What is the significance of love in meditation?

Beloved Osho, the mind is the sickness, the heart is a cure. Beyond that, your presence indicates silence, where words are no longer useful. I feel healthy with love, remembering you and meditation. Osho, could you say something about love, remembering you, and meditation in our daily lives?

They are not different. Just concentrate your whole energy on meditation. Become silent, watch your thoughts moving on the screen of the mind. Just by watching, they will disappear one day. Don't be in a hurry. You cannot do anything except watch and wait. Remember these two key words : watch and wait. Whenever the time is ripe, your watchfulness is perfect, thoughts will disappear -- and their disappearance means the opening of the whole existence. This is what I call meditation. In this moment there will be a very subtle remembrance of me, but don't emphasize it. Let it come as a breeze and let it go. It should not be a hindrance, it should be only a simple gratefulness -- just a whiff of fragrance for a moment, surrounding you and then disappearing into the cosmos. And as you become open to existence, you will find for the…

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…

That's what sannyas is: creating a right space, the right soil for love to grow, for love to expand. As your love becomes bigger, you become bigger. When your love is perfect you are perfect. There is no other way to be perfect. Only the perfection of love can bring perfection to your being. There are two ways to reach God: one is meditation, the other is love. A few people reach through meditation, a few people reach through love. Both are valid ways and both reach the same experience. When the meditator reaches the ultimate peak he suddenly finds love arising in his being, and when the lover reaches the ultimate peak he finds meditation happening of its own accord. On the way they are different, at the peak they become one. The path of meditation is arduous, it demands a little superhuman effort.

Beloved Osho, it has been my understanding that the meditator and the lover have different paths. The other day we heard your beautiful explanation of the path of meditation. Is this path different from that of the lover? If so, how to tell which path to choose?

Somebody attracts you; there can be any reason for that attraction. Mostly -- perhaps one hundred percent, not mostly -- the woman you are attracted to has something in her eyes, in the color of her hair, in her way of talking, in her voice, in her gestures, the way she walks... something in her resembles your mother. You are always in love with your mother, and your whole life you are seeking another mother. Of course, you are going to be frustrated. All lovers are frustrated, except those who never manage to get married. For example, Laila and Majnu -- the society did not allow them. Shiri and Fariad -- their families came in. They were never frustrated, they remained lovers their whole life. They lived loving the other person, they died loving the other person. But if you come together.... They were prevented from coming together. If you…

Ordinarily psychologists don't think that meditation can do anything because they are not aware of the roots -- and meditation's whole function is to cut the roots. Once the roots are cut the tree withers away by itself. Love makes man an ocean, an infinity. It gives a kind of unboundedness. It helps you to know that you are not defined by any limits, that you are not confined by the body or the mind, that you are not confined at all, that you are as vast as the sky; in fact, even the sky is not the limit. There is no limit to you. This is the beauty of love, it makes you aware of vastness. That is the first experience of godliness. And if the first experience happens, then other things follow in their own time. The first experience triggers a process.