Love

M: Does love act deliberately? Yes and no. Life is love and love is life. What keeps the body together but love? What is desire, but love of the self? What is fear but the urge to protect? And what is knowledge but the love of truth? The means and forms may be wrong, but the motive behind is always love -- love of the me and the mine. The me and the mine may be small, or may explode and embrace the universe, but love remains.

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Of all the affections the love of oneself comes first. Your love of the world is the reflection of your love of yourself, for your world is of your own creation. Light and love are impersonal, but they are reflected in your mind as knowing and wishing oneself well. We are always friendly towards ourselves. but not always wise.

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The witness of birth, life and death is one and the same. It is the witness of pain and of love. For while the existence in limitation and separation is sorrowful, we love it.

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Q: We love only ourselves.

M: Were it so, it would be splendid! Love your self wisely and you will reach the summit of perfection. Everybody loves his body, but few love their real being.

Q: Does my real being need my love?

M: Your real being is love itself and your many loves are its reflections according to the situation at the moment.

Q: We are selfish, we know only self-love.

M: Good enough for a start. By all means wish yourself well. Think over, feel out deeply what is really good for you and strive for it earnestly. Very soon you will find that the real is your only good.

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Q: In your present state can you love another person as a person?

M: I am the other person, the other person is myself; in name and shape we are different, but there is no separation. At the root of our being we are one.

Q: Is it not so whenever there is love between people?

M: It is, but they are not conscious of it. They feel the attraction, but do not know the reason.

Q: Why is love selective?

M: Love is not selective, desire is selective. In love there are no strangers. When the centre of selfishness is no longer, all desires for pleasure and fear of pain cease; one is no longer interested in being happy; beyond happiness there is pure intensity, inexhaustible energy, the ecstasy of giving from a perennial source.

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Q: What about love?

M: When it turns to lust, it becomes destructive.

Q: What is lust?

M: Remembering -- imagining -- anticipating. It is sensory and verbal. A form of addiction.

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Q: You see love everywhere, while I see hatred and suffering. The history of humanity is the history of murder, individual and collective. No other living being so delights in killing. M: If you go into the motives, you will find love, love of oneself and of one's own. People fight for what they imagine they love.

Q: Surely their love must be real enough when they are ready to die for it.

M: Love is boundless. What is limited to a few cannot be called love.

Q: Do you know such unlimited love?

M: Yes, l do.

Q: How does it feel?

M: All is loved and lovable. Nothing is excluded.

Q: Not even the ugly and the criminal?

M: All is within my consciousness; all is my own. It is madness to split oneself through likes and dislikes. I am beyond both. I am not alienated.

Q: To be free from like and dislike is a state of indifference.

M: It may look and feel so in the beginning. Persevere in such indifference and it will blossom into an all-pervading and all-embracing love.