Destroyed and Liberated in Love - " Fanaa "

Love essentially means somebody else has become far more important than yourself. That may be distressing for your existence is threatened. You will lose all your freedom and everything that you have. The moment you say "I love you" you can no more do what you want in your life.

There are innumerable problems, but at the same time it's pleasant. It's sweet. It drags you in. It is self-annihilating. If you do not annihilate yourself, you will never know love. Some part of you must die. If you don't let this happen, there is no love, only calculation.

What you call as love generally is a mutual benefit scheme. It's an arrangement. There is still some sweetness in this; mutually, both people are benefited, but it is conditional. If you get very unreasonable the other person will slowly back off. Even in your love affair you have to be reasonable.

What if your love is just one-sided? I believe its Devotion then.And devotion is unreasonable love. It is one-sided madness. That is the beauty of loving someone without letting anyone know about it because you don't have to have a relationship — you can just love. And everything is all on your terms...

Love is self-annihilating because your personality, likes, dislikes — you are willing to surrender when you really love somebody. When there is no love, people are rigid. When suddenly they fall in love with someone, they are willing to twist themselves any way they need to, which is a fantastic spiritual process because you are becoming flexible.

So love is definitely self-annihilating; that's the most beautiful part of it, as long as you don't handle it as a deal. We have formed a variety of relationships in our lives. There is indeed expression of love in these relationships. It should be there in everything that you do. But when we are talking about love as a spiritual process, as a process of self-annihilation, when we use the word "annihilation", it looks like a negative word.

Love is not necessarily self-annihilation, it could be just annihilation. It all depends who you love.

So let it destroy you; because if it doesn't destroy you, it is not a genuine love affair. When I say "destroy you", it doesn't mean destroying your home, your business, this or that. When what you call as "myself", your rigid personality, is destroyed in the process of loving, that is self-annihilation.

When your love is one sided you can love as much as you want. That is the beauty of devotion. Without some sense of devotion in you, without some sense of self-annihilation, you cannot love truly. If you pull down the whole of what you call as "myself", you will start loving and thats pure love.