Today we will be talking about love, sex, and relationship. Perhaps we can define all three of these things from the beginning, and then go back and look at them in more detail. What we usually call a relationship is the artificial need in the mind for the other. Now when I use the word relationship, I am talking about a male-female, one-to-one type of relationship. We are relating all the time obviously, but that’s not what we usually mean when we mention relationships. This is something coming from the mind.
Then we have the whole phenomenon of sex. Sex is an instinct of the body, an urge of the body. It is not a need of the individual, it is a need of the race. Real love is that state of overflowing where you need nothing. Especially in our culture, we tend to mix all these three things up together, stir them around, and we don’t know what’s what. We call our urge for sex love. We call the thing that results from that a relationship. Or because of the mind’s artificial need for the other, we call that love, and so forth. We stir it around, and we get very confused sometimes about what it actually is that we are dealing with.
So let’s back up now, and look at these things in more detail. Remember that one of your first and strongest impressions occurred at birth, and that was when you recognized that your survival depended on the other. The ‘other’ became life itself. You didn’t think of yourself as complete, and in a way you were not complete, because you wouldn’t survive by yourself. You learned to look outside of yourself for fulfillment. You couldn’t fulfill yourself. You couldn’t satisfy yourself.
So you looked outside for fulfillment right from the very beginning. Therefore almost everyone has this deep, deep, deep feeling - that in order to be fulfilled, I need the other. But this is just an expression of the helpless infant and its survival needs. But because of that, because it is so deep-seated, because we have lived with it for such a long time, we go through life still believing that our survival depends on the other.
Consciously we wouldn’t agree with that. Consciously we would say, "No, of course my survival doesn’t depend on the other, but life would be boring if I were all by myself," or you’ll find all kinds of reasons. But the real reason is that the subconscious honestly believes that you need someone else in order to be fulfilled - even in order to live.
This creates an almost constant state of anguish. If you don’t have someone, then your subconscious thinks you’re in danger of dying any moment, and all you can do is look around, and struggle, and manipulate, until you finally get the other. Then once you get the other, you worry about keeping the other. So it goes on and on and on. And it is not just a game played by two people, because on a subconscious level, you are an infant struggling for survival.
And of course this infant is delighted when it gets the other, especially if it can get the other to sign a piece of paper saying that he or she is going to stay around for life, or forever. Then this gives the subconscious a deeper feeling of security. It is not a real feeling of security, but at least it is a promise of security. That’s why marriage very often is such an important thing.
So we have this artificial need, this deep need for the other. And it actually doesn’t have much to do with the other. It has something to do with our survival, and that usually makes us very selfish. We want to arrange things so that our survival is guaranteed, and we are also willing to then compromise in order to keep the other there, in order to survive.
This doesn’t mean to say that you can’t have a more adult relationship with someone. You can. You can have an adult relationship, and we will talk about that a little bit later. But even that has to be examined, in order to see how much of it is rooted in the idea,"I need the other. I need the other for happiness, for fulfillment, for survival."
See that you were born with the idea, "I need the other in order to survive." Then someplace along the way - let’s keep it simple and call it puberty - arises this phenomenon called sex, which is a need of the race, not a need of the individual. Be very clear about that. Sex is not a need of the individual. Air is a need of the individual, water is a need of the individual, rest is a need of the individual, food is a need of the individual. Without these things the individual dies, and that is what defines a need. If you don’t get it, you die.
You don’t need sex. People have lived their whole life without sex, and lived to be very old, sometimes older than those who enjoy sex. People have been confined in a prison for years and years and years without sex, and they don’t die. Sex is not a need of the individual.
But sex is a need of the race. It is a way that the race has of perpetuating itself. The species will die out if there is no sex, so everybody is given a little bit of it, and the idea is to spread it around, and then the race continues. But it is not a need of the individual. Still it is a very strong urge.
So when this urge arises, and mixes with your artificial need for the other, of course you are attracted even more strongly than before to someone else. And because of the sexual urge, you are usually directed to someone of the opposite sex - not always, but usually - and then you start sliding into the patterns established by our society about how two people relate to each other.
Then the whole conditioning of the culture comes in and says that men should do this, women should do that, this is the way to act, this is the way to be, these are the games to play, and these are the rules of the game. It is all conditioning.
