~~ LOVE IS GOD.~~

Prem means love and pramod means joy; joy that comes out of love. That’s the only joy there is. Whenever you love, you are joyful. Whenever you cannot love, you cannot be joyful. Joy is a function of love, a shadow of love… it follows love.

So become more and more loving, and you will become more and more joyful. And don’t be bothered about whether your love is returned or not; that is not the point at all. Joy follows love automatically, whether it is returned or not, whether the other is responsive or not. If you are loving, you are joyful, and that is more than enough, more than one can expect. That is the beauty of love – that its result is intrinsic, its value is intrinsic. It does not depend on the response of the other. It is totally yours.

But people are in very much confusion. They think you become joyful only when love is returned. That’s where they miss. Their whole analysis is based on wrong presumptions and their whole life becomes a misery. Joy follows love. It has nothing to do with whether it is returned by somebody or not.

That’s why, even if there is no god, a man who prays deeply becomes joyful. There may not be any god, but that is not a necessity. The devotee loves – god is just an excuse. It triggers, that’s all. It will be difficult to love without somebody there, so you simply imagine that somebody is there in the heavens, and you become loving towards that reality that you have imagined. Joy follows; it is just a by-product of your love. It has nothing to do with the object of love. The object of love may not exist at all, still one can be joyful. The object of love may exist and you may be joyless if you are not loving.

People are continuously asking for something in return. Their love is conditional. They say, ’Make me happy, make me joyful, then I will love you.’ Their love has a condition to it, a bargain. They are completely blind. They don’t know that by loving, joy automatically arises. It is a spontaneous by-product. So just be loving.

And it makes no difference to whom you are loving – to a dog, to a cat, to a tree, to a rock. Just sit by the side of the rock and be loving. Have a little chit-chat. Kiss the rock… Lie down on the rock. Feel one with the rock, and suddenly you will see a shudder of energy, an upsurge of energy – and you are tremendously joyful. The rock may not have returned anything, or may have – but that is not the point. You became joyful because you loved. One who loves is joyful.

And once you know this key, you can be joyful for twenty-four hours – if you are loving for twenty-four hours, and you are no more dependent on objects of love. You become more and more independent, because you know more and more that you can love – even if there is nobody. You can love the very emptiness surrounding you. Sitting in your room alone, you fill the whole room with your love. You may be in a prison; you can transform it into a temple within a second. The moment you fill it with love, it is no more a prison. And a temple becomes a prison if there is no love. So love is freedom, love is joy, and in the ultimate analysis, love is god. Jesus says, ’God is love.’ I say, ’Love is god.’