Love can be known only by loving. It is not something that can be made comprehensible by intellectual discussion about it. Love is not a theory. If we try to make a theory out of it, it remains incomprehensible: there are things which we can know only by doing them, by being them. Swimming is known only by swimming; love is known only by loving; prayer is known only by praying. There is no other way. There are things which can be known without moving into them -- those are the futile things, those are intellectual things: philosophies, dogmas, creeds. But all that is real has to be lived, and all that is existential has to be penetrated, and the risk has to be taken. One has to be courageous and daring. And it is a great daring, because when we love somebody we start losing our self, our ego. To love somebody means surrendering. Love is the only knowledge there is. We can read all the holy books; there is no need to surrender. We can become very proficient, very skilled, very learned, but there is no need to surrender. If there is no need to surrender, it is not knowledge. Only when something demands surrender, only then is there a possibility of real knowledge, otherwise not. 

Once we are surrendered, a totally different world opens between us and existence. The heart-to-heart communication starts. Surrender means surrendering the ego, surrendering all that we know. Surrender means surrendering our knowledge, our mind, our intellect. Surrender is a suicide. Existential things can be known only through existential ways. Love can be known only by loving. A prayer can be caught but it cannot be taught. A prayer is like an infection. Love is also like an infection: it can be caught but not taught. It is flowing all around us, but if we remain like an island, closed, then there is no way to learn. 

God is all around us, but we are so full of scriptures, knowledge, so full of our own ego that there is no space left inside us where God can penetrate and enter into us. It has become impossible. It is becoming impossible only because of us. We need to put our ego aside, because that is the non-essential. We need to face our essence with the essence of existence. Then suddenly we will see a new fire arising in us. A new love will be born. Submission and surrender is the secret of knowledge. It is not an intellectual effort, but a total submersion, a merging of the self with existence. Love is the only thing in the world which cannot be attained in any other way than by loving. Many people are trying movies, reading novels and poetry and others' love letters in order to know about love. There is a great danger that we may come to know many things about love, but to know about love is not to know love. In fact, the more we know about love, the less will be the possibility to know love. We will be lost in our knowledge. We will start thinking that we know. 

Remember, we can know much about love, but that cannot help to know love. Love can be known only by loving. It means we have to move into love without knowing anything about it. That's why it needs courage. We have to move in the dark, with no map, nobody to guide, not even a torch. We have to move in the dark not knowing where we are moving, not knowing whether we are on the right track or not, not knowing whether we will find the path or we will fall in a ditch and be lost forever. This is the courage.

Love has many flavors, many dimensions and many nuances. Love is not one single thing. It is tremendously rich. It has many aspects to it; it is multifaceted. It is like a diamond: it has many facets and every facet gives it richness. - ' love' is a single word. All the ancient languages had many words for love, because there are so many loves. When we love a child It has no passion. It has compassion. When we love our mother, it has reverence, it has deep gratitude. But when we love a woman it is totally different: it has great intensity, almost maddening. When we love our friend: that is totally different. It is affection, but not in the same way. If we watch, we will find many nuances of love. The single word 'love' has many words hidden in it. And one has to know all about love by moving in all the dimensions. If we have not known any facet of love, our understanding about love will lack that much. One has to know all the aspects and all the subtle differences. A single word will not do; it is a complete language. And once we know, we will be simply surprised. We can touch somebody's hand like a friend, and then the touch has a different flavor. And we can touch somebody's hand like a lover, and then the touch has again a different flavor. A connoisseur of love, with closed eyes, can just feel our hand and see...and understand the language. Have we not watched it sometimes: when somebody looks at us with a deep lust in his eyes, we can immediately feel? 

When somebody looks with deep love, we can see the difference. When somebody looks with affection, we can feel the difference. But these are very rudimentary things because compassion also has many layers. When we have compassion it is more like sympathy, less like compassion. It is not pure. The love and compassion of a Krishna, a Buddha and a Jesus would have been nothing that we have known about love up to now. There would have been no passion but a lot of warmth with all the flavors of love. This kind of love is not possible by us because of us: our outlook changes, our vision changes, our eyes are not yet clear and fixed. We cannot see the totality. At one time we see one aspect, at another time we see another aspect -- because we cannot comprehend the whole. We will have to move into the world of love; and move into the dark; On the path of love, trust is the most essential thing. On the path of meditation, we can move without trust. On the path of meditation we can move without surrender, but on the path of love, without surrender, without trust, there is no go because it is the very first door. Love demands so much. It demands almost the impossible, and on the first step. 

Love is easy but very demanding. That's why even though the path is so easy, very few people travel it. The path of meditation is very difficult but not so demanding. That's why the path is difficult and arduous, yet still, many people travel it. When we hear about love it seems very simple and easy; but look at the demands. On the path of meditation, that which will be demanded on the last step is demanded on the first step on the path of love. The meditator will be asked to surrender his ego only at the last step: when he moves from the mind to no mind; only at the last step. Love demands the impossible. It says: on the first step you have to drop the ego. There is no need to refine it and there is no need to work on it. Because one has to drop it, so why bother carrying it? Drop it here, now. Trust arises on the path of meditation at the last stage. But on the path of love, trust is asked on the first step. The first step of love is the same as the last step of meditation. The path is very easy if we are daring. If we are almost mad and ready to risk all without any condition, the path is very easy -- because it completes on the first step. 

The first step becomes the last step. Here we surrender, and not even a split second is lost and we have arrived. People who are very learned in the ways of intellectual comprehension, contemplation, concentration, have no clue about love. They simply don't know that language. And this love is just hidden inside us at the very core of our being. It is already there. We have just to find a way to reach to our own innermost core -- the essential man. It is not something that has to be achieved, it is already there. It is not something that has to be earned, it is a gift of God. The moment we were created, that very same moment that treasure was handed over to us -- Have we known anybody to live without breathing? Love is the very breath of the soul. "As the body cannot exist without breathing, the soul cannot exist without love." So we may know it, we may not know it, but continuously love is happening inside. It is throbbing there; it is our very beat. We just have to find a way to reach there, because we have gone out in search of other treasures that can NEVER belong to us.

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