Love

Love is not a mental or physical need. Love is not for the faint-hearted. Love is not for those who fear the loss of relationships, reputation, possessions or life. Love is not for those who are afraid of family, society, or uncertainty. Love is not for those who seek sanction from tradition or culture.

Love would have helped you fly. And now you have captivated love within four walls. As wise men and women, if you are married, wonderful. As wise men and women, if you are not married, wonderful. The point is not really marriage. The point is wisdom. https://dev-main8.vedant.life/en/articles/marriage-and-love-1_0ff5cad

Questioner: A lot of students that I talk to — it’s the fear of the society, it’s the fear of the unknown, it’s fear of the expectations that they are carrying, that pushes them to become an engineer and then they figure out that probably this is not something that they wanted to be. And that is the reality of a lot of individuals and not just engineers. Probably, here is something that is stopping me from taking a plunge of starting something of myself, right? Fear is something that is stopping somebody who is in a relationship for ten years to take that step to get married. Where does this fear come from? Acharya Prashant: Lack of love, which comes from lack of self-knowledge. You see, when I tie my sense of existence, my very identity, to something that is unreliable, I will have to be afraid. It’s like putting my heart on this table. Now, how can I live in security? The heart is out there on the table, anybody can take it away, anything can happen to it. Or the heart might grow legs and walk away on its own. My very existence has been subjected to something that is not in my control. Something that is definitely going to deceive me at some point, that is fear. My sense of self-worth comes from my monies, my bank account, I will be afraid. That bank account can be closed anytime, anything can happen. My sense of self-worth comes from my physical appearance. I very well know, time will take it away, I will be afraid. Right? Who am I? I am the one who is praised or worshipped by the society. Oh! I will be so afraid, so afraid! You talked of people working for their images, they would be living a cursed life. Because, their heart is out there in the hands of strangers. Their entire identity is tied to their image and the image is in the eyes of other people. So, the image can be distorted or can disappear any moment. Just imagine, how afraid they would be all the time. That’s with the ego. Because, the ego, as I said, is a fundamental sense of incompleteness. Therefore, to complete itself, it just associates itself to anything possible. And the things that you are associating yourself with, they are not reliable. They belong to the world and the world can take them away. They belong to time. They came with time and with time all those things will disappear. And you have tied your identity to those things. Now how can you rest in peace? That’s fear. If you do not have self-knowledge, you will always be afraid. My identity is linked to my husband’s identity. Now the husband has two legs. And the husband has a brain, a mind of his own. If your identity comes from your husband’s name, as happens in India at least, you would always be afraid as a wife. The husband can change his mind any day. You would always be, you know, having one eye on his secretary, and the other eye in his email and mobile phone. What’s he getting into? Who’s texting him? Why is he on the phone so late in the night? Because you are afraid if husband goes away, what happens to you? Your very existence depends on the husband. That’s fear. When you operate from the ego centre and make something very, very important for yourself and that something belongs to the world, it can go away anytime, and you are afraid. And in that fear, there can never be love, never be love. If you are afraid of losing something, you will be very violent towards it. Nobody lets his money go and have a walk down the road. What do you do? You lock up your money. That’s violence. When something starts becoming very meaningful to you, you lock it up. You don’t want it to have freedom. And that’s violence. So, love and fear just cannot go together. If you are dependent on something or somebody, you will be afraid. And that dependence cannot be called love. And that is a confusion, we often get into it. Just because you depend on somebody and somebody depends on you, you start feeling as if it is love, it is not. Questioner: Just like the way political parties think that people love them but it actually is fear. Acharya Prashant: Exactly! Love is a rare quality and rarer in politics. Questioner: So, if I am interested in a particular profession, do I not pursue it wholeheartedly? Do I pursue it wholeheartedly knowing very well that the results can either be zero or one? Acharya Prashant: One has to go into the very nature of interest. Aren’t we interested in cricket? Aren’t we interested in seeing songs in movies? Practically, everybody in India is interested in cricket, nobody in Brazil is. And nobody in India is interested in ice hockey. So, that’s how flimsy the whole thing about interest is. In India, if you don’t get a movie with songs, you say, “I am disinterested.” The movie would bomb. In Hollywood, if you have a movie with songs, that would raise eyebrows, what’s going on? Occasionally, you have an OD song but typically there is no song. So, that is the nature of interest. It is never something of the heart. Love and interest are not the same thing. Interest is something that is given to you by your body, by your environment, by random chance, your circumstances and all these. So that’s how your interests come to you. So, if you are interested in a vocation, first of all, you have to ask yourself, “Just two years back, I was interested in something else and two years before I was interested in that and when I was four years old, I was interested in becoming a fighter pilot. What happened to all those interests?” Today, I smile at those things and just shrug them off, “I don’t want to be a fighter pilot.” What you want to be today? Oh! I want to be an investment banker. What happened to the fighter pilot? You were so interested in that. And how do you know, tomorrow you will not be looking at this I-banker, just the way today you are looking at the fighter pilot. The self of a five-year old appears so naïve and immature when you are twenty-five. How do you know that at thirty-five, you will not look back at this twenty-five year old self and say, “What the hell! How was I taking this fellow so seriously?” So, interest is something that you must look at with healthy contempt. Interest, mind you, can even be induced in you. Interest can be aroused in you. That’s what the entire advertising industry is about. They can make you feel Interested in things that is intrinsically worthless to you. So, of what value is this thing called interest? But, then in today’s world, we place so much premium on this word 'interest.' Do what interests you, this, that. Whereas, it is wisdom to realize that interest is the last thing that you should ever go after. Then people come up and say, “No, should we do things that we are not interested in? No.

