What is the difference between the practice of meditation and the practice of love?

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;…

What is the difference between waiting for godot and waiting for god?

It is as if the sun has risen in the morning and you are sitting in your room with closed doors and windows, in darkness. Open the doors, you become available to the sun. The sun was already available -- just the meeting happens. You cannot wait for God. All waiting is for Godot. Godot means the one who never comes, who CANNOT come, whose arrival is impossible. And the only impossible thing is that which has already happened -- how can it happen again? You are alive, and you are waiting for life, Now, this is ridiculous. The real man of religion does not think in terms of God. He thinks in terms of life or, even better, of living -- because life can again become an abstract idea. Living, moment-to-moment living. In that very living, one knows what God is, because one knows who one is. Your idea…

Meditation is an end and a beginning -- the end of the old and the birth of the new. You cannot even comprehend it because the old cannot comprehend the new, the old can only comprehend something which is old. It has limitations, it can move only within the boundary of the known, and the new is not within its boundary, the new is unknown. Hence only very courageous people can take the jump. Courage is needed because you have to die to the old, and the old is familiar. You are dropping that which is familiar for something which is absolutely unfamiliar. This is what courage is: dropping the known for the unknown. There are two steps to courage: the first is dropping the known for the unknown, and the second is dropping the knowable for the unknowable. By dropping the known for the unknown, meditation happens.

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…

He says: If you are logically blind, if you are blind in the eyes of logic and intellect, only then will you have eyes of the heart to see. But he does not mention that -- he says: Just be blind. That means, just be in love, and love is the only way to know God. [Premrito... The difference between love and meditation is very delicate... ] Not apparently visible, and as the ways come closer and closer to God, the difference is less and less. At the ultimate peak of experience when God explodes in you, all the differences disappear, but in the beginning they are all subtle differences. On the path of meditation one has to learn how to be alone, and on the path of love one has to learn how to share and how to be together.