So, here is what we don’t know. The soul has this quality of love. We come into the material world, we are covered with this illusion, the false ego. The soul emanates its qualities through this false ego illusion. And it comes out on the other side not as love but as lust. Think like this: there’s a light, a pure white light. When you pass this white light through a red glass disc, on the other side of this red disc the light is red. It is changed, now it’s no longer white, it’s taken on the color of this red medium it passes through. So, in the same way, when love passes through the medium of false ego, it comes out as lust. But we don’t know this. So, what we call love in the world today is actually lust.
Lust and love are opposite. Love is giving, love is not about oneself, love is about pleasing the one that is the object of your love. Your pleasure is in seeing your loved one happy and that makes you happy. The loved one is in the center of your life and you revolve around making that person happy. That’s love. So nourishing,
so warm, so beneficial for everybody concerned.
But lust is exactly the opposite. Lust is when I want something from my object of lust: “What can you give me? You’re supposed to make me happy. At the expense of yourself (it doesn’t matter what that expense is), you’re supposed to make me happy.” It’s very selfish and it never satisfies. Love always satisfies; love is always satisfying. Whereas lust is never satisfying: the more we get, the more we want.
In the great Vedic scripture Bhagavad Gita, there’s a very clear scenario outlined. It’s described like this: from the contemplation of the sense objects (you see, the eyes look, see an object that attracts them – chicken bones in the nose, “Oh, nice! Chicken bones!”)… So, from the contemplation of the object of the senses one develops attachment: I’m attached to this, this represents pleasure for me.
And in the material world we are the pleasure seekers because this is the nature of the soul – to be happy. Another quality. It is the nature of the soul to be happy. In the material world we’re not happy, maybe temporarily our senses are stimulated in a pleasant way, but we’re not really satisfied.
So, we see this object, it represents pleasure for us. We contemplate it. We become attached. Then from attachment comes lust. Now the energy is beginning to move very strongly. This is all involved with passion. Passion becomes the ruler. Lust and passion dominate me and I do whatever I do to try to solve that, to satisfy that need.
And then when I’m not satisfied (which is inevitably the case), I become angry. I’m now in the next phase: from lust comes anger. That’s why the more lusty the relationship is, the more anger there is, the more violence there is. This is the scenario that takes place.
And then it describes: from anger comes bewilderment of intelligence. We do stupid things, we say stupid things, we say things that hurt the other person. The person we love the most, we try to hurt the most. We usually have a special vocabulary reserved for them. We dig deep, sharpen the knife to make the person suffer as much as possible. We lose our intelligence, so we say things, we do things we wouldn’t do.
And then – bewilderment of memory. And we just fall into this whole mess of material misery. We call it love. But it’s not love, it’s lust. You see, that’s why it results in this way. So, don’t say, “Love is bad”, “Love is this and love is…” It’s not love. It’s lust.
So, in Bhagavad Gita also it’s declared: lust is the all-devouring sinful enemy of the world. Lust is our enemy, but under illusion we see it as our friend. We think, “Ohh…” And then we connect all these feelings of lust, “Oh, this is great!” You see. On and on it goes. We don’t recognize the enemy, this is not our friend. It destroys us. It takes us far, far away from love.
Now, remember, lust is the perverted reflection of love. Love is the most powerful force of all forces. You know, it is declared that the Supreme Lord is All-powerful. No one can defeat the Lord. Nobody. Yet He is defeated by love, the love of His children who are so lovingly devoted to Him.
So, love is so strong that it even conquers the All-powerful. There is no stronger force than love. Therefore, when it takes its perverted form of lust, it retains the power. It doesn’t lose power. But now that which was the most nourishing force, that which actually brings true happiness to the soul, that which is what we need above everything else, now becomes our enemy. It’s the most destructive force. You see, it’s turned over. Therefore, we in the material world are controlled by this all-devouring enemy. It eats us up.