Quotes on Lust

Love is rising sun, lust is the dark night of the soul.

Buddha says: Beware of lust. Love is beautiful, but lust is just fire. It burns you and burns you badly. It wounds you.

CHOOSE love; bring love out of lust. Let your life be a life of alertness, so whatsoever you do is done in such awareness that only that which is valuable is chosen, and the valueless is left. The whole life is nothing but a great effort to choose life against death, to choose love instead of lust, to choose God instead of the world, to choose beauty, good, truth, instead of falsities.

Lust is greed, lust is attachment, lust is possessiveness. Love needs no possession, love knows no attachment, because love is not greed. Love is a gift. It is a sharing. You have found something; your heart is full, your fruits are ripe. You hanker that somebody should come and share. It is unconditional; who shares does not matter. But you are so full of it that you would like to be unburdened — as when clouds are full of rainwater, they rain. Sometimes they rain in a forest, sometimes they rain on a hill, sometimes they rain in a desert, but they rain. The fact of where they rain is irrelevant. They are so full they have to rain. A lover is so full he becomes a cloud, full of love-water; he has to rain. That raining is spontaneous.

Man is unconscious. You go on doing things, not knowing why. You go on doing things you could not do if you were even a little conscious. What we are doing with our life is just sleeping through it. Consciousness has to be evolved. The more consciousness you have, the more energy starts flowing upwards on its own accord. Consciousness is the clue, the key, the master key. Lust becomes love through consciousness, so love cannot be an unconscious thing.

LUST is when you are unconscious. You see a woman or a man and you fall in love, and you don’t know why; sometimes even against yourself, in spite of yourself. People come and say to me, “What can we do? We are helpless; love has happened.” This love is not the love of the Baul; this is lust. What a Baul calls lust is this: unconscious love is lust. Then it flows downwards. Then it moves through the sex center into the world again. Upwards lust is love, but then it is conscious. Consciousness is the staircase: step by step you become more and more conscious. Whatsoever you do, you do it with full consciousness — even walking, eating, going to bed, talking, listening — small things of life, but you do them with consciousness. And when you are in love, you are in love with full consciousness. It is not against yourself. It is not that you are possessed, it is not that you are a victim, it is not that you are being pulled by somebody like a magnet. No, you are moving on your own.

Love is more aesthetic; lust is almost non-aesthetic. Lust is ugly, and you can observe it. When somebody looks at you with lust in his eyes, have you watched the face? — it becomes ugly. Even a beautiful face becomes ugly when lust is there in the eyes. And just the opposite also happens: even an ugly face becomes beautiful when there is love in the eyes. Love in the eyes gives a totally different color to the face; a different aura arises. Lust gives a black aura, a very evilish aura around you. To look at somebody with lust is ugly. It is not the search for beauty.

Lust is madness, lust is fire, lust is poison. It keeps people blind to the truth. It keeps them foolish, it keeps them unaware, it keeps them drunk.

A few distinctions have to be made: when Buddha says “sensuousness” he does not mean sensitivity. In fact, a sensuous person is a gross person; the sensitive person is subtle. Sensitiveness is beautiful, sensuousness is ugly. Love is beautiful, lust is ugly. Love is sensitivity, lust is sensuousness. Love gives what you have, lust tries to snatch away something from the other. The sensuous person exploits the other, and the sensitive person shares himself with the other. Be sensitive but don’t be sensuous. Be loving but get out of lust. Lust and sensuousness are animal; love and sensitivity are human.

At the lowest when love is just lust, physiological, it is an exploitation of the other, it is using the other as a means. Soon it is finished. Once you have exploited the woman or the man you lose interest; the interest was only for the moment. The moment the woman is well-known to you you are finished with her. You have used the other human being as a means — which is ugly, which is immoral. To use another human being as a means is the most immoral act in existence, because each human being is an end unto himself.

When lust is transformed and you enter into the city of love, you enter unattached. Remember, that is their definition of love. If love has attachment in it, it is lust, If love has no attachment in it, only then is it not lust. When you are in lust you are not really thinking of the other, thinking of your beloved or lover. You are simply using the other for your own ends. And of course, attachment is bound to be there, because you would like to possess him, and you would like to possess him or her forever. Because tomorrow also you may need, the day after tomorrow also you may need. You need a lover and you want to possess him.

Lust is the same energy as love; the difference is only of direction. Lust moves downwards, love has started the uphill task. Lust is like roots of a tree, love is like wings of a bird — but the energy is the same. All energy is the same. Energy as such is neutral. Unless you become conscious about it you cannot be creative. And the downhill movement is very destructive: you are simply dissipating yourself. You are not getting any integration through it — what Gurdjieff used to call crystallization.

Beware of lust, unconscious sexuality. When sex becomes conscious it has a totally different flavor. It becomes tantra, it is no longer sex. When sex becomes conscious it is love, it is no longer lust. Love brings freedom, and lust simply creates prisons for you.

Just watch your life and you will find it: one minute of anger and how many minutes of guilt? One minute of lust and how many minutes of guilt, or how many hours, or how many days?

This is compassion — when the other becomes more valuable than you. This is love — when you can sacrifice yourself for the other. When you become the means and the other becomes the end, this is love. When you are the end and the other is used as a means, this is lust. Lust is always cunning and love is always compassionate.

Love ordinarily is not love, it is lust. And lust is bound to feel hurt, because to desire somebody as an object is to offend. It is an insult, it is violent. When you move with lust towards somebody, how long can you pretend it is love? Something which is superficial will look like love, but scratch a little bit and hidden behind it is sheer lust. Lust is animalistic. To look at anybody with lust is to insult, humiliate, is to reduce the other person to a thing, to a commodity. No person ever likes to be used; that’s the most ugly thing you can do to anybody. No person is a commodity, no person is a means towards any end.

This is the difference between lust and love. Lust uses the other person to fulfill some of your desires. The other is only used, and when the use is complete you can throw the other person away. It has no more use to you; its function is fulfilled. This is the greatest immoral act in existence: using the other as a means.

My emphasis is also exactly the same as Atisha’s. You come to me with a thousand and one problems, but my answer is always the same. If you come with anger I say be aware of it, if you come with greed I say be aware of it, if you come with lust I say be aware of it — because awareness cuts the very root. What is the root? Unawareness is the root.

A man who lives through lust lives absolutely unconsciously. Whatsoever he is going to do is going to be wrong. Whatsoever he is going to say and see is going to be wrong. He can’t see, he is blind. He can’t hear, he is deaf. Nothing makes people more ugly and animal-like than lust.

When love is unconscious it is only lust and nothing else — a beautiful name for an ugly thing. When love is conscious, only then it is love.

Lust is the lowest form of sex energy; love, the highest form. Unless your lust becomes love you will be missing your goal.