A lover is ultimately the synthesis, unification and integration of the personal and the universal. There is no longer myself distinct from everything else. Myself and everything are the same thing. I don't love my lover because I think my lover is wonderful; I love her because I do not see any difference between me and my lover. When I look at my lover I see love. When I look at myself, I see love. Love melts the boundaries. If you are a true lover, you do not have separate boundaries.

The friend is the true mind and the lover is the true heart. So when I talk about the lover, I’m actually not restricting it to intimate love relationships. The lover is a part of you. Because of our human situation, we connect intimate love relationships with sex. But the lover is a part of you, just as a friend is a part of you. When I say the lover is drunk, I don’t mean unconscious. The drunkenness of love is not the same thing as the drunkenness of alcohol. I use the word drunk to mean that your usual intellect is not there. But this doesn’t mean that there is no awareness, no clarity, no presence. The lover is really present. When you first fall in love, you know how aware you are. When you’re really a lover, you are very aware of what’s happening. You notice the slightest movements of your beloved, the slightest changes. You are acutely aware of him. Your beloved turns his head and you’re aware of it, and why. He gets hungry and before he says anything you’ve brought food. Before the beloved says, “My back hurts,” you’re massaging his back. You start making plans for a trip to Hawaii and you don’t know why. It turns out your beloved really needs a vacation. The lover is very sensitive and very aware. The drunkenness is not unconsciousness. Your head is completely gone and completely empty. You just see what is there through your heart. Your heart has its own eye which sees and is sensitive. You please your beloved because it pleases you. When your beloved hurts, you hurt; when your beloved is happy, you’re happy. There’s no difference, no separation. You’re sensitive and aware because there are no boundaries.

The lover is one who is celebrating existence. The celebration is the pleasure that is the external manifestation of the lover. The life of the lover is an ongoing love affair with the world and everything in it. You love your beloved, you love life, other people, truth, understanding -- everything -- sometimes with passion, sometimes with gentleness or with sweetness. You are always in love. There is no one object for your love. You embrace it all.

When you are a lover, you're personal, but you have no boundaries that separate you from your lover. The lover is someone who is personal with God, personal with Being, with Essence. The only way you could be personal with God is through love -- by being a lover. This is the only way. And that is the true Essence of what the lover is -- being personal with the universal.

This Secret, the ultimate Beloved, is not like any other lover. It will not appear in the heart, it will not come to its abode, as long as there is anyone else there. As long as you have another lover, it won’t arrive. The true Beloved is the most jealous of all lovers; it is absolutely possessive. It either has you completely or it will not even bother to show up. The poem says the Guest arrives only at night, when everything is gone, when all that you love is thrown away, detached from, sacrificed. The inner poverty, the inner destitution, becomes so complete that there is total darkness, nothing left to see at all. Even you are sacrificed, dissolved, gone. This situation cannot be conceived by the mind. Even the heart does not know it until it finally experiences that the fire of this love does not lead to a union. The arrival of the Guest does not mean that you, the mind, or even the heart will finally behold the Guest or be with the Guest. That’s not how the meeting will go. The nature of the Guest will not allow anything else to be present beside it. This love affair will be final. The Guest is the slayer of the mind. The Guest is the bedazzler, the incinerator. Its slaying and its incineration does not happen through melting you in sweet love. It doesn’t go that way. The Guest is not gentle. When the Guest arrives, it doesn’t make you feel nice and wonderful and loving and cozy. That might be your experience of previous lovers. This Beloved has something else up its sleeve. Just feeling its closeness, you begin feeling your mind, your heart, and your body all burning up. And if you stay with it a few seconds, and do not run away out of fear, you’ll be completely annihilated, totally dissolved. The process of being annihilated by the Guest is hot, the most intense passion, a passion that burns, a passion that eats up, a passion that consumes, a passion that kills, a passion more powerful than thermonuclear reaction. We find out that the passion of the heart for its true master and the annihilating intensity of the nearness of the master are one thing. It is not two approaching one another but one recognizing its singlehood.

A friend is more like a mirror reflection, a guidance and a support, while a lover is someone you enjoy. With a lover you are yourself in a specific way—you are more your heart. When you are being a friend there is more objectivity, lightness, and delicacy. When you are a lover, a true lover, all those qualities exist as the space that allows the heart. In that objectivity, in that generosity, in that openness, in that acceptance, something else becomes possible. It becomes possible to lose yourself, to lose your head, to be just the heart, just the love, just the juice, the sweetness, the song. From that objectivity, that generosity, that openness, comes the space actually needed for another part of you, a part of you that has to do with intimacy. It is a particular intimacy, the intimacy of love. And the intimacy of love is an intimacy in which you lose yourself. You lose yourself not in the sense that you give yourself up or sacrifice yourself, but in the sense that you melt. You don’t melt with a friend; you’re full of joy with a friend. With a lover you melt; you are a melting, a sweetness, a nectar. You are a song in that emptiness and objectivity and generosity. With a lover it’s not a matter of being objective. It’s not a matter of seeing or finding or understanding the truth. With a lover it’s not a matter of being kind. With a lover it is a matter of being. You are the truth, you are the love, you are the life.

With a lover you are a drink, a delightful drink. With a lover you are a happy song. You want to be with a lover not to talk about anything, but to disappear. You don't want to communicate; no, you want to be completely gone. It is not a matter of dialogue; there is no dialogue. There is oneness. In the realm of the heart, there is no separation. That's why attachment and enmeshment are actually fake; they substitute for and imitate the real love situation. In the real love situation, all windows are opened -- there are no protections, no attempt at protection, there is no holding back. It is not a question of being fully present; you're so present that you're gone. You are just a sweetness. The windows and the doors are so opened that there is no you and other. There is just one; the one is sweetness, love and appreciation. There’s a playfulness; two hearts are singing in one voice.