What we often mistake for love:
- The desire to possess someone
- An all-consuming passion that must be satisfied
- Using someone to reach pleasure
- Wanting to fulfill yourself through someone else
- Needing someone to maintain your equilibrium
- Leaning on someone to reach a goal
I'm probably forgetting some.
I've been reading Osho's The Book of Secrets for a while now.
Whatever you think of him — he's a controversial figure — he's an exceptional spiritual writer.
And on love, specifically, two things he says have stayed with me.
First: lust is never love.
When you look at someone with carnal desire, that person is no longer a person.
You're not interested in the whole being — only in a part you want to use to satisfy a desire. A part you could find in someone else.
That's why lustful stares are unpleasant.
They objectify. They depersonalize. You become a function.
Real love, Osho tells us, is exactly the opposite.
The beloved feels whole, unique, distinct from the rest of the world.
Imagine a small administrative employee, he says.
To the institution he serves, he's just a number.
The institution uses only a part of him. Again, he is an object.
If he dies, he'll be replaced by someone who can do the same thing.
And the world will keep turning.
Nothing in that relationship is love. It's utility.
But one day, someone falls in love with that little employee.
Not the colleague at the next desk, not the one across the hall. Him!
And for that person, this employee is different from everyone else.
If he dies, it will be a catastrophe. Nothing will ever be the same.
He becomes irreplaceable.
Unique in the universe.
Because of a single gaze.
That is love.