In Plato’s Symposium

A man who practices the mysteries of love will be in contact not with a reflection, but with truth itself. To know this blessing of human nature, one can find no better helper than love.

I have been commenting my whole life on love, in thousands of different ways, but the message is the same. Just one fundamental thing has to be remembered: It is not the love that you think is love. Neither is Socrates speaking about that love nor am I speaking about it.

The love you know is nothing but a biological urge; it depends on your chemistry and your hormones. It can be changed very easily—a small change in your chemistry and the love that you thought was the “ultimate truth” will simply disappear. You have been calling lust “love.” This distinction should be remembered.

Socrates says, “A man who practices the mysteries of love . . .” Lust has no mysteries. It is a simple biological game; every animal, every bird, every tree knows about it. Certainly the love that has mysteries is going to be totally different from the love with which you are ordinarily acquainted.

A man who practices the mysteries of love will be in contact not with the reflection, but with truth itself.

This love that can become a contact with truth itself arises only out of your consciousness—not out of your body, but out of your innermost being. Lust arises out of your body, love arises out of your consciousness. But people don’t know their consciousness, and the misunderstanding goes on and on—their bodily lust is taken for love.

Very few people in the world have known love. Those are the people who have become so silent, so peaceful . . . and out of that silence and peace they come in contact with their innermost being, their soul. Once you are in contact with your soul, your love becomes not a relationship but simply a shadow to you. Wherever you move, with whomsoever you move, you are loving.

Right now, what you call love is addressed to someone, confined to someone. And love is not a phenomenon that can be confined. You can have it in your open hands, but you cannot have it in your fist. The moment your hands are closed, they are empty. The moment they are open, the whole of existence is available to you.

Socrates is right: One who knows love also knows truth, because they are only two names of one experience. And if you have not known the truth, remember that you have not known love, either.

To know this blessing of human nature, one can find no better helper than love.

You will be surprised to know that the English word love comes from a Sanskrit

word lobha; lobha means greed. It may have been just a coincidence that the English word love grew out of a Sanskrit word that means greed, but my feeling is that it cannot be just coincidence. There must be something more mysterious behind it, there must be some alchemical reason behind it. In fact, greed digested becomes love. It is greed, lobha, digested well, which becomes love.

Love is sharing; greed is hoarding. Greed only wants and never gives, and love knows only giving and never asks for anything in return; it is unconditional sharing. There may be some alchemical reason that lobha has become love in the English language. Lobha becomes love as far as inner alchemy is concerned.

Love is not what is ordinarily understood by the word. The ordinary love is just a masquerade; something else is hiding behind it. The real love is a totally different phenomenon. The ordinary love is a demand, the real love is a sharing. It knows nothing of demand; it knows the joy of giving.