Osho – Love is the ultimate godly experience. Love proves that existence is not without meaning, that life has significance. Except for love there is no proof for life’s significance. If one has not experienced love one will feel meaningless, accidental, just driftwood, at the mercy of unknown, unconscious, natural forces.
That’s how materialists look at life: just a combination of matter, just a by-product of matter, an epi phenomenon. But then there is no significance, and without significance one can only drag, one cannot dance. Without significance only cowards can live. The courageous one will commit suicide, they will commit hara-kiri.
The existentialistic philosophers must be cowards because they go on saying that life is meaningless, still they go on clinging to life. If life is meaningless then why should one live? For what? If it is all going to end in nothingness, if matter is going to disappear into matter and there is going to be no outcome of it, then why all this anguish, anxiety, despair, struggle? And these are all the themes of existentialists: anguish, anxiety, despair, fear, death. If life is meaningless then why should one be worried about death? One should rejoice! Then to commit suicide should be the only worthwhile act, the first and the last. But they don’t commit suicide; they go on talking about the meaninglessness of life. In fact this very talk becomes their purpose.
One great philosopher, Zeno, lived a very long life — more than ninety years — and for his whole life he was teaching that life is meaningless. In fact it is said that a few fools committed suicide in following his ideas; he was a very convincing man. When he was on his deathbed somebody said, “This is very strange, that you lived ninety years and many of your followers have committed suicide following your ideas. Why did you not commit suicide? He said, “I had to live so that I could teach my philosophy.” Now that was his only purpose: to teach philosophy, to teach this philosophy that life is meaningless. It was as if that became his meaning.
No, nobody really agrees — not even the existentialists who go on saying that life is meaningless really agree with their own philosophy. Deep down they are still doubting: there may be some meaning. Perhaps we have not discovered it yet. Who know? — maybe tomorrow we will stumble upon it. We may not have come across it up to now but it can happen tomorrow. So let us wait, live and go on searching.
Nobody really becomes convinced that life is meaningless because life is not meaningless; it has intrinsic value, but it has to be discovered. We are unconsciously, intuitively, instinctively aware of it. We have just a hunch that there is — there is bound to be some meaning — but we are not clear about it. It has not come to light; we don’t have any proofs for it. Love gives us proofs for it.
A lover has no doubts about life’s meaningfulness, its significance, its joy. It is only through love that people have slowly slowly discovered the ultimate meaning, god. It is only through love they have discovered the whole science of meditation because in loving moments, mind stops. When you are really in love, in those moments you don’t think. The past disappears, the future disappears, the present becomes all and all — and that’s what meditation is. Love gives you a glimpse of meditation, and through meditation a window opens into the existence of god; hence I call love the most godly phenomenon on earth.
My sannyasins have to be meditators and lovers and together, because both are supportive energies for each other. If you love, you will be able to meditate more deeply; if you meditate you will be able to love more totally, and so on, so forth. They go on helping each other; they are very supporting. Slowly slowly a pyramid is created in your consciousness. By the bricks of love and meditation one can reach the highest peak of existence.
The man who knows only meditation is missing something, and the man who knows only love is also missing something. The whole man knows both; he has both aspects of the coin in his hands. He has all that is valuable within him. His life becomes an exquisite phenomenon, a beautiful song, a graceful experience. He lives on the earth but he is part of the sky. He is a miracle, he is a paradox, but in his paradoxicalness he is whole — and to be whole is to be holy. That is my definition of a holy man.
Source – Osho Book “The Golden Wind”