How is the element of awareness related to the paths of meditation and love?

Osho, you have earlier said, “Live moment to moment, live in the present.” Now you are saying, “Return to the past.” What should we do?

So it is with the mind—there are ruts. The past means endless grooves. However much you understand, your intellect agrees, you make decisions, you resolve—at the moment of resolve you feel something is going to change. But not even an hour passes before your decision breaks. Then only self-condemnation is produced, nothing else. Your saints, your fakirs, your priests and pundits—most of the time they only succeed in producing self-condemnation in you, nothing else. Their words are logically correct. You cannot even say they are wrong; you have to admit they are right. In that admission you take a decision. But against what are you deciding? Inside are grooves carved since who knows when, deep tracks. Walking in them has become a habit. It is easy to walk in them. They will pull you again and again. The meaning of returning into the past is: these grooves must be erased.…

Question: OSHO, IS AWARENESS A HIGHER VALUE THAN LOVE? Virendra, THE HIGHEST PEAK IS THE CULMINATION of all the values: truth, love, awareness, authenticity, totality. At the highest peak they are indivisible. They are separate only in the dark valleys of our unconsciousness They are separate only when they are polluted, mixed with other things. The moment they become pure they become one; the more pure, the closer they come to each other. For example, each value exists on many planes; each value is a ladder of many rungs. Love is lust -- the lowest rung, which touches hell; and love is also prayer -- the highest rung, which touches paradise. And between these two there are many planes easily discernible. In lust, love is only one percent; ninety-nine percent are other things: jealousies, ego trips, possessiveness, anger, sexuality.

Osho, you have said there are two opposite paths: meditation and love—intelligence or feeling. So tell us, what is the difference between the practice of meditation and the practice of love? Is a meditator not loving before samadhi?

These paths are opposite; where they lead is one. You can arrive from either side. Erase one of the pair, and the other will vanish by itself. Which one you choose to erase depends on your personal inclination. It is the art of erasing one of a pair. The other will vanish because it was the inevitable counterpart. If from existence we remove light itself, darkness will also be gone. It sounds difficult only because in your house, if you blow out a lamp, darkness doesn’t disappear—it increases. But you haven’t removed light from existence. If light were eradicated from existence, darkness would vanish. If darkness were erased, light would vanish. If we remove death from the world, life will disappear that very day. We think the opposite: that death destroys life. You do not know; they are two parts of one thing. Without death there can be no life;…

Beloved Osho, it has been my understanding that the meditator and the lover have different paths. The other day we heard your beautiful explanation of the path of meditation. Is this path different from that of the lover? If so, how to tell which path to choose?

Somebody attracts you; there can be any reason for that attraction. Mostly -- perhaps one hundred percent, not mostly -- the woman you are attracted to has something in her eyes, in the color of her hair, in her way of talking, in her voice, in her gestures, the way she walks... something in her resembles your mother. You are always in love with your mother, and your whole life you are seeking another mother. Of course, you are going to be frustrated. All lovers are frustrated, except those who never manage to get married. For example, Laila and Majnu -- the society did not allow them. Shiri and Fariad -- their families came in. They were never frustrated, they remained lovers their whole life. They lived loving the other person, they died loving the other person. But if you come together.... They were prevented from coming together. If you…

Osho, are the deaths of meditation and of love different? Are their processes different as well?

Death is one and the same—whether through meditation or through love. But the processes, the paths, the methods that lead to that death are different. Through meditation, the same thing happens: you disappear. Through love, the same thing happens: you disappear. The dissolving happens in both cases, but the ways are very different. In the first stages of meditation, you do not vanish. At that stage, what is false in you is burned away and what is true is preserved. The inauspicious is removed; the auspicious is kept. Impurity is burned; purity is protected. Thus on the path of knowledge or meditation one begins to be purified. One does not disappear; one becomes refined, yet one remains. In the final leap, the refinement reaches a point where even purity appears impure. Where mere being appears impure, there, in the last jump, the meditator snuffs himself out. The devotee snuffs himself…