Love and liberate, don't possess
As long as our love happens towards a particular object, even if the object is a person, we will try to reduce that person only to the level of an object. That is exactly what we do when we feel possessive or attached to another person. In the way that we try to possess furniture or a house or any object, we try to possess the person also. We want the person to be just how we want him or her to be, which means we are actually reducing the person to sheer matter.
So understand, whenever our love or our attention is towards something in particular, we will be only materialistic, creating suffering for ourselves and for others. We will only suffocate the object or person. Instead, if we turn our attention towards the experience of love itself, we will be liberating the object and we too will be liberated from the object. That is the beauty of love that happens just as love and not for the sake of any object.
When you start possessing someone, you bind yourself also. If you are walking holding your dog's leash, be very clear that you are also bound. Don't think only the dog is bound; you are also bound. Don't think that only the dog cannot run away, you too cannot run away! You may be thinking that you are holding the rope and the dog may be thinking that he is holding the rope. Who knows?
The next time you are with someone, when you are with your friend with whom you are completely open, remember to practice this technique.
Just sit next to him or her. Don't bother about what you are going to do or what you are going to say. Just sit, that's all! That is the technique. Actually, speaking is nothing but avoiding the other person. Because you cannot look into the other person's eyes, you go on speaking. That is the truth. The other person listens so that he can start speaking whenever you take a break! If a person is listening to you, it means that he is either thinking of something else or he is preparing for his turn. He sits there so that he can start once you finish.
Now if you try this technique, it can take you to a different space altogether. When you are with the master or your friend or your beloved, whoever you feel deeply connected with, whoever you are very open with, you can try this technique. It will straightaway lead you to enlightenment. Be very clear, I am not teaching this technique for you to have better relationships or for you to develop your personality. No! I am giving it to you to straightaway experience the pure love that can lead you to enlightenment.
This technique will take you through a quantum jump from the form to the formless, from possessive love to causeless love.
When love happens as causeless overflowing, you simply liberate yourself and the other person from your own attachment and possessiveness, because possessiveness as you know it, binds not only the other person but you as well. It tortures the other person as well as you! Real love simply liberates both of you. It gives freedom to you and the other person.
When I travel around the world, people ask me, 'Swamiji, did you sleep well last night? It is a new place for you.' I tell them, 'Only when you have attachment to a particular house does another house become a new place for you and you struggle. When you don't have attachment to any house, you feel at home wherever you go!'
I never feel any place is mine or not mine. I feel totally at home anywhere. The comfort is always within us, never outside us. When there is no comfort within us, we look for comfort outside us. Feeling comfortable within us is the result of the causeless love energy.
When we don't feel attached to one home, we feel at home in the entire world. We are totally relaxed anywhere in the world.