Swami Chaitanya Keerti
The other day a young girl got initiated into sannyas. It is surprising that so many young people are interested in spirituality these days. But what was really unique about this girl is that she decided to choose her new name herself: Prem Sakshi. It was her conscious decision to follow this path of love and meditation. Prem means love and Sakshi means the witnessing consciousness.
The spiritual journey is an inner pilgrimage of the expansion of love and consciousness. It is not one of renunciation and escape from the world. Ordinary love remains limited in scope and expanse, as it doesn’t go beyond one’s family and close relationships.
When it evolves somewhat it is still limited to one’s particular religion or nation. But the fully evolved love knows no boundaries. It originates in consciousness that is universal and is not limited by any barriers. That’s the meaning of true sannyas. We can define it as the renunciation of boundaries and rejoicing in freedom of the universal oneness of humanity.
This is not merely a theory. This is a realisation that comes through meditation.
Love and meditation are the two balancing wings of the bird of sannyas. And they are inter-independent. Meditation without love is meaningless and love without meditation becomes narrow to the point of blindness.
Meditation gives eyes to love and love gives bliss to meditation and this pilgrimage of life becomes joyous and juicy. In his discourse on Unio Mystica, Osho gives the example of two distinct and separate paths of love and meditation that lead to realisation of God in oneself.
He says: Buddhism is the path of meditation, Zen is meditation. Sufism is the path of love, Sufism is love. And there are only two ways to reach him: either through meditation or through love. And they both become one at the peak.
If you attain one, the other is attained just as part of it; it is only a question of emphasis. If you become meditative you will be surprised: after meditation, love comes of its own accord.
If you love, you will be surprised again: meditation comes just as a shadow behind it. Love is the heart of meditation; meditation is the heart of love. They are together, two names for the same phenomenon. A few people will find it easy to follow the path of meditation – in fact 50 per cent of people in the world will find it easy to follow the path of meditation: Zen is their way. And 50 per cent will find love closer to their being: Sufism is their way.
