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and give it freely to the whole world, because through so giving it she would come to understand its secrets and its mysteries, and as she fell deeper and deeper into love, her love towards me, too, would be overflowing.
But no, we are ignorant about higher mathematics. We live in a world of very simple mathematics where everything diminishes through distribution; so it is quite natural that everyone should be afraid of the act of giving. The wife is afraid of the husband giving his love to someone else, and the husband fears that his wife may fall in love with another man. Actually, to talk about the husband or wife falling in love with someone else is beside the point, for the dilemma already exists within the family. When the mother shows her love towards her son, her husband is jealous; and when the father shows his love for his daughter, his wife is jealous. Tension breeds in such circumstances, for true love is absent. That feeling which we are given to calling love is not true love.
The real test of love lies in whether it is beyond the laws of quantification. Love is immeasurable. Drop your delusion that true love diminishes when it is shared. The stumbling block is the fact that all the other experiences available to us are measurable. Whatever we have can be measured; our anger, our hatred, and all other feelings can be measured.
The only experience which is beyond measurement is love; and love is unknown to you. This is why you find it so hard to understand what God is. One who understands what true love is does not worry about understanding God, because if you know love you know God -- they are part and parcel of the same arithmetic, they belong to the same dimension. One who has understood true love will say, "It's all right even if I don't know God. I have known love, it is enough. My purpose is served -- I have known! I am initiated into that higher world, that world where sharing brings no decrease, where the things freely and abundantly given remain with the giver."
And remember, when you feel within you a kind of love which remains whole even after it has been given in its totality, then your need of love from others
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