How does love feel? What is true love?

You are just here for a few years to be. Enjoy, delight, be happy, dance, and love; and out of your love and dancing, out of your deep selfishness will start an overflowing of energy. You will be able to share with others. Love, I say, is one of the most selfish things.

Love has to be of the quality that gives freedom, not new chains for you; a love that gives you wings and supports you to fly as high as possible.

Real love is always in the present. Egoistic love is always either in the past or in the future.

The higher love needs you to be vulnerable. You have to drop your armor; that is painful. You have not to be constantly on guard. You have to drop the calculating mind. You have to risk. You have to live dangerously. The other can hurt you; that is the fear in being vulnerable. The other can reject you; that is the fear in being in love.

There is no need to ask for it to be real. Play the game, that’s its reality. And if you are too much a seeker for reality, then love is not for you. It is a dream, it is a fantasy, it is a fiction—it is romance, it is poetry. If you are too much a seeker after reality, obsessed with reality, then love is not for you. Then meditate.

This continuous anxiety about whether the other’s love is real or not simply shows one thing: that your love is not real. Otherwise, who bothers? Why be worried about it? Enjoy it while it lasts, be together while you can be together! It is a fiction, but you need fiction.

All that is needed on your part is not to learn the ways of love, but to unlearn the ways of unlove. The hindrances have to be removed, the obstacles have to be destroyed—then love is your natural, spontaneous being. Once the obstacles are removed, the rocks thrown away, the flow starts. It is already there—hidden behind many rocks, but the spring is already there. It is your very being.

And these are the obstacles: jealousies, possessiveness, attachment, expectations, desires . . . And your fear is right: “If all these disappear, will anything be left of my love?” Nothing will be left of your love. Love will be left . . . but love has nothing to do with “I” or “you.” In fact, when all possessiveness, all jealousies, all expectations disappear, love does not disappear—you disappear, the ego disappears. These are the shadows of the ego. It

But this is how it goes: “You don’t know me, I don’t know you.” It is just accidental. Needs are there; people feel lonely; they need somebody to fill their loneliness. They call it love. They show love because that is the only way to hook the other. The other also calls it love because that is the only way to hook you. But who knows whether there is love or not? In fact, love is just a game. Yes, there is a possibility of a real love, but that happens only when you don’t need anybody—that’s the difficulty.

(…)

The woman flatters the man, the man flatters the woman—it is a mutual flattery. The woman says, “There is nobody as beautiful as you are. You are a miracle! You are the greatest that God has ever made. Even Alexander the Great was nothing compared to you.” And you are puffed up, and your chest becomes doubled, and your head starts swelling—there is nothing but straw, but it starts swelling. And you say to the woman, “You are the greatest creation of God. Even Cleopatra was nothing compared to you. I can’t believe that God will ever be able to improve upon you. There will never again be another woman so beautiful.” This is what you call love! This is narcissism—the man becomes the pool of water and reflects the woman, and the woman becomes the pool of water and reflects the man. In fact, the pool not only reflects the truth but decorates it, in a thousand and one ways makes it look more and more beautiful. This is what people call love. This is not love; this is mutual ego-satisfaction. The real love knows nothing of the ego. The real love starts first as self-love.

Naturally, you have this body, this being, you are rooted in it—enjoy it, cherish it, celebrate it! And there is no question of pride or ego because you are not comparing yourself with anybody. Ego comes only with comparison. Self-love knows no comparison—you are you, that’s all. You are not saying that somebody else is inferior to you; you are not comparing at all. Whenever comparison comes, know well it is not love; it is a trick somewhere, a subtle strategy of the ego.

(…)

In real love, there is no relationship. Let me repeat it: In real love there is no relationship, because there are not two persons to be related to. In real love there is only love, a flowering, a fragrance, a melting, a merging. Only in egoistic love are there two persons, the lover and the loved. And whenever there is the lover and the loved, love disappears.

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Photo by Manuel Meurisse on Unsplash