Quite obviously we have combined this physical urge for sex with the need for the other, and so out of that then comes a very, very strong impulse, a strong attraction to be with the other. Neither of these things have anything to do with love, nothing whatsoever to do with love. The need for survival is nothing compared to what it was when you were an infant. We have grown far beyond that, but we still have inside us the idea, "If I can only find the other, then I’ll be happy, then life will be complete, then I will be fulfilled." Because this is what the infant thought. "When mother is there, then I am fulfilled, then I am taken care of, then I am safe, then I can relax."
Therefore everybody is still looking for someone else so that they can relax, without noticing that in the meantime they are actually taking care of themselves. But this need for the other, coming from this program, is not love. It is the opposite of love. It is the exact opposite of love. It is coming from neediness, not from overflowing. It is coming not from love for the other, but from concern for yourself, and a need to survive. Not that that is wrong, because you do need to survive, and it is fine to care for yourself. But it is the attitude of an infant.
And as long as you believe that your survival, or your happiness, or your well-being depends on the other, then you yourself remain incomplete as a person. You will always feel incomplete as long as you believe that. Most people want to call this need for sex, this need of the race, this urge for sex, and this artificial need of the mind for the other, "love". And this is where alot of the confusion comes from - because we call it love, and it isn’t love. It is usually the opposite.
We talk about falling in love. When you ‘fall in love’, you basically fall into regression. Something in you says, "Ah, at last, mommy is here." Or, "At last, daddy is here." And the moment that happens, you are projecting onto the other everything that you always wanted from the other. You don’t even see the other, but you project on to the other what you want to see in the other, what you want to have for yourself.
Of course the other has to have certain attributes which will allow you to do that. The other person has to at least approach the general direction of your ideal, of what you want, wherever that is coming from. But once you decide that this could be the one, then you - ‘clunk’ - fall in love, and project onto the other everything that you want. But because the other is doing more or less the same to you, after a while you start getting this uneasy feeling that the other isn’t all he or she is cracked up to be, that the other is not living up to the advertising.
And once this little crack appears, then you start having doubts, which get more serious all along. Then after a while you start accusing the other of lying to you. "If I had known you had been like this, I never would have gotten involved with you in the first place." Or, "You led me on, you made me believe this about you." And maybe the other didn’t say anything like that, or didn’t do anything like that. It was your own projection. You were promising yourself that this person was going to be a certain way, not them. And they were doing the same thing toward you.
So then comes the period where we see that this person is not what we were expecting them to be. Then we turn the whole energy around and accuse them of lying to us, of deceiving us, of being dishonest - and what was ‘love’ before, now turns into something like hate and disappointment. And it is all self-induced. It is a game, it is a drama, it is a movie that we have produced, that we wanted to believe in, that we wanted to live in. And then when it doesn’t work, we don’t take responsibility for it, but we blame the other. And then we go on looking for someone new, and we do exactly the same thing again. We look around for someone that we can lay our trip on, that this is the ideal person, this is the most beautiful person in the world, this person will give me everything I want. And at the subconscious level we are thinking that this person will save my life, this person will fulfill me. My life will be complete because of this person.
And the whole thing starts all over again. We are often very possessive, very jealous, very suspicious of the other. We are afraid that we are going to lose the other, and we’re afraid because we think that our survival depends on the other. So too often what we call ‘relationship’ is just neediness. But it is an artificial neediness, because it is not a genuine need. It is an artificial need coming from the mind, the mind saying, "I need this person, or someone like this person, in order to fulfill me, to be fulfilled." It is coming from a space of emptiness, it is coming from a space of regression.
What can happen - which gives hope - is that when the internal infant in the one person feels fulfilled by the presence of the other person, and vice versa, then they can both relax. The one is thinking, "Ah, I have mommy," and the other is thinking, "Ah, I have mommy," and so now both have mommies and they can relax. And because they relax, something beautiful can happen - but it is the relaxation that causes something beautiful to happen, not because they are with each other. If they could relax through some other method, then it would be the same thing. It is the relaxation that causes the beautiful space to be there, not the presence of the other. That does happen sometimes, that two people get together and somehow they both feel fulfilled, and something blossoms. If it lasts, it is rare, but still it can happen.
We can achieve that same kind of thing by learning to relax by ourselves, by seeing that we can fulfill ourselves without the other. If we learn that, then we can feel exactly the same way as two people feel who - theoretically, at least - are in love.
