75. Love.

      Rest is the supreme goal, work is the medium.

      Total relaxation, with complete freedom from effort,

      is the supreme goal.

      Then life is a play, and then even effort becomes play.

      Poetry, philosophy, religion are the fruits of repose.

      This has not been available to everyone,

      but technology and science will make it so

      in the near future.

      That is why I am in favor of technology.

      Those who attribute intrinsic value to labor

      oppose the use of machines – they have to.

      For me, labor has no such intrinsic value: on the contrary,

      I see it as a burden.

      As long as work is a prerequisite for rest

      it cannot be blissful.

      When work flows out of a state of rest voluntarily,

      then it is blissful.

      So I cannot call rest a sin.

      Nor do I support sacrifice.

      I do not want anyone to live for anybody else, or one generation

      to sacrifice itself for another.

      Such sacrifices turn out to be very costly –

      those who make them expect an inhuman return.

      This is why fathers expect the impossible

      from their sons.

      If each father lives for his son who will live for himself?

      For every son is a potential father.

      No, I want everyone to live for himself –

      for his own happiness, his own state of rest.

      When a father is happy he does much more for his son –

      and easily, because it comes out of his happiness.

      Then there is neither sacrifice nor renunciation;

      what he does comes naturally out of his being a father –

      and a happy father at that.

      Then he has no inhuman expectations of his son,

      and where there is no pressure from expectations,

      expectations are fulfilled – out of the son being a son.

      In short, I teach each person to be selfish.

      Altruistic teachings have taught man nothing but suicide,

      and a suicidal man is always homicidal.

      The unhappy sow their sorrow amongst others.

      I am also against the sacrifice of the present for the future,

      because what is is always present.

      If you live in it totally the future will be born out of it –

      and when it comes it too will be the present.

      For he who has the habit of sacrificing the present for the future,

      the future never comes

      because whatever comes is again

      always sacrificed for that which has not yet come.

      Finally, you ask why I too work for others

      and for the future.

      First of all, I do not work.

      Whatever I do flows out of my state of rest.

      I do not swim, I just float.

      No one can ever do anything for another

      but if something happens to others out of what I am,

      that is something else,

      and there too I am not the doer.

      As for the future –

      for me, the present is everything.

      And the past too is also a present – that has passed away.

      And the future too – that is a