Most people are terribly lonely, bored with life, and pleasure becomes the means of escape from their loneliness, their depression, their ugliness, their brutality and all the rest of it. So one has to understand this extraordinary principle of pleasure on which most of our culture is based – morally, religiously, sexually, aesthetically, you know, every way that is the principle on which man functions. One can see how pleasure is sustained by thought. You had an extraordinary meal yesterday and it brought you pleasure, and you want that pleasure repeated tomorrow. One had physical pain and you are afraid that it might happen again. The fear comes in when you think what might happen. Like in death, you put it away, as far away as you can because you are afraid of what might happen, and you don’t want to die. Again thought puts it as far away as possible and never understands what death is, nor does it understand pleasure and fear, so it must escape. Thought and fear become mechanical, and our culture is mechanical because most people are second-hand people. I’m not insulting but just saying what is. To really understand the immense thing called love, one has to understand all this.