Love makes you ready to take the final jump, the quantum leap.
That's what I call prayer, or you can call it meditation.
I AM CONFUSED. WHEN YOU TALKED ABOUT THE TWO-ARROWED LOVE I FELT PIERCED TO THE HEART AND A BEAUTIFUL PAIN AROSE IN ME. IS LOVE PAINFUL? WHERE AM I AND WHERE DO I GO FROM HERE?
LOVE IS PAINFUL, BUT THE PAIN IS CERTAINLY A BLESSING.
Sex is not painful. Sex is very convenient, comfortable. People use it almost as a sedative, a tranquillizer.
Love is painful — because love brings growth. Love is painful because love demands. Love is painful because love transforms. Love is painful because love gives you a new birth.
Sex does not touch you at all. It is mechanical. It is just physiological. Love brings your heart into relationship — and when the heart is in relationship there is always pain. But don't avoid the pain. If you avoid the pain, you will miss all pleasures of life.
In sex there may be relaxation. In sex there may be physiological health and hygiene. But there is no growth. You remain animal. With love you become human. With love you become upright. With love you stand erect on earth. With sex you are again animal, you are horizontal on the earth, just moving like other animals, crawling. With love you are erect, vertical.
With love are problems. With sex there is no problem at all. But with problems is growth! The greater the problem, the greater the opportunity.
So you ask me: "Is love painful?" Certainly love is painful, but that pain is a blessing. And you have felt it, the questioner has felt it. .
"I am confused. When you talked about the two-arrowed love I felt pierced to the heart and a beautiful pain arose in me."
She is aware that it was beautiful. Now don't recoil back from it. More and more blessings are waiting for you, but, of course, more and more pain too.
That's why many people never love — it is so painful. They choose not to love, but then they remain animalistic; they never become human, they never become vertical. They never take their life in their own hands. They are never of any worth — they are worthless. Love makes you precious.
And if you are in love, then you will see that there is a still deeper pain that is of prayer. It shatters you completely. Love never shatters you completely. It simply shatters you a little, a little bit. It shatters the crust of your ego, but the centre of the ego remains intact. Then there is a deeper pain, deeper than love, and that is of prayer — it shatters you utterly. It is a death. When you have learnt how to love, and you have learnt that the pain that love brings is a blessing in disguise, it is beautiful, it is tremendously beautiful, then you become able and you take another step — that step is prayer.
With a human lover you can exist, but with God as your love you cannot exist. That passion is so great, it simply burns you utterly. No residue is left. In love you are simply burnt, but you are there. Lovers remain, overlapping each other, burning each other a little in their fire, but not burnt completely. That is the beauty of love, and that is its misery too.
Unless you are completely shattered, no residue remains, the ego is gone, totally gone, there will remain a little misery.
All lovers feel a little miserable. They would like to disappear completely, but it is not possible in human relationship. Human relationship is limited. But one learns from it, that there is a possibility: if it can happen so much in a human relationship, how much more can happen in a relationship with the Divine?
Love makes you ready to take the final jump, the quantum leap. That's what I call prayer, or you can call it meditation. If you use Buddhist terminology, it is meditation; if you use Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian terminology, it is prayer. But the meaning is the same. You have to disappear for God to be. Love is a training ground, a school, to learn first lessons — of the beauty, of the blessing and benediction of disappearance; to learn that pain is blessed. And then a desire arises to feel the ultimate pain. The Hindu devotees have called it VIRAH — ultimate pain; the pain that will remain unless one is consumed by God, consumed in God.
So when you are in love, or when love arises, cooperate with it, don't try resisting. People come to a compromise. Lovers — I have watched thousands of lovers. Every day they come to me; they bring their problems. But the basic problem that I have been looking at is that lovers by and by come to a compromise. The compromise is: You don't hurt me, I will not hurt you. That's what marriage is. Then people become settled. They become so afraid of pain that they say, "Don't hurt me and I will not hurt you." But then when pain disappears, love also disappears. They exist together.
I have heard:
The male patient complained to the dentist that he was in terrible pain, but he insisted on saving the tooth. The dentist put on his white coat, adjusted the light on his forehead, started his drill, and said, "Okay, now open your mouth and we'll see what we can do."
Just then the patient grabbed him below the belt. "What the hell are you doing?" the dentist screamed.
"Now," the man said quietly, not letting go, "we're not going to hurt each other, are we?"
Now this is what happens. When you are in love, love hurts. It hurts terribly. Then you grab each other and you say, "What…! Make a compromise: let it no more be a love affair — let it be a marriage. Make it legal. And I will not hurt you if you don't hurt me." Then husbands and wives live together without being together. They live together alone. They tolerate at the most. They are patient with each other, but love has disappeared.
Love is painful. Never resist, never create any barrier for pain. Allow it. And by and by you will see that it was a wrong interpretation. It is not really pain. It is just that something is going so deep in you that you interpret it like a pain. You don't know anything else. You are only aware of pain in your past life, in your past experience. Whenever something penetrates deep, you interpret it as pain.
Don't use the word 'pain'. When love and love's arrow goes deep into your heart, close your eyes and don't use words — just see what it is, and you will never see it is pain. You will see it is a benediction. You will be tremendously moved by it. You will feel joyous.
Don't use words. When something new happens to you, always allow a deep look into it without any language.
OSHO