If you want to know the secret of love, first of all you must avoid confusing it with pleasure

If you want to know the secret of love, first of all you must avoid confusing it with pleasure. You will say that without pleasure love is so boring and bland. Not at all, for pleasure concerns only the physical plane. Beyond pleasure there is the joy, the inspiration, the wonder and the ecstasy experienced by the soul and spirit. When a man and woman are able to bring to each other a sense of the divine without being carried away by passion, this tenderness and the communion between them become extraordinarily expressive, rich, intense and beautiful. It is pleasure, of course, but a higher, divine pleasure, which makes them immortal. Otherwise, you all know the song ‘Love, love, when you have a hold of us…’ Yes, for then love is like a brute force that possesses people and holds them so tight they can no longer escape, and they become its slaves. Unfortunately, that is how most people understand love – as something that torments them, burns them, consumes them and saps their force – because they have confused love with pleasure.