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Great love; Greater Love || AP Neem Candies
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5 years ago
Love
Desire
The Ultimate
Self-love
Suffering
God
Higher Love
Lower Love
Description

Acharya Prashant explains that all human beings fundamentally want the ultimate, something immeasurable and infinite. This is the nature of desire; it doesn't stop at anything small and can only cease when it attains something boundless. This ultimate object of desire is sometimes called Truth, and colloquially, it is also referred to as God. This is our shared, deepest, and most real desire. This establishes two entities: the 'I' that wants, and 'that' which is wanted. The speaker connects this wanting to the concept of love, stating that we make efforts to get what we want because we love ourselves. If one did not love oneself, there would be no motivation to do good for oneself. The greatest good one can do for oneself is to attain that which is truly wanted. This introduces two kinds of love: the love for 'that' which is wanted, termed 'higher love', and the love for oneself, which is 'lower love'. This lower love for oneself is what expresses itself in relationships with others and is the highest form of love possible on the worldly plane. Using the example of a saint, he illustrates that a truly loving person exhibits two kinds of love: love for God (the ultimate destination) and love for fellow human beings. These two loves, while seemingly different, are deeply connected. The love for God is the higher love for one's ultimate destination. The love for others stems from self-love, recognizing that the other person is very much like oneself. Real worldly love is not about gaining something or exchanging pleasures but about seeing the profound commonality with the other. You suffer because you are separated from the ultimate, and you see that the other person suffers from the exact same condition. The realization of this shared suffering is love. Just as you seek liberation from suffering for yourself, you extend that same gift to the other. This, he concludes, is what it means to truly love another person.