VBT – Meditation 18.5
Love Is Difficult
Love itself is the greatest method, but love is difficult – in a way impossible. Love means putting yourself out of your consciousness, and in the same place, where your ego has been in existence, putting someone else. Replacing yourself by someone else means love – as if now you are not and only the other is.
Jean Paul Sartre says that the other is hell, and he is right. He is right because the other creates only hell for you. But he is wrong also because if the other can be hell, the other can be heaven. If you live through lust, the other is a hell because then you are trying to kill that person. You are trying to make that person a thing. Then that person will also react and will try to make you a thing, and that creates hell.
So every husband and every wife, they are creating hell for each other because each one is trying to possess the other. Possession is possible only with things, never with persons. You can only be possessed by a person; you can never possess a person. A thing can be possessed, but you try to possess a person. Through that effort a person becomes a thing. If I make you into a thing, you will react. Then I am your enemy. Then you will try to make a thing out of me – that creates hell.
You are sitting in your room alone, and then suddenly you become aware that someone is peeping through the keyhole. Observe minutely what happens. Have you felt any change? And why do you feel angry about this peeping Tom? He is not doing anything to you – just peeping. Why do you feel angry? He has changed you into a thing. He is observing; he has made you into a thing, into an object. That gives you uneasiness.
And the same will happen to him if you come near the keyhole and look through it. The other will become shattered, shocked. He was a subject just a moment before: he was the observer and you were the observed. Now suddenly he has been caught. He has been observed observing you, and now he has become a thing.
When someone is observing you, suddenly you feel your freedom has been disturbed, destroyed.
That is why, unless you are in love with someone, you cannot stare. That stare becomes ugly and violent – unless you are in love. If you are in love then a stare is a beautiful thing, because your stare is not changing the other into a thing. Then you can look directly into the eyes; then you can go deep into the eyes of the other. You are not changing him into a thing. Rather, through your love your look is making him a person. That is why only the stares of lovers are beautiful; otherwise stares are ugly.
Psychologists say there is a time limit. And you all know, observe and you will come to know, what the time limit is for how long you can stare into someone’s eyes, if he is a stranger. There is a time limit. One moment more, and the other will become angry. Just a passing look in public can be pardoned because it seems as if you were just seeing, not looking.
A look is a deep thing. If I just see you when passing, no relationship is created. Or I am passing and you look at me, just while passing – no offense is meant so it is okay. But if you suddenly stand and look at me, you become an observer. Then your look will disturb me and I will feel insulted:
“What are you doing? I am a person, not a thing. This is not the way to look.”
Whenever you are turning someone into a thing, that act is immoral. But if you are filled with love, then in that love-filled moment with any object this phenomenon, this blessing, is possible. It happens.
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