What is the difference between love and lust, and can lust become love?

A friend has asked, Osho, in bhakti-yoga you have given love a fundamental place. I don’t know whether we ordinary people are familiar with love or only with lust! What is the difference between the two? And can lust become love?

It is worth asking, and worth understanding. Because we take lust to be love. And lust is not love; it can become love. In lust there is the possibility of love. But lust itself is not love; it is only a seed. If rightly used, it can sprout—but a seed is not a tree. So the one who becomes satisfied with lust, or concludes, “This is the end,” will never even come to know what love is. Lust can become love. Lust means attraction between two bodies—between bodies. Love means attraction between two minds. And devotion means attraction between two souls. They are all attractions, but on three planes. When one body is drawn to another body, that is kama, sex. When one mind is drawn to another mind, that is prem, love. And when one soul is drawn to another soul, that is bhakti, devotion. We live on the…

As with a seed you sow—that’s the first stage. It becomes a tree—that’s the second. Flowers bloom—that’s the third. Then fragrance takes wing into the sky—that’s the fourth. Love is that fragrance. Lust is the seed. Love is the final event; beyond it, nothing more. The seed has a form; does fragrance have a form? The seed has an address; does scent have an address? You can grab the seed, the tree, even hold the flower in your fist—but what of the fragrance? Close your fist and the fragrance won’t remain inside. No one can bind love. Whoever tries will be left holding trash. This is not how you hold fragrance. With fragrance, you yourself must take flight with it, merge into it, attune yourself to its endless, formless being—fall like a drop into the ocean. Only the one who becomes fragrance will know.

Even if sometimes love-like feelings arise in my heart, immediately the next moment I start feeling 'this is not love, this is not love at all: it is all my hidden cravings for sex and all that'.

The questioner seems to be afraid and antagonistic: "It is all my hidden cravings for sex and all that." There is a condemnation in it. Nothing is wrong; man is a sexual animal. That's how we are. That's the way life means us to be. That's how we have found ourselves here. Go into it. Without going, you will never be able to transform it. I'm not speaking for mere indulgence. I'm saying move into it with deep meditative energy to understand what it is. It must be something tremendously valuable because you have come out of it, because the whole existence enjoys it, because the whole existence is sexual. Sex is the way God has chosen to be in the world, notwithstanding what Christians go on saying -- that Jesus was born out of a virgin woman -- all foolishness. They pretend that sex was not involved in Jesus'…

With the body is joined lust. Lust is gross. The body seeks the body: that is lust’s meaning. The body seeks the opposite body; because one shore is incomplete, the desire for the other shore arises. Man seeks woman, woman seeks man, so that the river of life may flow between, the two banks meet. Man is alone. Woman is alone. On the plane of the body there is the demand for the body, the longing for bodily union. For a moment that union does occur. For a moment body sinks into body and is lost—but only for a moment! The pain does not end; it deepens. After that union, a great melancholy rains down, because after union comes a deeper separation. Nothing is truly received; in fact it feels as if more has been lost. Bodily union can only be momentary. The gross cannot dissolve into the gross.

Bhakti is love’s supreme form. Love has three forms—lust, love, devotion. Lust is the lowest form—downward, descending; bound to the body. The second form—neither going upward nor downward; moving on a level—neither descending nor ascending; in the middle—is love bound to the mind. Devotion is the third, ultimate form—ascendant, rising upward; bound neither to body nor to mind; immersion in the soul. Man has three planes—body, mind, soul. So too love in man has three planes—lust, love, devotion. Until your lust becomes love you will not find happiness. And until your love becomes devotion you will not know bliss. If your lust remains lust, you will know sorrow upon sorrow. If your lust becomes love, you will know sometimes sorrow and sometimes happiness. If your lust becomes devotion—you will know happiness always. You will become happiness itself. Lust is bondage; in devotion there is freedom.