Most people never evolve beyond their psychological age of three, four, ten, or twelve years. So they have to be consoled like kids.

She won’t directly say, “Get me a sari.” Often when they need a sari, they do not say they need a sari; they say, “Janu (beloved), you do not love me!” And janu understands: she needs a sari.

Similarly, janu does not need to say…

When you meet a person, meet in friendliness, meet in love, meet to share, meet to play, meet to rejoice. That’s right relationship. Don’t meet to sit at that person’s feet. That’s vulgar. You don’t need to sit at anybody’s feet. This head can bow down only in front of…

You are what you want. If you want to change who you are, then you will have to want something radically different. Your destination, your desire decides your constitution. You become what you intend to achieve and be.

If you love the mud, you will become an earthworm. If you…

A fellow who irritates you and keeps your mind agitated, why is he present in your life as a friend? How exactly is he taking care of you if his presence leads to an unsettled mind? What are these tags?

The only definition of a friend is someone who brings…

Love is when you start seeing the deep desire beneath all your superficial desires. Love is when you start seeing what you are really really thirsty for. Superficially, the desires of different people are different. Deeply, we all share one desire.

So, what is it that happens in love? In…

To love is to see that the other is in trouble. To love is to extend a helping hand. Love is not about admiring somebody’s physicality or using someone for some means. Love has to be an exercise in compassion.

Only two kinds of associations are right in this world.…

We need to see a lot of young people traveling on their own. We need to see a lot of young people living all by themselves for very long years, many, many long years. We need to see these things.

And we need to see young people who are much…

I cannot tell you what Bharat is by referring to the etymology of the word. If you ask me what is love, it would be foolish of me to say, “L-O means this, V means this, E means this.” If you ask me what is love, I will wait for…

Women like burly guys—and why do they like burly, big, and muscular guys? Because they are likely to have higher levels of testosterone. Unless you have testosterone, you cannot build muscles; you know that, right? And that is why you cannot build muscles, let’s say, after fifty or sixty. It’s…

To love is to see that the other is in trouble. To love is to extend a helping hand. Love is not about admiring somebody’s physicality, or using someone for some means. Love has to be an exercise in compassion.

So, I often say, when you relate to the other,…

Teach the girls that their body is not an instrument to bear kids. Teach them that their self-worth is not at all linked to their motherhood. Teach them where the real fulfilment of life lies, and teach them that it is not in birthing or breastfeeding.

Teach them creativity. Teach…

We are not talking of the perfect one; we are talking of the higher one, relatively higher. The higher person does exist. First of all, you must become that higher person, and then it is a case of holding hands to rise together, because that’s the shared love. What’s the…

You never want the other person; you want returns from the other person.

When those returns are not forthcoming, have you seen how you shout, how you go breathless, how you panic, how you stamp your feet, how you pull the other’s hair, how you pull out your own hair?…

Love knows on its own. Love needs no instructions. Hence, we are so afraid of it. We cannot control it. We do not know where it would go and what trouble it might lead us into. So, we say, keep your hands off this dangerous thing! Better be in formal…

Whenever you get cheated in love, don’t blame anybody else. Ask yourself, did you not have anything better to do with your life that you went and clinged to a person? I ask you, is he worth being devoted to? Then why do you pick some man, some woman, and…

Love is about giving yourself the highest. When you love somebody, do you want to stop short of giving them the highest possible? Similarly, when you love yourself, would you stop short of giving yourself the highest possible?

The highest possible is not contained in pleasure nor in happiness. Both…

If the two of you could together shout and scratch and bite and tear and break—if all those things could be done together, why not meditate and be loving and compassionate together? Or is companionship only for biting into each other?

So, having been companions, now it is your responsibility…

There is a kind of entrepreneurship that says, start the company, see which sectors are hot and booming, and when you reach a certain stage after n rounds of funding, sell it off and add a few more zeroes to your personal bank balance. That’s one kind of entrepreneurship. It…

When I say that your love has to include even animals and plants and ecologies, do I mean that your love would exclude women, or that a woman’s love will exclude men? Obviously not. But then, this is pathological—sticking to a woman or sticking to a man, inwardly aiming for…

If you start thinking that a man or a woman will bring contentment to you, will bring godliness to your home, then you are going to be severely disappointed.

