The first, and the most important, is prayer. Love is prayer. There is no other prayer, all other prayers are just pseudo, substitutes for’ love. The other prayers are invented by people who cannot love, who are incapable of love, who are afraid of love; who have been so badly damaged by the society that they have lost their intrinsic quality of love.
Everything starts with love, remember; love is the ultimate law. Then prayer, mercy, grace, follow of their own accord.
Forget everything else: remember only love. Love each and every being. Don’t bring in your likes and dislikes. Don’t make love synonymous with your liking. People almost always do that: they call their liking their love. Then it becomes difficult to love that which you don’t like. But love has nothing to do with liking or disliking, it is a totally different phenomenon.
Love is the rock, the only rock on which we can build the temple of life, the temple of God. Everything else is just sand; except love nothing can become the foundation of life. And to make a house on anything else is to waste your time, energy; ultimately you will have only frustration in your hands and nothing else.
The world is only a school to learn the art of love. When you have learned the art of love, you have to direct your love energy towards the divine. You have to become loyal to God, you have to become surrendered to God.
Love has to be just your flavor, your aroma, your fragrance. When you pass by the side of a rosebush, the rosebush does not bother whether it likes you or not. Its fragrance is available to you as much as to anybody else. Its fragrance is available to the birds, to the animals, to the trees – and unconditionally, without any expectation in return. Its fragrance is available even when there is nobody present to enjoy it, appreciate it. It simply goes on releasing its fragrance; it is its nature.
Man cannot be fulfilled without love without meditation, without God. Love is the beginning of the journey.
Love and hate are not real opposites, but love and fear are real opposites. Hate can become love very easily: it is really love standing upside-down. It is not very far from love, it is love energy in a disturbed state. The energy can be calmed, stilled. It is only a question of rearranging the energy, and hate can become love. And we know – it happens every day in life – love can become hate, hate can become love. You hate the same person and you love the same person. One moment you hate, another moment you love. So love and hate are two sides of the same coin, they are not real opposites.
The moment love arises in the heart, all fear disappears, light has come in and no darkness is found.
Love is loyal, faithful. Love can be trusted, love can be relied upon. Love never betrays. If it betrays, it was not love in the first place, it was something else. If it is disloyal, then it is only pseudo. If it cannot be relied upon, it is not worth anything. It may be lust, but it is not love.
Love respects, raises the other to their ultimate glory, makes the other divine, makes the other feel worthy, loved, respected – not used as a means, but worshipped as an end unto himself. Love is ready to sacrifice, but love never sacrifices the other. And love is the way to God.
Love is the only contentment in life; everything else deceives. Everything else is a mirage; it allures you but it never satisfies you. On the contrary it leaves a feeling of great frustration – money, power, prestige, everything except love. Love gives you the first taste of contentment. One feels perfectly satisfied as one is, and in that state of contentment God comes in.
