What is the relationship between love and God?

Osho, you always say that love is God. What is the relationship between love and God?

You’ve seen it: sometimes on a lotus leaf two dewdrops roll together and become one, and yet a drop remains a drop. One drop has formed in place of two; nothing vast has occurred. The boundary grows a little. You were a little half-and-half; meeting the beloved you become a little more whole. You were alone; meeting the beloved you are no longer alone. The path of love is the path of prayer. See: among Hindus, the images are made of Sita and Ram together, of Radha and Krishna, of Shiva and Parvati. These images are symbols—symbols that the love which happens between human and human is to be expanded, made so vast that it happens between man and the Infinite. On the path of meditation this is not needed. That is why Mahavira stands alone, that is why the Buddha sits alone. On the path of meditation the other…

Osho, what is the relationship between meditation and patience?

If you sit to meditate to remove mental restlessness, you will keep looking back again and again: “Has it gone yet?” And the irony is that when you begin to meditate, restlessness will increase. Because what has been repressed will start surfacing; catharsis will begin. The rubbish you have kept hidden within and never allowed to express—meditation will break open those doors too. It will clean the house. Dust piled up for years, for births, will rise again; there will be gusts and storms. For a while even the little peace you had will be lost. Then you will panic: “I came for peace, and even what I had is gone.” Without patience, you could even become unhinged, because meditation brings such a great storm. The disease is not from a day or two; it’s from lifetimes. Meditation will break through all the layers to reach your innermost core. In…

Remain unattached and flowing. That is what I call being married to love; not being married to somebody but to the experience of love itself. You can call it being married to God -- it is the same. Sannyas is a love affair, a love affair with love itself. The greatest thing in life and the highest too is love. If one becomes love one becomes God. The condition to become love is only one, and that is to drop the ego. Ego is a false entity. It does not exist. It exists only because we believe in it. If we withdraw our belief it evaporates, it disappears. So withdraw your belief in the ego, in the separate existence of yourself. We are not separate, we are all one. Man is not an island, nobody is. we are all part of a vast, infinite continent.

Osho, most of the world’s religious leaders gave their male and female renunciates rules to keep as much distance as possible; yet you always emphasize love between the two. Do you wish to make some constructive use of love? Or do you want us to experience its futility?

Therefore I say: love is the first introduction to God. Whomever you fall in love with, you will begin to glimpse God in them. Where love happens, you will see transformation. The person you love is no longer ordinary; he becomes extraordinary. Your love begins to seek God within him. Love finds God—because without God, love cannot be. The faults of the one you love stop appearing; and the one you hate, you see only faults. In the one you hate you begin to see the devil; in the one you love you begin to see God. You see goodness upon goodness. Even if he does wrong, it seems right. Only fragrance seems to emanate. A temple begins to arise. This is the recognition, the acquaintance. If this acquaintance is with you, then some day, standing before God, you will recognize him. Without this, as is the case with your…

We have lost track of our own source, we have forgotten the language to speak with the whole. But love helps you to relearn it, to remember it. [Lilian was given a fancy name -- Amrita Anurago. The first bit means eternal, and the second, love for god, Osho said.] And by "god" I don't mean a person, because to think of god as a person makes your love confined; not only confined, but in many ways difficult and almost impossible. It is like putting the whole sky into a small space. It is not possible. God has to be impersonal. God has to contain the whole. So the Christian god, the Jewish god, the Hindu god, won't do; they are too small. We need something vaster, more oceanic. All the religions have created a false idea of god in people -- a very small god.