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.
The ordinary love pretends too much. The real love is nonpretentious; it simply is. The ordinary love becomes almost sickening, syrupy, drippy, what you call “loveydovey.” It is sickening, it is nauseating. The real love is a nourishment, it strengthens your soul. The ordinary love only feeds your ego—not the real you but the unreal you. The unreal always feeds the unreal, remember; and the real feeds the real.
Become a servant of real love—and that means becoming a servant of love in its ultimate purity. Give, share whatsoever you have, share and enjoy sharing. Don’t do it as if it is a duty—then the whole joy is gone. And don’t feel that you are obliging the other, never, not even for a single moment. Love never obliges. On the contrary, when somebody receives your love, you feel obliged. Love is thankful that it has been received.
Love never waits to be rewarded, even to be thanked. If the thankfulness comes from the other side, love is always surprised—it is a pleasant surprise, because there was no expectation.
You cannot frustrate real love, because there is no expectation in the first place. And you cannot fulfill unreal love because it is so rooted in expectation that whatsoever is done always falls short. Its expectation is too great, nobody can fulfill it. So the unreal love always brings frustration, and the real love always brings fulfillment.
And when I say, “Become a servant of love,” I am not saying to become a servant of somebody whom you love, no, not at all. I am not saying to become a servant of a lover. I am saying become a servant of love. The pure idea of love should be worshipped. Your lover is only one of the forms of that pure idea, and the whole existence contains nothing but millions of forms of that pure idea. The flower is one idea, one form, the moon another, your lover still another . . . your child, your mother, your father, they are all forms, all waves in the ocean of love. But never become a servant of a lover. Remember always that your lover is only one tiny expression.
Serve love through the lover, so that you never become attached to the lover. And when one is not attached to the lover, love reaches its highest peaks. The moment one is attached, one starts falling low. Attachment is a kind of gravitation—unattachment is grace. Unreal love is another name for attachment; real love is very detached.
Unreal love shows so much concern—it is always concerned. Real love is considerate but has no concern. If you really love a man you will be considerate of his true need but you will not show unnecessary concern for his foolish, stupid fantasies. You will take every care of his needs, but you are not there to fulfill his fictitious desires. You will not fulfill anything that is really going to harm him. For example, you will not fulfill his ego, although his ego will be demanding. The person who is too concerned, attached, will fulfill the ego demands—that means you are poisoning your beloved. Consideration means you will see that this is not a real need but an ego need; you will not fulfill it.
Love knows compassion but no concern. Sometimes it is hard, because sometimes it is needed to be hard. Sometimes it is very aloof. If it helps to be aloof, it is aloof. Sometimes it is very cold; if it is needed to be cold then it is cold. Whatever the need, love is considerate—but not concerned. It will not fulfill any unreal need; it will not fulfill any poisonous idea in the other.
Search into, meditate on love, experiment. Love is the greatest experiment in life, and those who live without experimenting with love energy will never know what life is. They will only remain on the surface without going into the depth of it.
My teaching is love-oriented. I can drop the word God very easily—there is no problem—but I cannot drop the word love. If I have to choose between the words love and God, I will choose love; I will forget all about God, because those who know love are bound to know God. But it is not vice versa: Those who think about God and philosophize about God may never know about love—and will never know about God, either.
