LOVE II

There are two kinds of love. 

C.S. Lewis has divided love into these two kinds:

’need-love’ and ’gift-love’

Abraham Maslow also divides love into two kinds. 

’deficiency-love’ and  ’being-love’. 

The distinction is significant and has to be understood.

The ’need-love’ or the ’deficiency-love’ depends on the other; it is immature love. In fact it is not truly love – it is a need. You use the other, you use the other as a means. You exploit, you manipulate, you dominate. But the other is reduced, the other is almost destroyed. And exactly the same is being done by the other. He is trying to manipulate you, to dominate you, to possess you, to use you. To use another human being is very unloving. So it only appears like love; it is a false coin. But this is what happens to almost ninety-nine per cent of people because the first lesson of love that you learn is in your childhood.


A child is born, he depends on the mother. His love towards the mother is a ’deficiency-love’: he needs the mother, he cannot survive without the mother. He loves the mother because mother is his LIFE. In fact, there is no love; he will love any woman – whosoever will protect him, whosoever will help him to survive, whosoever will fill up his need. The mother is a sort of food that he eats. Itis not only milk that he gets from the mother, it is love also – and that too is a need.

Millions of people remain childish all their lives; they never grow up. They grow in age, but they never grow in their minds; their psychology remains juvenile, immature. They are always needing love. They are hankering for it like food.

Man becomes mature the moment he starts loving rather than needing. He starts overflowing, sharing; he starts giving. The emphasis is totally different. With the first, the emphasis is on how to get more. With the second, the emphasis is on how to give, how to give more, and how to give unconditionally. This is growth, maturity, coming to you.

A mature person gives. Only a mature person can give, because only a mature person has it. Then love is not dependent. Then you can be loving whether the other is or is not. Then love is not a relationship, it is a state.

What will happen if all the disciples disappear and only I am here? Do you think there will be any change? What happens when a flower blooms in a deep forest with nobody to appreciate it, nobody to know its fragrance, nobody to pass a comment and say ’beautiful’, nobody to taste its beauty, its joy, nobody to share – what happens to the flower? It dies? It suffers? It becomes panicky? It commits suicide? It goes on blooming, it simply goes on blooming. It does not make any difference whether somebody passes by or not; it is irrelevant. It goes on spreading its fragrance to the winds.It goes on offering its joy to God, to the whole.

If I am alone, then too, I will be as loving as when I am with you. It is not you who are creating my love. If you were creating my love, then naturally, when you are gone, my love will be gone.

 You are not pulling my love out – I am showering it on you: it is ’gift-love’, it is ’being-love’.
And I don’t really agree with C.S. Lewis and Abraham Maslow. The first love that they call ’love’ is not love, it is a need. How can a need be love? Love is a luxury. It is abundance. It is having so much life that you don’t know what to do with it, so you share. It is having so many songs in your heart that you have to sing them – whether anybody listens or not is not relevant. If nobody listens,then also you will have to sing it, you will have to dance your dance.

The other can have it, the other can miss it – but as far as you are concerned, it is flowing, it is overflowing. Rivers don’t flow for you; they are flowing whether you are there or not. They don’t flow for your thirst, they don’t flow for your thirsty fields; they are simply flowing there. You can quench your thirst, you can miss – that’s up to you. The river was not really flowing for you, the river was just flowing. It is accidental that you can get the water for your field, it is accidental that you can get water for your needs.


A Master is a river, the disciple is accidental. The Master is flowing; you can partake, you can enjoy, you can share his being. You can be overwhelmed by him, but he is not FOR you. He is not flowing for you in particular, he is simply flowing. Remember this. And this I call mature love, real love,authentic love, true love.


When you depend on the other there is always misery. The moment you depend, you start feeling miserable, because dependence is slavery. Then you start taking revenge in subtle ways, because the person you have to depend upon becomes powerful over you. Nobody likes anybody to be powerful over them, nobody likes to be dependent; because dependence kills freedom, and love cannot flower in dependence. Love is a flower of freedom – it needs space, it needs absolute space.The other has not to interfere with it. It is very delicate.

