We ought to talk over together too what is love.
I hope all this is not boring you.
If you want to take a breather, it’s all right.
As the speaker said,
we ought to go into this great question of what is love.
We use the word ‘love’ so loosely, it has become merely sensuous, sexual;
love is identified with pleasure.
And to find that perfume one must go into the question what is not love.
Through negation you come to the positive,
not the other way around. Am I making myself clear?
Through negation of what is not love
then you come to that which is immensely true, which is love.
So love is not hate: that’s obvious.
Love is not vanity, arrogance.
Love is not in the hands of power.
The people who are in power, wanting power;
it doesn’t matter if it’s over a small child or wanting power
over a whole group of people or a nation,
that surely is not love.
Love is not pleasure, love is not desire.
I don’t know if you have time to go into the question of desire.
Perhaps we may.
Love is certainly not thought.
So can you put aside all that: your vanity, the sense of power,
however small, however little it is, it’s like a worm.
And the more power you have, the more ugly
– and therefore in that there is no love.
When one is ambitious, aggressive, on which you are all brought up:
to be aggressive, to be successful, to be famous, to be known
which is all so utterly childish – from the speaker’s point of view.
How can there be love?
So love is something that cannot be invited or cultivated.
It comes about naturally, easily, when the other things are not.
And in learning about oneself one comes upon this:
where there is love, there is compassion;
and compassion has its own intelligence.
That is the supreme form of intelligence,
not the intelligence of thought,
intelligence of cunning, deceptions and all the rest of it.
It’s only when there is complete love and compassion
there is that excellence of intelligence which is not mechanical.