The external social order neither tolerates nor matches the innate order of Love || Acharya Prashant

Question: Why does society hate lovers but like husbands and wives?

Speaker: The society is not based on love. Society is a certain external order and love is an intrinsic order, an internal order. So love and society are different, are opposites. It is simple.

Society means man relating to another man on the basis of preset, well laid out rules. It’s an external order. So you have to walk on a particular side of a road, I too have to walk on a particular side of the road. Right? And we have to stand in a queue. So, a man relating to another man on the basis of a pre-established order. That is society.

And what is love? Man relating to another man on the basis of an innate order. So the society cannot like love. The external order is dead. The internal order is dynamic, alive, kicking. The internal order is very-very rebellious. It doesn’t like any external orders. The force of love doesn’t tolerate any external rules, traditions, impositions. It doesn’t like them. So, always there is a clash, a dissonance between the society and the lovers.

Society wants an external discipline; love moves on its own inner discipline. This inner discipline is very beautiful but it does not conform to the external patterns. So the society is unable to recognize it, or trust it. It is very difficult for the society to trust love. In fact the society cannot trust anything. Society is founded on mistrust. Where there is trust, there is a very little space for rules. And the society is all rules, and rules. Society cannot even trust, and love has faith. Such is the distance between two. How can the two go together?