IN LOVE THERE IS TRANQUILITY

 
The emergence of higher love from the shell of lower love is helped by the constant exercise of discrimination. Therefore, love has to be carefully distinguished from the obstructive factors of infatuation, lust, greed and anger.

In infatuation, the person is a passive victim of the spell of conceived attraction for the object. In love there is an active appreciation of the intrinsic worth of the object of love.

Love is also different from lust. In lust there is reliance upon a sensual object and consequent spiritual subordination of oneself to it, whereas love puts one into direct and coordinate relation with the reality behind form. Therefore lust is experienced as being heavy, and love is experienced as being light. In lust there is a narrowing down of life, and in love there is an expansion of being.

To have loved someone is like adding another life to your own. Your life is, as it were, multiplied, and you virtually live in two centers. If you love the whole world, you vicariously live in the whole world; but in lust there is an ebbing down of life and a general sense of hopeless dependence upon a form regarded as another. Thus, in lust there is the accentuation of separateness and suffering, while in love there is the feeling of unity and joy.

Lust is dissipation; love is restoration. Lust is a craving of the senses; love is the expression of the spirit. Lust seeks fulfillment, but love experiences fulfillment. In lust there is excitement, and in love there is tranquility.