Questioner: Pranam Acharya Ji, There is line send by you “If you can’t be free without passing through that pain, why do you want to insulate your loved ones from the pain, why? Let them pass through this pain and when they will pass through this pain, if you love them, you too will pass through a pain. This Pain will purify both of you.”
~ Acharya Prashant
In the above line what is meant by this line ‘This pain will purify both of you.’
Acharya Prashant: Take something as obviously external as chewing gum, right? The ordinary gum that you get in the market. If even such a thing sticks to your body, It will be painful removing it. Especially if it sticks to one’s hair or some delicate part of the body god forbid. This is when the phenomena would be not even skin deep very very superficial still there would be pain. It is obvious that the thing is external, it is obvious that the thing is not conscious, it is obvious that the thing is just gum. Yet if it comes and forms a bond with just the surface of your physical being, there is a pain in separation, right?
Love is about separating the loved one from all kinds of gums. Even the superficial gum can be a testing issue, then what to talk of all that which sticks internally to us. It would be demanding and painful to remove all that.
There can be earthly love only of two kinds - real love, real earthly love of two kinds. One when you get associated with someone so that he can separate you from all that which is lifeless and useless. And the second type is when you relate to someone in order to liberate the other one from trivia and gums.
Whatever be the case, the essence of love is purification which is another name for 'wise separation.' Separation of the real from unreal, of the life-giving from the life-sapping, of the true from the false, of contentment from titillation.
But easier said and done. It is alright to know the academic definition of love. Love involves self-purification as well as the purification or elevation of the loved one. But when it comes to practice, Ah! then you discover that it tests your patience, it demands your entire energy. Everything is put at stake, your faith, your resources, your time, your attention, your entire personality.
The deeper the love the deeper the pain caused by it. And the mark of superficial love is the absence of pain and the presence of instant pleasure.
Unfortunately, that’s the kind of love we mostly know - Instant pleasure love. That Love is not love. That is something very toxic in which you relate to the other to give pleasure and be pleased in return.
Real love makes the lover feel almost like each other’s enemies.
It would be difficult probably for you to imagine such a love. This kind of love you will not find in the movies or in romantic novels. It is real and therefore rare. In real love, you are determined to not stop short of bringing the other anything lower than the highest. And in real love, you are prepared to pay whatever price is needed for that ultimate success. You work upon the other, you work upon on yourself.
Real love is a lot of hard work.
Not at all the stuff of fantastic dreams, not at all stuff of fairy tales. Real love is closer to the crucifixion of Christ. Pleasurable? No. Romantic? No. Loving? Yes. Great to look at? No. Great to realize? Yes. So love devoid of agony is not love at all.
I am not merely talking of pain. I am talking of agony that threatens to split apart every fiber of your being. That’s real love. But you don’t need to purposefully made things painful, that’s not the takeaway, please. You don’t need to go and attack your partner with a hammer or sickle because Acharya Ji just preached that real love must be quite painful. We are not talking of superficial pains here. We are not talking of abusing your beloved or your lover. We are talking of a sustained determined patient process of self-elevation loosely called as self-improvement actually self-dissolution, that’s love.
Let your love affair be genuine, let your love involve pain, and let your love be so deep that you get the courage and the patience to pass through that pain even if after passing through all of that really nothing of you is left. If the process is so demanding and so exacting that nothing of you is left after passing through the painful process of love. If you have really been shredded away to the point of disappearance then you have succeeded. The success of real love lies in your eventual disappearance and your final absence. If lovers have been real to each other none of them will survive.
Needless to clarify I am not talking of the physical dimension. If lovers have been real to each other both will assist each other, actively prod each other, actively push each other towards clarity purity all of which can be finally summed up in their absence, that’s love. Why must one pass through so much pain? You know. No reason can convince you if you still have this question.
All love is really reasonless maybe begins for a reason. The reason can even be purely physical carnal but as it deepens there is no real reason, why you want to do so much and sacrifice so much. If you would insist on finding reason your very being is the reason, your very being calls for it. You can’t rest without it. Without what? Without your disappearance.
