Love is an opportunity to know yourself

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

Acharya Prashant (AP): Do we understand the difference between creating and building? Mind builds, intelligence creates.

All love starts as nearness, all love starts as an urge for nearness. It will always start in the mental domain, always. It could be sexual; it could be any other desire.

Listeners (L): Emotional.

AP: Anything. It could be a social need, an emotional need, whatever. Always mental. But the good part is, whatever be the origin it creates nearness, it creates an opportunity to know. But just an opportunity. After that nearness, after that opportunity whether it blossoms into creativity, whether it enters the zone of creativity, is another matter. Rarely does it exceed the initial attraction and flower into creativity. That rarely happens.

So man and woman come close to each other, mother and child are close to each other and the reasons are of course biological in both the cases, mother and child, man and woman.

And that nearness is a great opportunity for observation but it never happens that way, rarely happens that way.

Do you remember Ishq-e-Majazi (metaphorical love) and Ishq-e-Haqiqi (love of God)? It would always start as Ishq-e-Majazi but its destiny is to dissolve into Ishq-e-Haqiqi. That never happens, unfortunately.

Love may begin as an attraction of the body but it should transcend that.

Transcending does not mean that now I do not look at your body.

Obviously, the eyes will only look at the body, the hands will only touch the body but something else has also happened and that is the real thing.

Some other event has taken place, that event does not take place.

Let that happen.

There are people in your life; there are objects in your life that you think you are in a loving relationship with.

See whether your love is still that emotional, loose thing? Is it still about identification, security, and all that or whether it has helped you and the other reach somewhere else? What is your effect upon the other’s life and what is the other’s effect upon your life?

Reflect on that.

Watch the full video here.

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