gets enamoured of a sensual object; in lust he develops a craving for sensations in relation to it; and in greed, he desires to possess it. Of these three forms of lower love, greed has the tendency to be extended from the original object to the means of obtaining the object. Thus persons become greedy for money, power or fame which can become instruments for possessing the different objects of craving. Anger and jealousy come into existence when these lower forms of love are thwarted or threaten to be thwarted.

These lower forms of love are obstructive to the release of pure love. The stream of love can never become clear and settled until it is disentangled from these limiting and perverting forms of lower love. The lower is the enemy of the higher. If consciousness gets caught in the rhythm of the lower it cannot emancipate itself from its self-created ruts and finds it difficult to get out of them and advance further. Thus the lower form of love continues to interfere with the development of the higher form of love, and has to be given up in order to allow the untrammeled appearance of the higher form of love.

The emergence of the higher from the shell of the lower love is helped by the constant exercise of discrimination. Therefore love has to be carefully distinguished from the obstructive factors of infatuation, lust, greed and anger. In infatuation, the person is a passive victim of the spell of conceived attraction of the object; but in love there is an active appreciation of the intrinsic worth of the object of love.

Love is also different from lust. In lust, there is a reliance upon the object of sense, and consequent spiritual subordination of the soul in relation to it; but love puts the soul into direct and coordinate relation with the Reality which is behind the form. Therefore, lust is experienced as being heavy and love is experienced as being light. In lust, there is a narrowing down of life, and in love, there is an expansion in being. To have loved one soul is like adding its life to your own. Your life is, as it were, multiplied, and you virtually live in two centers. If you love the whole world, you vicariously live in the whole world, but in lust there is the ebbing down of life and the general sense of hopeless dependence upon a form which is regarded as other. Thus, in lust, there is the accentuation of separateness and suffering; but in love, there is the feeling of unity and joy. Lust is dissipation; love is recreation. Lust is a craving of the senses; love is the expression of the spirit. Lust seeks fulfillment, but love experiences fulfillment.