In lust, there is excitement; but in love, there is tranquility.

Love is equally different from greed. Greed is possessiveness in all its gross and subtle forms. It seeks to appropriate gross things and persons, as well as the abstract and intangible things like fame and power. In love, the annexation of the other person to your individual life is out of the question; and there is a free and creative outpouring that enlivens and replenishes the psychic being of the beloved, independently of any expectations for the self. We have the paradox, that greed, which seeks for the self, the appropriation of another object, does in fact lead to the opposite result of bringing the self under the tutelage of the object; whereas love, which aims at giving away the self to the object, does in fact lead to a spiritual incorporation of the beloved in the very being of the lover. In greed, the self tries to possess the object, but is itself spiritually possessed by the object; in love, the self offers itself to the beloved without any reservations, but in that very act it finds that it has included the beloved in its own being.

Infatuation, lust and greed together constitute a spiritual malady which is often rendered more virulent by the aggravating symptoms of anger and jealousy; pure love, in sharp contra-distinction to them, is the bloom of spiritual perfection. Human love is so much tethered by these limiting conditions that the spontaneous appearance of pure love from within becomes impossible. So, when such pure love arises in the aspirant, it is always a gift. Pure love arises in the heart of the aspirant in response to the descent of the Grace from the Master. When pure love is first received as a gift from the Master, it comes to be lodged in the consciousness of the aspirant like the seed in a favorable soil, and in the course of time, the seed develops into a plant and then into the full-grown tree.

The descent of the Grace of the Master is, however, conditioned by the preliminary spiritual preparation of the aspirant. This preliminary spiritual preparation for Grace is never complete until the aspirant has built into his psychic make-up some divine attributes. When a person avoids backbiting and thinks more of the good points of others than of their bad points, and when he can practice supreme tolerance and desires the good of others even at the cost of his own self, the aspirant is ready to receive the Grace of the Master. One of the greatest obstacles which hinders this spiritual preparation of the aspirant is worry; and when, with supreme effort, this obstacle of worry is overcome, a way is paved for the cultivation of the divine