Let’s look for a moment at love. Love is more or less the opposite of both of these things. Love is total fulfillment. Love is like an overflowing, it is an expansion. I am using love in this sense, and not mixing it up with sex, and the need of the mind. Love is non-directive. It is not directed to anyone. Relationships usually are directed. What we call love in relationships is directed to one person as an investment, hoping to get something back, even if it is just this feeling of inner fulfillment.
True love doesn’t expect anything back, because it doesn’t need anything. It is already complete in itself. True love is like a light bulb shining in a room. It doesn’t shine just on one specific person. It simply shines and it doesn’t matter if anyone is even there, the light is shining. The light is complete in itself and doesn’t need to feed on anyone in the room in order to be bright. That is the way love is.
Love is an overflowing, love is a giving, love is an expansion, love is a feeling of completion, of fulfillment. And the result of that is an overflowing. When you are in love, in true love, you are not just in love, you are love. You are producing love, you are love, you are love itself.
This experience - love - is most apt to come to you when you are relaxed. This can come in meditation, this can come in dance, this can come anyplace actually. But it is a feeling of relaxation, of expansion, of trust. It is something that you experience when the ego - the mind, the memory - is not tormenting you, not contracting you.
Many people are looking for love through sex and through relationships, and they don’t find it - which doesn’t mean to say that you can’t find love through a relationship with another. You can use it perhaps as a doorway. But real love will be with yourself and Existence, and that will include everybody else in Existence. Yet the moment your love is directed to one person, then be very clear about the fact that this is the mind saying, "I need this other for survival," and then it is not love, it is a need.
If you can see that, you will save yourself a lot of anguish. You will save yourself a lot of time and effort, if you are interested in love. But because we use the word love to refer to that which happens when the need of the mind combines with the need of the species for sex, we experience a lot of confusion. We talk about two people being in love when they’re not. And it is then very easy to confuse what sages and wise people say about love - when they are talking about the overflowing kind of love - with the kind of love that we learn about on the Hollywood movie screen, which is not love at all.
We use the same word to mean two totally opposite states of being, and we create a lot of confusion. If we can separate these things, see them as different elements, different states, then we can move beyond the states that are crippling us, and be open to those states which would expand us. Also by seeing these different phases and different states more clearly, we have a clearer choice as to what we want to do.
What we normally call love is just a mind trip, and it keeps us in the mind, it keeps us regressed, keeps us frustrated, keeps us in a state of turmoil. And it is also something that we have to let go of, if we ever want to become clear. The moment you can let go of it, you probably will enter a state of love.
You can use relationship just like you would use any device to help you get clear. You can use a relationship to help you see how childish you are, how dependent you are on the other, how you still are projecting onto the other your mother, your father, or other people that were taking care of you in your infancy. You can see how you make the other responsible for your happiness, for your relaxation, for your well-being, which simply isn’t fair.
Up until a few years ago, it used to be one of the greatest compliments you could give someone to say, "I can’t live without you." To say this is stupid, just plain stupid. And if anyone ever says this to you, you are going to feel like you are in prison, because they are making you responsible for them. They are saying, "I can’t live without you. Without you I am going to die. If you go away and leave me, I’ll die. My life depends on you. My survival depends on you."
That is the infant coming out in its purest form. It is not a compliment at all. That person just wants, someone to take care of them. It used to be considered the highest expression of love, "I can’t live without you. I’ll die if I can’t be with you." This statement indicates total regression. It has nothing to do with love, absolutely nothing. It is the opposite, the exact opposite of love.
Yet because of language we mix these things up, and after a while we don’t know what we are talking about. The Christians hear Jesus talk about love, and they think that’s what they do between the sheets at night. And we call having sex, ‘making love.’ That’s so ridiculous. Sex can give a feeling of expansion, because this urge for sex is being realized or released. The need of the mind for the other is being satisfied, so everything can seem perfect. But it isn’t love. And sometimes the next morning you recognize that it isn’t love.
If we can keep these things separate, we can start learning from them. There is nothing wrong with being with another - that’s beautiful. But if you make the other responsible for your survival, it gets to be ugly. If you blame the other for your unhappiness, it is ugly. If you cling to the other and limit the freedom of the other, it is ugly. It is not love.
Be open to what you mean each time you say or hear the word love, how you interpret it, how you translate it in your own mind. Use your relationships to find out more about yourself. Be careful about calling your relationships love, unless you are prepared for the other to walk out of your life at any second. If you are giving the other complete freedom to walk out of your life, knowing that you are going to remain complete yourself, then you can call that love. But if any part of you is clinging to the other, understand that it’s a need coming from the infant that you used to be, that it’s an artificial need coming from a helpless infant which you no longer are.
