Lust, Jealousy, Physical Love

Bhagavan Das · Confusing Words Series · 11 pages

The fourth of the Bhagavan Das analyses in this section, from The Science of the Emotions, and the one that draws the sharpest line. The thesis is that lust is the mother of jealousy — that the kind of love mostly responsible for the feeling of jealousy is the kind best called lust, and that satiety, exhaustion, weariness, dreariness and unhappiness are among its consequences.

He begins by conceding the objection: that to refined natures it looks improper to call lust a kind of love at all. His answer is that later and evil associations have made the present connotation of the word wholly bad, and that it was not always so — the old expression "lusty youth" means only physical vigour and the capacity for physical love, with nothing depreciatory in it. From there the analysis proceeds on his general definition of love as the desire for union by exchange and equalisation, which is what allows lust to be placed within the same family rather than opposite it. The second half unriddles physical love and turns on a formulation used throughout his work: that separateness is the cause of bondage and of freedom alike. An endnote by the author closes the argument.

Read the full text (PDF, 0.9 MB, 11 pages)