There isn’t a ladder for love; it takes you all at once, like being swept away, not climbed step by step.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, Mahavira divided the path of renunciation and meditation into fourteen steps. Is there any similar exposition for the path of love? Please say something about it.
There is no way to parcel out love. Because love is a leap. Knowledge is gradual; love is a jump. Knowledge moves inch by inch, step by step. Love does not move inch by inch, step by step. Knowledge is very clever; love is very mad. So these gunasthanas are for the seeker of knowledge. On the path of devotion there are no gunasthanas. The devotee does not know division. He does not know categories. He does not know analysis. The devotee’s hallmark is synthesis. His mark is to see the indivisible wherever there are divisions. The knower’s whole effort is to discern differences even where there is unity. Mahavira called his entire scripture bhed-vijnana—the science of discrimination. To recognize what the body is and what the soul is; what the world is and what liberation is. To recognize each thing, to give precise accounts and exact analysis. By right…Read the full discourse →
Question: First question: Osho, can Truth be attained through love? Just so, I open scriptures before you—now Ashtavakra, now Narada, now Mahavira, now Buddha, now Sufis, now Hasidim, now Zen—in the hope that wherever your nature resonates, at some station, you will say, “I’ve come home.” Somewhere your eyes will suddenly light up; you will begin to run, you will begin to dance. Somewhere, suddenly, you will feel a thrill, an upsurge of joy. That is why I speak on so many paths, because I hold this: there are as many paths as there are kinds of people. These two are the main streams—of knowledge and of love. Then there are smaller streams within each. By love one certainly arrives; it isn’t as clean-cut as the path of truth. Love’s path is misty—that is its joy, its flavor.Read the full discourse →
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…Read the full discourse →
Osho! I set out to seek the Beloved; how is union with the Beloved attained?
Yog Neelam! The Beloved is not far. Not even so far that any meeting would be needed. There has only been forgetfulness, not separation. Separation cannot be. The Beloved abides within. He is the breath of our breath, the heartbeat of our heart. Without him we have no being. Because he is, we are. As the ocean is, so the waves are. The ocean can be without waves, but the waves cannot be without the ocean. Yet a wave can fall into a delusion—the delusion that “I am separate from the ocean.” In that very delusion, forgetfulness happens. Only forgetfulness happens; separation cannot. The whole search for the Beloved is nothing but remembrance—re-remembering. That is why the saints have called this search surati. Surati means remembrance, recollection. Surati is the folk form of the word smriti. What the Buddha called smriti, by the time of Kabir and Nanak became surati—dearer,…Read the full discourse →
Osho, you call sannyas, meditation, and love a leap. What do you mean by a leap?
Narendra! Whatever is essential in life—be it meditation, love, or sannyas—does not come the way mathematics does. It has no method, no staircase. There is no sequential movement in it. It is an explosion. Everything happens in a single instant. It is not a conclusion of thought; it is a condition of the heart, a state of feeling. Suddenly! When you light a lamp, darkness doesn’t go away gradually—first a little, then a little more. Here the lamp is lit, and there the darkness is gone—in one moment, at once. I call the lighting of the lamp and the vanishing of the darkness a leap. If it left little by little, in sequence, in measurable increments, then it would be a process. So too with sannyas: it is not a process. In a moment of awakening, the futility of life is seen. It is seen with such intensity that nothing…Read the full discourse →