And that’s why you see disappointed couples. The man was living a forlorn life. The woman was living a spineless life,…

What is it that is keeping beef affordable? It is milk consumption, because it is in circulation.

You see, you have an asset; if the only thing that you can have from it is its flesh, then you will be required to firstly raise it to its maximum weight, and…

Real carnal love, real worldly love, is not about trying to gain something from the other, or trying to bring happiness to the other, trying to exchange pleasures with the other. It is about seeing that the other is so much like you. It is a bit intricate, please understand.…

Love is not about admiring somebody’s physicality, or using someone for some means. Love has to be an exercise in compassion. So, I often say, when you relate to the other, relate either to uplift or to be uplifted.

Only two kinds of associations are right in this world. If…

As long as the relationship is of need, the relationship will remain one of violence. You can never be more violent upon anybody than upon someone you love—so-called love. Because the greater is your love for someone, the greater is your investment in that person. And you invest in someone…

Why did the breakup happen? And if you are you and he is what he is, then won’t the breakup happen again?

Do you know who you are? You are the one who will accept this guy back if he comes to your life.

Do you know who you are?…

What is self-love? Self-love is really possible only when the self is worthy of being loved. For self-love to happen, the petty and divided and confused self has to be elevated to the point where it is clean and shining and expansive and fearless. That is real self-love.

Now you…

False love is very lucrative, very charming. Oh, there is such a romance around it! But then, that romance is hardly love.

Real love tests. Real love stretches, breaks. Real love is like a sculptor carving a beautiful one out of an unseemly rock. The rock must go through and…

What do you call as beautiful in a woman? Her curvature, her hips, her breasts—all of that just makes her conducive for bearing a child. Exactly that which qualifies her to bear a child is taken as beautiful by you.

So, all that you are looking for is someone who…

One can relate to the other without being psychologically dependent. And that relationship, then, is not of exploitation but of compassion. Now you can really say that you love the other.

If the other exists in your life to serve your needs, then there can be no love. There would…

The quality of your love depends on the quality of your life. Your love affair cannot be a sublime thing if your life is mired in littleness.

We all want our love affairs to be fairytales, and we don’t look at our lives. We are little people—afraid, desirous, ambitious, suspicious.…

Love firstly means total dedication towards the Beloved, and secondly, total identification with the world. First of all, you need total disidentification with the world, because unless you are totally disidentified with the world, how will you identify with Him? And that is why saints have so much compassion for…

If a drunkard were to use the law of attraction, what would he deem suitable to attract to himself? A huge truckload of beer. He would keep fantasizing of beer companies and such things, and maybe that materializes also. And if that materializes, it is even worse for the drunkard,…

Your mind keeps racing—you find that a problem? Next time your mind runs away from the office, you too run away. Don’t say, “Oh, this fickle mind, it can’t rest; it is not spiritual enough!” Great that it is not spiritual enough; great that it is not tolerating rubbish.

Why…

You cannot keep measuring human wellness by human consumption anymore, not possible. You have to train yourself to think in different terms. Your internal model of human wellness has to be very different now; it has to be an internal model.

“Does the fellow have food to eat? Does the…

Do attractive girls actually get more love? I know they get more of attention—sexual attention. Surely a lot of attractive girls try to keep themselves attractive, and even more attractive, in the hope of getting more love. That’s tragic!

Somebody needs to shout it out very loudly, and in the…

Man is not really starving in the stomach. Man is starving in the mind. In fact, man is the only species that is overweight and obese and still thinking about food.

You need money for mental aggrandizement. You need money to feel secure internally. You don’t need money merely to…

A fellow might be doing the worst possible thing to you in the name of love or concern or friendship, and he will keep saying, “But you know, this is my care towards you.” This is not care. You must apply intelligence. Is this love? Is this care? When you…

If you move towards greatness or aspire for it and that hurts the people around you, that only means that the people around you are insistent on remaining small. Further, it also means that the people around you do not love you at all. Not only do they not love…

Man has such great systems of morality, and yet man is a mass murderer. Man has caused thousands of species to get extinct, and they will never come back. Man is causing this very planet to be destroyed in a couple of decades. And man rapes, man kills, man hoards,…

If the two of you could together shout and scratch and bite and tear and break and… If all those things could be done together, why not meditate and be loving and compassionate together? Or is companionship only for biting into each other?

So, having been companions, now it is…

The sexual activity is just like any other activity of man: he is searching for God. He searches for God in ambition. He looks for God in money. He looks for God in fame. He also looks for God in a woman’s body.

But because he is not in touch…

One may say, “I keep feeling lonely, let me get married”; or one may say, “Let me change cities and move to another place where my community or my friends live”; or one may just say, “Let me switch on the television or visit the shopping mall.” One behaves as…

Please concentrate on the aspect of one’s relationship with oneself. Nobody can help you in the entire world if first of all you don’t like or respect or love yourself. What is the point in admiring a great personality if first of all you can not admire yourself? And most…