So watch your relationships with people. This includes not only your so-called love and sexual relationships, but also your relationships with friends and acquaintances. See how much you make them responsible for your happiness, for your well-being, your fulfillment, how much you blame them if things don’t go right for you. Be aware of that.
As long as you believe that you need the other for survival - that you need the other for life, that you are incomplete - you are going to remain incomplete. As long as you allow this pattern to be operating at the subconscious level, you are going to remain incomplete. That is just the way it is. You are perpetuating the program by believing in it.
Once you can start seeing this, and start seeing that you don’t need to have it, then you can begin to get rid of it, and feel completion and fulfillment with life itself, with you yourself. You can feel love wherever you are. Then you will be love. But you will never experience yourself as love as long as you need the other. It is a contradiction. It cannot possibly happen.
I spoke earlier about the possibility of of an ‘adult’ type of relationship. This happens when two adults recognize their own completion, recognize their own fulfillment in being alone, recognize their relationship to Existence, and then by chance happen to be together, both giving the other total freedom, both respecting the other, both accepting responsibility for his or her own feelings.
An adult type of relationship happens when two people, who can dance beautifully alone, decide for whatever reason to dance together, both of them knowing that they can dance beautifully without the other, and both willing to once again dance separately when that happens. And perhaps they separate, perhaps they come back together again, perhaps they separate, perhaps they dance together again, perhaps - this goes on and on. But there will always be a feeling of freedom on the part of the two individuals, each knowing that I am complete as I am, and yet it is fun to dance with the other. I don’t need the other, but it is fun to be with the other. And when there is the slightest urge of the other to move away, then I let them go.
This sometimes happens when people start out with a sexual relationship, and over a period of years, or over a period of time, become friends. And they have their sexual relationships with other people, but they remain friends with each other. This is not exactly an adult relationship, but it is moving in that direction, because they respect each other, and give each other freedom.
Look at your own relationships, and the ones you have had in the past. You can look at the ones you have had in the past first. If you are in one now, of course it is undoubtedly the greatest thing that ever happened in the world, but the one that you just got out of, of course it was all a mean trick on the part of the other. So it is easy to look at the ones that are already over with. But believe me, they are no different than the one you are in right now, because you created both of them, or all of them. And when this one is over, you will feel the same way. And you know this, because you have been through it often enough.
The more you can respect the other, and the more you take responsibility for yourself while you are in a relationship, the more you are going to respect the other when it is over. That is a good test. But watch - especially if you are interested in ultimately becoming clear - and look to see how the mind clings to the idea, "I need the other." As long as you allow that program to be there, you are going to be at some level in a regressed state, in an artificial state. Remember, an artificial state is going to keep you in the same space that you were in when you were an infant - helpless, dependent, inadequate and incomplete.
So I am sure I have stirred up a few questions, maybe even a little anger. Usually this stirs up a bit of anger. People feel that I am threatening their survival when I say these things. But I will also say that I am not the first one to have said these things.
Question: "When you were talking about this state of regression, in which we project mommy or daddy on the other...What did you mean?"
Jeru: A lot of people still don’t love their mother, even as adults. They are attached to her, they see her as the other part of them. As a child, we see our mother just like another heart outside of ourselves, which we need, so we are attached to it, we are involved with it, but it is not love. And so a lot of adults are still the same way. They are attached to their parents, but it is out of need, not love. Now of course that can change. You can soften your attitude, and you can start feeling a kind of affection. But you have to look at it yourself to see how much of it is affection, and how much of it is still attachment.
As long as you make your parents your parents, then it is the mind. When you can let go of them and let them become people, then you have a chance of experiencing yourself also as a person. Do you see that difference at all? What we call love is usually just attachment, you are still feeling like the umbilical cord is still there, do you understand?
Question: "What about the love between children and their parents? Do children love their parents?"
Jeru: They don’t. And if you have small children, you’ll see that they don’t love you. You’ll see that they need you. You see it like with little animals, like when you observe little piglets. They just walk all over the mother, you know. They’re only interested in one thing. They’re interested in eating, that’s all. They don’t even care what the tit is attached to. It is totally unimportant. And you’ll see this with Kids - that’s the way nature has made them. It is fine. It is the way it is. They have to survive, so that’s what they are worrying about...
