To relate in love is to relate free of experience

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

Question (Q): Sir, how can we relate in love?

Acharya Prashant (AP): Let us take a very basic kind of example, starting from what we usually interpret as ‘love’. Suppose there is a friend, and you love your friend. She is your childhood friend, and you love her. Because she is your childhood friend, there are a lot of experiences that you have had with her. Am I right?

You remember images of her when she was three years old, six years old, ten years old, then fifteen, and now twenty. And now she is in front of you, and you are talking to her. Have you ever wondered whom do you talk to? Do you really talk to the living fact, or do you talk to the entire domain of your experience?

You have thousands of images and memories, and you talk to them. You don’t even bother to look deeply, sharply, lovingly at the living thing. Because you already have experiences. “I already know her.”

Pay attention to this.

The doorbell rings, you open the door, and your father is standing at the door. Right? When you open the door, whom do you find? Your father. Now there is another case. The doorbell rings and a stranger is standing at the door. In which of these two cases…