Is meditation necessary to attain truth through love?

Osho, you have titled this series of talks “Sahaj Yoga.” Do “sahaj” and “yoga” not seem mutually opposed?

Anand Maitreya! They don’t just seem opposed, they are opposed. But no ultimate truth of life can manifest without contradiction. Life is made of opposites—darkness and light, day and night, woman and man, negative electricity and positive electricity, birth and death. The very structure of life is woven of opposites. Hence the opposites are not only opposed; they are complementary to each other. If you have labored hard all day, you will be able to sleep deeply. Labor and rest are opposites, yet only the one who has worked can rest deeply—and the one who has not worked cannot. So the opposites are not only opposed, they complete each other. And only the one who has rested deeply at night can rise in the morning and engage in work again. One who has not rested through the night will not be able to work in the morning. Look closely at…

Question: First question: Osho, can Truth be attained through love? Love and truth are not two events; they are two facets of one event. Realize truth and love manifests. Realize love and truth is directly revealed. Set out in search of truth and, upon reaching the goal, you find yourself entering the temple of love as well. You went looking for truth—love arrived alongside. Or travel by the path of love; the moment you arrive at love’s temple, truth will be there. They go together. Love and truth are two names of the Divine. There are, however, two kinds of people in the world. For some, attaining truth is easy—love follows as its fragrance. For others, love is easy—truth comes as its consummation. Hence knowledge (jnana) and devotion (bhakti) are the two fundamental paths. Woman and man are the two primordial polarities.

Why is love so essential for spiritual growth?

Love and awareness is the highest form of polarity -- just like man/woman, life/death, darkness/light, summer/winter, outer/ inner, yin/yang, the body and the soul, the creation and the creator. Love and awareness is the highest form of polarity, the last polarity, at which transcendence happens. Love needs two. It is a relationship, it is outgoing, it is energy moving outwards. There is an object: the beloved. The object becomes more important than yourself. Your joy is in the object. If your beloved is happy, you are happy; you become part of the object. There is a kind of dependence, and the other is needed. Without the other you will feel lonely. Awareness is just being with yourself in utter aloneness, just being alert. It is not a relationship, the other is not needed at all. It is not outgoing, it is ingoing. Love is the movement of the light out…

Lies need to be advertised, propagated, argued for, proved; they need support. They have to prove that they are not lies. They have to create the appearance of being true. Great effort is needed to make a lie appear as truth -- still, it can fall any moment. You can befool a few people for the time being, but you cannot befool all people for all time. Truth has its own light. The lie has to borrow it from somebody else, from somewhere else. The lie is like darkness: you cannot see anything. The truth is as bright as the day. That is another meaning of rob: bright, as bright as the day. It is just as when you see the sun rising, no proof is needed: the sunrise is enough proof unto itself.

So this has to be the work of every sannyasin, this is the work, to go into your aloneness. Find moments when you can be alone. There is no need to escape to a monastery or to the mountains; one can find a few hours every day. And the best thing is to find it in the world, amongst all kinds of distractions, because then nothing can destroy it. If you find it in the Himalayas when you come back to the world it will be destroyed. It was something contributed by the Himalayas, it was not something that has grown in you. It was a gift of the Himalayan peace. It was just a reflection in you, it was not really yours at all.