Does love really happen only once?

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Questioner (Q): From the very first plan, you said that love happens only once; and the rest is just life. But sir, in this modern era, whenever I watch all over my surroundings, I get so much confused that I thought to ask this question to you. Does love really happen only once?

Acharya Prashant (AP): What’s your name?

Q: Prashant.

AP: Prashant, it is not a question of whether it happens once or twice or maybe seven or eight times. He is asking about love. The question is whether we understand what these two words are. Whether we understand, what do we mean when we are using this word ‘love’. Whether we understand what we mean when we are using the word ‘life’.

How many of you have seen kids of age eight fall in love with girls who are aged six?

(Audience laughs)

How many of you have seen love stories begin at that time? They do not.

(Murmurs in the audience)

Right. Right. Hold your horses. Silence.

Now try understanding this. What you call as love, why must it initiate only after a certain age? It initiates only after a certain age because it is a biological thing. It is your hormones that are at work. And if you are given a few shots of hormones, right now, all of you will start feeling very loving, very loving!

And some of you will escape from this place, for acts of love, to unknown corners!

(Audience laughs and claps)

And that you call as love? Chemicals?

(Audience laughs)

Polymers, molecules? And if the reverse act is done — if your hormones are sapped away, all this talk of love will vanish. Then even the most sentimental love song will not have any meaning for you if your hormones are sucked away from your body. There is nothing important or sacred or sacrosanct about love, as you know love.

The love that you know, Krishnamurthi used to call it, is a purely biological remembrance. He used to say that it is a biological-sexual remembrance. It is the act of a machine. There is no understanding…