What is the concept of self-love?

A popular philosophy says, ‘Love yourself. Believe in yourself.’ You can only believe in things that you do not know. ‘Know thyself.’ That’s good. ‘Believe in yourself?’ The idea itself is crazy! Why can’t you just say, ‘I cannot perceive.’ ‘I believe in myself, I love myself,’ this is a sure way to mess yourself up. You will create a loony breed.

For love, you need a subject and an object. It is like if I want to talk, I need somebody to talk to. ‘I love myself’ is a bad idea. It is just like ‘I talk to myself.’ If you are talking to yourself, one has become two. If this becomes well-established, then we call the person schizophrenic.

You need two to love simply because love is a transaction. There is no such thing as ‘I love myself.’ You try to invent a way of loving yourself simply out of a deep sense of loneliness and because you are not willing to transact with any other being around you.

When you say, ‘I love myself,’ you don’t have to transact with anybody. Loving somebody costs life because if you have to love somebody, you have to give up something of yourself. You have to make space. Only people who have never truly loved think love is a pleasure. Love is a way of self-defeat.

The more you love, the more you will fall apart. That is why the term has come about, ‘falling in love,’ because what you consider as ‘myself,’ only if at least a part of it falls, there is room for a love affair. If you are intact and you are trying to love, nothing like that will happen. The beauty of love is that you are being obliterated in the process. It is a longing for self-destruction. That is what love affairs are. You cannot have a love affair with yourself.

It is when you are not willing to even give an inch to anybody, you start a love affair within yourself. And after sometime, you will become two because without two, there is no love. So do not try to love yourself; try to love someone else. If human beings are impossible for you, try a dog.

If you are badly in need of attention, a dog is good for you. Try a dog; if you are successful, then try a human being. But don’t try to love yourself because it is absurd. You cannot love yourself because then you would be creating two entities. And once these two entities get established, you will become sick!