When you are dependent, the other will certainly dominate you, and you will try to dominate
the other. That’s the fight that goes on between so-called lovers; they are intimate enemies – continuously fighting. 

Husbands and wives – what are they doing? Loving is very rare; fighting is the rule, loving is an exception. And in every way they try to dominate – even through love they try to dominate. If the husband asks the wife, the wife denies – she is reluctant. She is very miserly: she gives, but very reluctantly; she wants you to wave your tail around her. And so is the case with the husband. When the wife is in need and asks him, the husband says that he is tired.

 In the office there was too much work, ’really overworked’, and he would like to go to sleep.


I have read one letter written by Mulla Nasruddin to his wife. 

To my dear, ever-loving wife,

During the past year I have tried to make love to you 365 times, an average of once per day, and the following is a list of the reasons you gave for rejecting me:

• Wrong week 11
• It will wake the children 7
• It is too hot 15
• It is too cold 3
• Too tired 19
• Too late 16
• Too early 9
• Pretending to sleep 33
• The window is open, neighbors might hear 3
• Backache 16
• Toothache 2
• Headache 6
• Not in the mood 31
• Baby restless, might cry 18
• Watched late show 15
• Mud-pack 8
• Grease on face 4
• Too drunk 7
• Forgot to visit chemists 10
• Visitors sleeping in the next room 7
• Just had hair done 28
• Is that all you think about?’ 62

Dearest, do you think we can improve on our record during the forthcoming year?

Your ever-loving husband,


Mulla Nasruddin.


These are ways how to manipulate, how to starve, the other, how to make him more and more hungry so that he becomes more and more dependent.

Naturally, women are more diplomatic about it than men, because man is already powerful. He need not find subtle and cunning ways to be powerful, he is powerful. He manages the money – that is his power.

Muscularly, he is more strong. Down the centuries he has conditioned the mind of the woman that he is more powerful and she is not powerful. 

In every way he has always tried to find a woman who is in every way lesser than him. 

• A man does not want to be married to a woman who is more educated than him, because then the power is at stake. 

• He does not want to marry a woman who is taller than him, because a taller woman looks superior. 

• He does not want to marry a woman who is too much of an intellectual, because then she argues, and argument can destroy power. 

• A man does not want a woman who is very famous, because then he becomes secondary. 

• And down the centuries man has asked for a woman who is younger than him. Why can’t the wife be older than you? What is wrong? But an older woman is more experienced – that destroys power.

So man has always asked for a lesser, in every way a lesser woman – that’s why women have lost their height. There is no reason for them to be of lesser height than men, no reason at all; they have lost their height because only the smaller woman was always chosen. By and by the thing has entered in their minds so deeply that they have lost their height. 

They have lost their intelligence, because an intelligent woman was not needed; an intelligent woman was a freak. You will be surprised to know that just in this century their height is increasing again. And you will be surprised... even their bones are becoming bigger, and their skeleton is becoming bigger. Just within fifty years... particularly in America. And their mind is also growing and becoming bigger than it used to be: their skull is becoming bigger.

With the idea of freedom, some deep conditioning has been destroyed. Man already has power so he need not be very clever, need not be very indirect. Women don’t have power. When you don’t have power, you have to be more diplomatic – that is a substitute. The only way they can feel powerful is that they are needed, that the man is continuously in need of them.

This is not love – this is a bargain. And they are continuously haggling over the price; it is a
continuous struggle. C.S. Lewis and Abraham Maslow divide love in two. I don’t divide in two. I say that the first kind of love is just a name, a pseudo coin; it is not true. Only the second kind of love is love.


Love happens only when you are mature. You become capable of loving only when you are a grownup. When you know that love is not a need but an overflow: being-love or gift-love, then you give without any conditions.

- Excerpt from Tantra vision Vol II