What is the opposite of love – Mohanji
I believe there are no opposites to love. Love cannot have opposites. You can say the opposite is a lack of love. The state is a state, a temporary state. The lack of love is not a permanent state; it’s a temporary state. You don’t feel love. It’s a state that cannot last for long. But love is a permanent state.
When something is permanent, for example, what is the opposite of truth? You can say untruth, lie. But is it a permanent state? Truth is a permanent state. Now, what is the opposite of reality? We can say non-reality but is non-reality a permanent state?
Non-permanent
So, whatever is non-permanent, is not the real opposite. Like, what is the opposite of the Sun? You can say clouds. Clouds can obscure the Sun for some time, but the Sun will always shine. The nature of the Sun is brightness, brilliance, energy, and nobody can stop it. But in certain times, you don’t see the Sun, so you feel that now there is no Sun, but that doesn’t mean that there is no Sun on the horizon somewhere. We are under the clouds.
So, there is no permanent opposite to any of this. See, the perpetual, like for example God is a state, energy brighter than a million suns, huge energy, very big power. It has two forms. One is the form manifested in all the universe and all the beings, and the other form is unmanifested, a pure energy state. Now, what is the opposite of God?
The truth
This is the problem, you know, so many true things have no opposites. No other sides. That is it. These truths, like love is truth. It cannot be substituted. We call it conditional love or unconditional love, which is almost like saying washing machine, refrigerator. It doesn’t matter. They have their own states, you know, but it doesn’t talk about energy per se.
What is running all this energy?
That is always the same; love is always the same. Love has no opposite. Conditional love can have an opposite. Conditional love means you have a treaty; I love you provided you are like this, I love you provided you give this, I love you in certain situations. This is not love; it’s like a pretension. I don’t call it love.
But all the real things, true things, have no opposites; they cannot have opposites. It can only have a seeming opposite, just to understand the truth, to understand the real, seeming opposite, means almost like an opposite, but it’s not an opposite. Indifference is definitely not the opposite of love; hatred is not the opposite of love, hatred is rooted out of ignorance, love is rooted out of love. This is the problem; its root itself is the same thing.
Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt
Proofread by Shyama Jeyaseelan