separately.

People have tried to fulfill love without freedom. Then love brings more and more misery, more and more bondage. Then love is not what one has expected it to be; it turns out just the opposite. It shatters all hopes, it destroys all expectations, and life becomes a wasteland, a groping in darkness and never finding the door.

Love without freedom naturally tends to be possessive. And the moment possessiveness enters in, you start creating bondage for others and bondage for yourself, because you cannot possess somebody without being possed by him. You cannot make somebody a slave without becoming a slave yourself. Whatsoever you do to others is done to you.

This is the basic principal to be understood, that love without freedom never brings fulfillment.

And there have been people who have tried the other extreme, freedom without love. These are the monks, the escapists, the people who renounce the world. Afraid of love, afraid of love because it brings bondage, they renounce all the situations where love can flow, grow, can happen, is possible. They escape into loneliness. Their loneliness never becomes aloneness, it remains loneliness. And loneliness is a negative state; it is utterly empty, it is sad.

I get what Osho says here, no problem but I still don't get why with love as the center and freedom the circumference, that would be a co-dependent relationship (I'm referring to my previous post here.) And maybe Osho is right, that man's (or woman's), or let's say, the greatest human longing is freedom that it is the essential core of human consciousness. I have respect for Osho and I'm assuming that he knows this experience directly. I certainly long for freedom. And yet, I long for love too so what if I were to say that the greatest human longing is love, that it is the essential core of human consciousness? I've had direct experiences of love--but I'm not sure if it was the center or the circumference. Love or Freedom. Interesting stuff though and I'll be contemplating this more. I think I'll write a friend of mine who has been working on the question What Is Freedom? at Enlightenment Intensives and see if he can offer me some insight.