Is love truly worthy of the highest place in existence?

Osho, more or less all saints have praised love. But you have enthroned love upon Gaurishankar, the highest peak! Is love truly worthy of such a supreme place? And does love really occupy as much of existence as you give it?

So your fugitive sannyasin flees sorrow, but does not attain bliss. In your monks’ lives you will not find sorrow perhaps; they have withdrawn from the entire arrangement that produces sorrow. But have you found happiness in them? Have you seen streams of peace flowing in their eyes? Have you seen ecstasy in their hearts? Have you heard songs of joy upon their lips? Have you seen them dance? And until a renunciate can dance, there remains something lacking in his renunciation. He left the world, but did not find the divine. Those who live in the world sometimes dance; but your renunciate never dances. Those in the world sometimes get a fleeting glimpse of happiness; if they did not, they would never remain in the world. It comes for a moment—true. But it does come. Your renunciate does not get even that fleeting moment. Sometimes a little light spreads…

Question: Last question: Osho, is love the most important event of life? Love is the most important event—and yet love is not an event. Love is life; all else is death. The one who has known love has known life. The one who has not known love has known only dying. His life is nothing but a long suicide—done slowly, slowly. He dies a little every day and does nothing else. Love is not an incident that happens in life—love is life’s very other name. And the day this understanding dawns in you, that love is another name for life, the Divine begins to dance within you. The skies give birth no more; for years no mad lover arises. For years no prophet rises out of the wilderness. Love is lost; therefore no prophet can be born. Love is lost; therefore even a true madman is no longer born.

Love, and love unconditionally. Love, and love without asking for any return. Love as an end unto itself, and that is true prayer. And love the whole existence without any discrimination, without any choice. Love choicelessly, and then the day is not far away when you will become aware of godliness surrounding you, reaching you from every nook and corner of existence. You will become fire with it, aflame! (And then to Prem Peter Osho said: ) Love is the rock on which the temple of life can be built. Without love all houses are made on sands, shifting sands. One is bound to be disillusioned sooner or later, one is bound to be disappointed because the whole effort can collapse any moment. You don't have a real foundation to your house. It is more or less a house made of playing cards.

And that is the experience that gives you the proof of god's existence; when you have experienced it with one person you know that now you can melt with the whole. You know the art, you have learned it; you can now melt with the whole universe and become one with it. That is prayer. Not the Christians and Hindus praying in their temples -- that is not prayer. Prayer is the ultimate state of love, the fragrance of that ultimate state, the fragrance of the flower of divine love. [Then more on love to Satprem. Her name means true love, Osho told her. Our love is only so-called love, he began.] It has many other things in it which are far more predominant: jealousy, possessiveness, domination -- all kinds of ego numbers. And ego is the most poisonous thing for love. Love is very delicate.

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and clearned up. It is for reference purposes only.] Love is a song, because basically it is an uprising in the heart, it is an explosion of feeling, it is sensitivity to beauty. And to be sensitive to beauty is to be available to joy. That's the only window through which joy comes in. Joy cannot enter into a being without love. Many have tried -- millions in fact, down the ages. All the monasteries have been full of such people. They have tried to be joyful without love. It was a great experiment but it failed. It was bound to fail: their joy was phony, a pretension, their smile remained just a painted smile, there was no soul in it because the window was closed.