And this, this desire, is the reality which is inside love. The ego itself plays a false part in it. The individual is like a deep pool, or tarn, in the mountains, fed from beneath by unseen springs, and having no obvious inlet or outlet. The springs which feed the individual at the depths are sources of power, power from the unknown. But it is not until the stream of desire overflows and goes running downhill into the open world, that the individual has his further, secondary existence. Now we have imagined love to be something absolute and personal. It is neither. In its essence, love is no more than the stream of clear and unmuddied, subtle desire which flows from person to person, creature to creature, thing to thing. The moment this stream of delicate but potent desire dries up, the love has dried up, and the joy of life has dried up. It’s no good trying to turn on the tap. Desire is either flowing, or gone, and the love with it, and the life too. This subtle streaming of desire is beyond the control of the ego. The ego says: “This is _my_ love, to do as I like with! This is _my_ desire, given me for my own pleasure.” But the ego deceives itself. The individual cannot possess the love which he himself feels. Neither should he be entirely possessed by it. Neither man nor woman should sacrifice individuality to love, nor love to individuality. If we lose desire out of our life, we become empty vessels. But if we breakout own integrity, we become a squalid mess, like a jar of honey dropped and smashed. The individual has nothing, really, to do with love. That is, his individuality hasn’t. Out of the deep silence of his individuality runs the stream of desire, into the open squash-blossom of the world. And the stream of desire may meet and mingle with the stream from a woman. But it is never _himself_ that meets and mingles with _herself_: any more than two lakes, whose waters meet to make one river, in the distance, meet in themselves. The two individuals stay apart, for ever and ever. But the two streams of desire, like the Blue Nile and the White Nile, from the mountains one and from the low hot lake the other, meet and at length mix their strange and alien waters, to make a Nilus Flux. See then the childish mistake we have made, about love. We have _insisted_ that the two individualities should “fit”. We have insisted that the “love” between man and woman must be “perfect”. What on earth that means, is a mystery. What would a perfect Nilus Flux be?--one that never overflowed its banks? or one that always overflowed its banks? or one that had exactly the same overflow every year, to a hair’s-breadth? My dear, it is absurd. Perfect love is an absurdity. As for casting out fear, you’d better be careful. For fear, like curses and chickens, will also come home to roost.