The body is imaginary, and we bow to the tyranny of a phantom. Love is a privilege perception, the most total and lucid not only of the unreality of the world but of our own unreality: not only do we traverse a realm of shadows; but ourselves are shadows.
Sexual love is a troubled and problematic relationship in cultures where there is a strong sense of man's separation from nature, especially when the realm of nature is felt to be inferior or contaminated with evil.
Love cannot in its very nature be peaceful or content. It is a restlessness, an unsatisfaction. I can grant a lasting love just as I can grant a lasting unsatisfaction; but the lasting love cannot be coupled with possession, for love is pain and desire and possession is easement and fulfilment.
And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.
When the eternal and the human meet, that's where love is born -- not through escaping our humanity or trying to disappear into transcendence, but through finding that place where they come into union.
Infinite Love is a weapon of matchless potency. It is the 'summum bonum' of life. It is an attribute of the brave, in fact it is their all. It does not come within the each of the coward. It is no wooden of lifeless dogma but a living and life-giving.
But one thing you have to understand clearly is that it is the man who longs for domination, and it is the woman who dominates. This is what I call coexistence: live and let live. More than that is all imagination. If you really had known what love is...the basic thing is not to create a relationship. Stand aloof as the pillars of a temple stand aloof, but support the same roof. Don't destroy the individuality of the other, enhance it if you can; otherwise, at least leave it as it is, uninterfered with.
Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse.