There are three levels that human energy can rise to: the first is sex, the second is love, the third is prayer. It is the same energy moving higher, becoming less and less gross, becoming more and more subtle.
Sex is energy moving downward; it functions under the law of gravitation. The earth pulls it down. It is earthy, it is physiological, biological, chemical. Science can study it; it is available to scientific methodology. It is material.
Love is higher. It is exactly between sex and prayer. A part of love is available to us, just a little bit penetrates at times. A part of it is available to all human beings, but the other part penetrates time and is available only to those who start moving into the inner search, only to the religious people.
The first part, that is available to ordinary human beings, is unconscious. The second part is conscious. When love becomes conscious, for the first time you experience something that is beyond gravitation, that does not go downward but moves upward.
And the third is prayer. Sex goes downward, love goes upward, prayer goes nowhere. It is a state of being. Sex is movement, so is love; they move in polar opposite directions. But prayer is a still point; there is no movement, no journey, no pilgrimage. You simply are.
In that profound silence and stillness, when you simply are, you become aware of godliness. The whole existence becomes full of godliness. And it is not only that you experience godliness. People who come close to you, people who are open to you, will also feel something strange, mysterious, miraculous. They will have a whiff of the unknown. In some moments they may become aware of a certain aura around you. That is the fragrance of prayer.
