Love
The difference between Love and attraction || Acharya Prashant (2014)
Listener: What is an attraction?
Acharya Prashant: At least this much should be very clear. We see instances of attraction, every moment, all the time around us. There is the game of attraction going on. So somebody bangs the door, and your mind gets attracted towards that. It is as if the banging of the door and the movement of the mind towards the door are one and the same thing. If one happens the other has to happen, they are inseparable. This is the attraction.
If you put some iron pieces near a magnet, the iron pieces will move towards the magnet. This is the attraction. If two reacting chemicals are brought together, there is a reaction and the subsequent release of energy and everything else and that is the attraction. So attraction is obvious, it is happening all the time around us.
It is just a mechanical movement. The iron does not know why it is getting attracted to the magnet. The magnet does not know why it is attracting the iron piece. And yet attraction is happening. It is a dead thing. Sodium does not know why its atom wants to react with water. And water does not know why a particular configuration of the atom must be reacted to. Yet there is a reaction. This is the attraction.
You take two metals let’s say, iron and nickel; and keep them in close contact for long periods of time. And after that, you cannot separate them. Diffusion of molecules of one metal will happen to the other and some kind of a bond will get established between the metals.
If some of you drive an old bike or old car, you will know that old nuts and bolt cannot be opened. They have to be cut, the nut fuses with the bolt. The nut fuses with the bolt. So, close together and close together for a long period of time, space and time; that is the attraction.
Space and time are attraction.
Space and time are also this world. What is this world? This world is all this that appears all spread around, so space. And this world is the past and future, so time.
Attraction and the world are inseparable. Attraction is the fundamental quality of this world.
And remember this world by itself has no life, it is a mechanical system. An apple gets attracted towards the earth; the earth gets attracted towards the apple, fundamental quality. And where there is an attraction, there is repulsion as well. So attraction and repulsion, that is what this universe is all about, and this universe is time and space. We just said that in closeness there is an attraction. If you keep iron and magnet very far away from each other, attraction will become almost zero.
You very well know even the gravitational pull is inversely proportional to the square of the separation distance between the two interacting objects. So you increase the distance and the pull will become almost zero. You require time and you require closeness in space. So, if you are with a person for a long period of time, you will get attached.
Attachment is the fruit of attraction in time. Attraction happens right now and when attraction continues in time then what you get is the attachment. Attraction is a dead thing and attachment is an equally dead thing.
So iron and magnet, they will attract each other and if they stay in touch for a long period of time, they will also get attached. And that is the fact of our relationships. There is an attraction and after that there is an attachment. And sometimes we give the name Love to either of these. But this universe only knows attraction and attachment, it knows no Love.
Love is a totally different quality; Love is understanding. And Love does not relate to being attracted. To get attracted you require the mind to be dull, to be stupid. Only a stupid mind gets attracted and attached, an unhealthy mind, a diseased mind. A mind that feels incomplete and so it wants to go and cling to something and somebody, and feel complete. You very well know why chemicals react. One chemical has some shortage of electron so it wants the other atom to provide those electrons. Right? Either by transfer or by sharing. So attraction happens when there is a feeling of incompleteness. And whenever you feel incomplete, that is dis-ease, you are uncomfortable, restless.
Love, on the other hand, is the quality of a healthy mind that feels complete in itself. Because it feels complete in itself, because it is a healthy mind; all its relationships are also healthy. A healthy relationship is also called a loving relationship, it is so simple.
Love has no excitement or titillation about it. It is a simple being in health.
When you relate to other, not because of greed or fear, it is Love. But unfortunately if we look at our relationships, there is greed, fear and expectation always, always present. And where there is greed, fear, expectation, insecurity – there can be no Love. There would be jealousy and possessiveness and there could be discord and strife, but no Love. So there is nothing sensational about Love, it is so simple.
The relationships of a healthy mind are loving relationships.
When you do not relate to the other in order to get something from him, it is Love. Where you are feeling so full in yourself, that you feel no violence towards the world, it is Love. Love is not about creating boundaries, my family, my people, my love, my house.
Love is like the sun, full in itself; so its brightness falls on everybody, its warmth is available to all. Wherever it goes, it brings light. That is Love.
But love, in spite of being such a simple thing cannot really be an object of discussion. Because love comes from a healthy mind; and health simply means freedom from disease.
We do not need to work towards health; we only need freedom from the disease.
As long as the mind is diseased, it will be experiencing attraction and attachment. Attractions and attachments are the symptoms of an unhealthy and sick mind.
They arise from conditioning. They arise from the latent tendencies of the mind, vritti (Sanskrit word for mental tendencies).
So these must be the object of consideration:
Why is the mind unhealthy? Can I look at it?
Can I understand how deeply conditioned I am? Can I catch my ways?
Can I observe my daily life and look at the play of conditioning, attraction, attachment?
If you can do that, then just that realisation gives me freedom from disease. Freedom from disease is health. And the relationships of a healthy mind are loving relationships, simple.
So when you talk of Love, kindly do not get excited, there is nothing exciting about Love, just as there is nothing exciting about pure water. But pure water is life, life giving. There is a lot that is exciting about fizzy drinks, about liquor. But about water, there is nothing exciting; it is simple, pure, and transparent. Love is like pure water, it is not sensational, it is not sentimental, it is not titillating. Love is the quality of a healthy mind, a mind that is not afraid and a mind that is not carrying the burden of the past or expectations. That is love.
Never think that a man who is carrying ideologies, a man who is ambitious, a man who belongs to a particular line of thought, can ever be capable of Love. He will carry his sense of violence, into everything that he does.
The man, who is dull and bored and careless and violent in the office, cannot be a loving father or a loving husband. After all, it is the same mind; he will carry the same mind into the house as well. A healthy mind will be healthy in all walks of life, throughout the day. A lady, who does not care for small kids in the slum opposite her house, cannot be a loving mother. It is impossible. How is it possible to love your kids, when you only have the indifference for the other kids, who are shivering in the cold? A man, who kill animals, cannot have a love for anybody. After all, it is the same mind. When you do not have sensitivity and you can use the knife on one being, then how will your mind suddenly become sensitive towards rest of the world? It is the same mind.
I know that as young people, love is a very hot topic for you all. But kindly do not think that you can ever know Love, without cleaning up your mind.
Love is possible only to a very clean and very pure mind.
Others will know attraction and attachment but they will never know Love. And that is their punishment.
The punishment of remaining conditioned is that you will never know Love.
You will live sixty years or hundred years, without even knowing a moment of Love. You can name other things as Love; you can fool yourself by saying that, “I have a very loving family”. But the fact will be that there will be no Love.
So forget Love, look at the purity of mind. That is what you can do.
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.
