The difference between Love and attraction || Acharya Prashant (2014)

Listener: What is an attraction?

Acharya Prashant: At least this much should be very clear. We see instances of attraction, every moment, all the time around us. There is the game of attraction going on. So somebody bangs the door, and your mind gets attracted towards that. It is as if the banging of the door and the movement of the mind towards the door are one and the same thing. If one happens the other has to happen, they are inseparable. This is the attraction.

If you put some iron pieces near a magnet, the iron pieces will move towards the magnet. This is the attraction. If two reacting chemicals are brought together, there is a reaction and the subsequent release of energy and everything else and that is the attraction. So attraction is obvious, it is happening all the time around us.

It is just a mechanical movement. The iron does not know why it is getting attracted to the magnet. The magnet does not know why it is attracting the iron piece. And yet attraction is happening. It is a dead thing. Sodium does not know why its atom wants to react with water. And water does not know why a particular configuration of the atom must be reacted to. Yet there is a reaction. This is the attraction.

You take two metals let’s say, iron and nickel; and keep them in close contact for long periods of time. And after that, you cannot separate them. Diffusion of molecules of one metal will happen to the other and some kind of a bond will get established between the metals.