Definition of Real Prema (Love)

There is need to spread the message of Love as the message of God. However, Prema or Love is a much misused word. Any positive response to the attraction is called love; any feeling of attachment, however trivial or transitory, is characterised as prema. We must certainly coin new words or set aside specific words to indicate the forms of love.

The attachment of parents to their children or of children to the parents must be called affection. The response to the attraction of sex can be best described as fancy, fascination or moha (delusion). The feeling of kinship or comradeship evokes dearness. The pleasure one gets through a sense of possession, especially of material objects, can be known as satisfaction. The yearning to reach for the sublimity that lies inherent in Truth - this alone is entitled to be called by that holy word, Prema.

Prema is strong and steady enough to leap over all obstacles, confront with equanimity all changes of fortune and defeat, all attempts to delay or deviate. It does not judge one incident as good and another as bad; it does not ascribe them to different agencies. Just as the same Sun causes both day and night, the same divine Will causes joy and grief.

-Sai Baba