If you come to realize this, you will not need to create a private illusion that someone loves you. Then there is meaning, and if no one loves you, no meaning is lost. Then you are not afraid at all because even death will not annihilate you. It may annihilate the form, it may annihilate the body, but it cannot annihilate you because you are the existence.

This is what happens in meditation. This is for what meditation is meant. In it you become a part, an opening. You come to feel, “Existence and I are one.” Then you are welcomed, and there is no fear and there is no death. Then love flows from you. Then love is not an effort – you cannot do anything except love. Then it is like breathing. Deep inside you breathe love; in and out you breathe love.

This love grows into devotion. Then ultimately you will even forget, it just as you forget your breathing. When do you remember your breathing? Have you observed? You remember only when something is wrong. When you feel any difficulty, then you know that you have been breathing; otherwise there is no need even to be aware of it. And if you are aware of your breathing, that shows that something is wrong with your breathing process. There is no need of being aware of the breathing process. Silently it goes on.

So when you are aware of your love, the love that is a state of mind, it means that something is still wrong. By and by even that awareness is lost. You simply breathe love in and out. You have forgotten everything, even that you love. Then it has become devotion. That is the ultimate peak, the ultimate possibility – you may call it anything.

Love can become devotion only when this awareness is lost, forgotten. It doesn’t mean that you have become unconscious, it only means that the process has become so silent that there is no noise around it. You are not unconscious of it, but you are not conscious of it either. It has become so natural. It is there, but it does not create any disturbance inside; it has become so harmonious.

So remember, when I am talking about love, I am not talking about your love. But if you try to understand your love, it will become a step toward growing into a different kind of love. So I am not against your love. I am simply stating the fact that if your love is fear-based, it is just ordinary, animal love. And no derogation, no condemnation is implied; it is simply a fact.

Man is afraid. He needs someone who gives him the feeling that he is welcomed, he need not be afraid. At least with one person you need not be filled with fear. This is good as far as it goes, but this is not what Buddha or Jesus called love. They called love a state of mind, not a relationship. So go beyond relationship, and by and by just be loving. First you will not be capable of it unless you move into meditation. Unless you come to know the deathless within, unless you come to know a deep unity between the inner and the outer, unless you feel that you are existence, it will be difficult.

So these techniques of meditation are just to help you grow from relationship into a state of mind. And do not think of time at all, time is irrelevant for love.