Magdalene looked out the window and saw this beautiful person sleeping under the tree. She had never seen such a beautiful man. Just as there is a beauty of the body, there is a beauty of the soul. One can often see beauty of the body, but beauty of the soul is rarely seen. But when the beauty of the soul appears, even the ugliest body becomes the most beautiful flower. She had seen many beautiful people because there was always a crowd at her door – it was often difficult for her even to enter her own house. Magdalene was drawn to the tree as if pulled by some magnet.

Jesus was about to get up and leave; he had finished resting. Magdalene said, “Would you do me the favor of coming into my house to rest?”

Jesus said, “I have finished resting now, and it was your tree. Now it is time for me to leave. But if I happen to pass by here again and I am tired, then I will certainly rest in your house.”

Magdalene felt hurt. Great princes had been turned away from her door, and now when she was inviting a beggar from the streets to rest in her house, he refused. It hurt her feelings, so she said, “No, I am not going to listen to this. You must come inside – won’t you do even this much to show me your love? Won’t you come and rest in my house for a little while?”

Jesus said, “By your very invitation I have entered your house already, because except in the feelings of the heart, where else is your house? And if you ask, ‘Won’t you show me even this much love?’ then I will say to you that you may have seen many people who have said to you ‘I love you,’ but none of them loved you, because in their innermost core they were loving something else. And I can assure you that I am actually one of the few people who can love you and who does love you – because only one in whose heart love has arisen can love.”

None of you can love because within you there is no flow of love. When you say to somebody, “I love you,” you are in fact not giving love, you are asking for love. All of you ask for love, and how can one who is himself asking for love, give love? How can beggars be emperors? How can people who are asking for love be the givers of love?

All of you ask each other for love. Your beings are beggars asking someone to love you. The wife asks the husband for love, the husband asks the wife for love; the mother asks the son, the son asks the mother; friends ask friends for love. All of you ask one another for love without realizing that the friend that you are asking is himself asking for love. You are like two beggars standing in front of each other holding your begging bowls.

As long as someone is asking for love, he cannot be capable of giving love because the very asking is an indication that there is no source of love within him. Otherwise, why would he have to ask for love from the outside? Only a person who has risen above the need to ask for love can give love. Love is a sharing, it is not a begging. Love is an emperor, it is not a beggar. Love knows only giving, it does not know anything about asking.

Do you know love? The love which is asked for cannot be love. And remember, someone who asks for love will never get any love in this world. One of the essential laws, one of the eternal laws of life is: someone who asks for love will never, ever get it.