Everybody in the world wants to know what love is. It is a part of one’s being. When one does it in a planned way, it is rational. When it is prompted by a higher force, it is psychic. When it is only for the satisfaction of the animal senses, it is physical.
Rational love means the communion between two persons which is arrived at after a lot of thinking about the pros and cons. Those who want to develop love on a rational basis have to think in a particular manner and then they have to take into consideration different actions and reactions that will follow in that love. One sees the whole thing before one’s eyes and ultimately one decides that the love should proceed.
Love itself is not emotional or rational. Love is love. But one has an emotional, rational or psychic background. Once one really loves God or one’s child or one’s wife or husband, nothing can destroy that because love is imperishable and immortal. Whether the wife or husband misbehaves, nothing can destroy the love. Love is not an expression of the intellect, emotion or a particular relationship. It is an expression of man’s deep rooted divinity.
Love is not being emotional and passionate. When one speaks of love, it is a vague idea. Love is the feeling of oneness with others, feeling for others as one feels for oneself, being able to feel the difficulty of another person as one feels one’s own. That is one expression of love. Therefore, in love, duality is fused into unity – two become one. Sometimes emotions come and take the form of love. It is very important to know this. There is a clear-cut distinction between love and emotion; they are two substances completely, but they look almost alike. With love one feels oneness behind diversity. However, the definition most people give to love relates to emotional activities, which suits most people, but any experience of love related to emotional activity is not infinite. If one loves an object or a person, there is always a kind of reaction. One’s love for that object is not durable and permanent; there is fluctuation every now and then. How can that be love?
Love is a higher experience, an experience that has to do with the experience of total unity. Therefore, when loving the attitude has to be continuous, constant and consistent. Love requires a lot of sacrifices: comforts, idiosyncrasies, ego, money, life, everything. In love there is just giving and not taking. Love is an act of giving and giving and giving, and giving, and not taking. Khalil Gibran says:
I fell in deep love with the world
And the world also behaved in the same way
That’s why all my smiles were on their lips
And all their tears were in my eyes.
A lover gives love. There is the story of Romeo and Juliet, and also the story of Laila and Majnu. In love one gives and does not expect anything in return. When something is expected in return, it is not love; it is something else. To attain love the mind has to be purified and a lot of experiences undergone in life. That is only possible when one is a pilgrim, when one is searching for God.