Is there another way to reach prayer beyond feelings of hopelessness about love?

Many people feel quite hopeless about love. Is there not another way to reach prayer?

No. If you feel quite hopeless about love, you should have to feel absolutely hopeless about prayer, because prayer is nothing but the very essence of love. Love is like a flower and prayer is like a fragrance. If you cannot attain to the flower, how can you attain to the fragrance? Nobody can bypass love. And nobody should try, because there awaits failure and nothing else. Why you are so hopeless about love? The same problem will come with prayer because prayer means love with the whole, the cosmos. So go deeper in the problem of love, and solve it before you think about prayer. Otherwise your prayer will be false; it will be a deception. Of course only you are deceived, nobody else. There is no God listening to your prayer. Unless your prayer is love, the whole will remain deaf. It cannot open in any other way…

Question: The first question: Osho, what is prayer? Avinash, prayer is the distillation of love. As pressing flowers yields perfume, so if you press all the forms of love, prayer is born. As fragrance dwells in flowers, so prayer is the fragrance of love. Prayer is neither Hindu, nor Muslim, nor Christian. And if it is, then know it is not prayer; it is something else—fraud, self-deception. And deception never reaches the Divine. You need real steps if you are to reach the doorway of that temple. Prayer needs to be learned no more than love needs to be learned. You are born with the capacity for love; just so, you are born with the capacity for prayer. Simply let your love grow. Let love expand—let there be no boundary for 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…

Osho, your helpless child weeps. Today, from the innermost I make my call; there is no ritual of worship—only this my body and mind, begging for the gift of your darshan.

Taru! That is enough. If one can weep, prayer is complete. It begins with tears and ends with tears. All else are borrowed flowers; only the flowers of tears are our own. Whatever arrangements man makes are gross. There is no need for gross arrangements. Let feeling arise in the subtle, let a ripple awaken in the subtle—whether it flows as tears or becomes song, whether it turns into dance or music—the essential thing is that the feeling arises in the innermost. When feeling rises, devotion has happened. Perhaps no one even hears; it isn’t necessary that tears actually appear in the eyes—if the eyes simply grow moist, that is enough. Even tears need not reach the eyes; if the heart becomes moist, that is enough. The heart’s moisture is prayer. Let those who have leisure read the inscriptions of mosque and temple. Here, as far as the eye can…

Osho, I am utterly like a stone and yet I want to drown in prayer—but I do not know what prayer is. How should I pray? Give eyes even to me, the blind!

The heart gives the hint of the goal. The heart points toward the destination, because the heart is love. Like a compass: however you turn it, it settles to the true direction; it points to the north. Just so the heart is always aligned toward God. And that alignment toward God is called prayer. The source from which that prayer arises is called love. Do not ask for eyes—ask for the Eye! Do not ask for argument and knowledge—ask for love. Without eyes, tears will do. You ask: “I am utterly like a stone!” Everyone is a stone—until God happens. So do not take any inferiority into your mind. The moment God descends, all stones become idols, and an unparalleled beauty is revealed. Sometimes even stone breaks. When has the drop of water ever revealed its secret? When has the ocean not hid a dreadful fire within? It bears, it…