Lovers are mirrors to each other. Love makes you aware of your original face.

Love and ego cannot go together. Knowledge and ego go together perfectly well, but love and ego cannot go together, not at all. They cannot keep company. They are like darkness and light: if light is there darkness cannot be. Darkness can only be if light is not there. If love is not there the ego can be; if love is there the ego cannot be. And vice versa, if ego is dropped, love arrives from all the directions. It simply starts pouring in you from everywhere.

The ego is a subtle wall around you. It does not allow anybody to enter into you. You feel protected, secure, but this security is deathlike. It is the security of the plant inside the seed. The plant is afraid to sprout because - who knows? The world is so hazardous and the plant will be so soft, so fragile. Behind the wall of the seed, hiding inside the cell, everything is protected.

To be motherly is a totally different phenomenon. It is something absolutely human; it transcends animality. It has nothing to do with biology. It is love, pure love, unconditional love. When a mother loves unconditionally - and only a mother can love unconditionally - the child learns the joy of unconditional love. The child becomes capable of loving unconditionally. And to be able to love unconditionally is to be religious. And it is the easiest thing for a woman to do. It is easy for her because naturally she is ready for it.

So let it be a criterion if you follow the path of awareness, let love be the criterion. When your awareness suddenly blooms into love, know perfectly well that awareness has happened, SAMADHI has been achieved. If you follow the path of love, then let awareness function as a criterion, as a touchstone. When suddenly, from nowhere, at the very center of your love. a flame of awareness starts arising, know perfectly well... rejoice! You have come home.

When this awareness grows, dreaming stops, by and by. When this awareness grows, the wheel moves slower and slower, because there is no point. You never move, so what is the point of travelling the whole earth? You remain the same; then desires slow down. One day it happens: the wheel is as silent, as unmoving as the hub. That is the point when enlightenment happens.

Experiment with this a little. During these days that you are here with me, don't nourish any desire for happiness, and then see how your heart becomes filled with happiness. Don't have any desire for peace, and see how the turmoil within you vanishes. Don't beg for contentment and see how contentment showers down on you. Please try this - only then will you understand.