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CHAPTER 1
Tales of love untellable
11 January 1975 am in Buddha Hall LOVE’S NOT GROWN IN GARDENS; LOVE’S NOT SOLD AT MARKET.
HE WHO WANTS IT, KING OR COMMONER,
GIVES HIS HEAD AND TAKES IT.
STUDYING GREAT BOOKS MANY HAVE DIED. NONE EVER BECOME LEARNED.
TWO LETTERS AND A HALF IN LOVE, WHO STUDIES THEM IS LEARNING. NARROW IS THE LANE OF LOVE. TWO WILL NEVER FIT.
WHEN I WAS, THE LORD WAS NOT. NOW HE IS; I AM NOT.
2
KABIR SAYS: CLOUDS OF LOVE CAME ON ME SHOWERING; SOAKED THE HEART, GREENING THE INNER JUNGLE. A HEART DRY OF LOVE;
RAM AGAIN UNTASTED.
THUS IS MAN IN THIS WORLD:
HIS ARISING WASTED.
ROUSED, ECSTATIC WITH HIS NAME, LOVE-DRUNK, OVERFLOWING, REVELLING IN HIS VISION.
WHY BOTHER WITH LIBERATION? TALE OF LOVE, UNTELLABLE. NOT A BIT’S EVER TOLD.
THE SWEETS OF A DUMB ONE – HE ENJOYS... AND SMILES.
I look at you and am convinced of one thing, that you once had something – some treasure, some symmetry, some secret, some key – but you have lost it. Every moment, asleep or awake, you are always busy looking for something. It is quite possible you do not know exactly what you are searching for and that you are unaware of what you have lost, but I see the hunger in your eyes. It is apparent in every beat of your heart.
This quest has been going on for countless lives. Sometimes you call it the search for truth. But you have never known truth, so how can you lose it? And sometimes you call it the search for God. But your meeting with Him has never taken place, so how can you be separated from Him? You go in search to the temples, to the mosques, to Kashi and to Mecca; you knock on every door you come across in the hope you will find what you have lost. But as long as you do not know exactly what it is you have lost your search cannot be fulfilled. Your own experience will tell you the same thing – you have knocked on many doors, but you have always returned empty-handed. The doors are not to be blamed for this. Before you set out in search you should know what it is you are looking for, what it is you have lost.
If an illness is incorrectly diagnosed how can you know the right medicine to take? Even if a doctor is here what good will he do? Nanak fell ill – the illness was the same as yours – and the people in his house sent for a physician. Whenever someone is ill we automatically send for a doctor; we don’t understand there are some diseases that have nothing whatsoever to do with doctors. In any case the physician came, took hold of Nanak’s wrist and started to take his pulse. Nanak began to laugh. “There is no illness there,” he said. “You will discover nothing by taking my pulse. The illness is of the heart.” The doctor had no idea what Nanak was talking about. Doctors have their own worlds and they diagnose illnesses by taking one’s pulse. Nanak needed a master, a spiritual physician, and not a medical doctor.
The master is also a physician, not of the body but of the heart. And the master’s first task is to make it clear to you what it is you are seeking. Then the search becomes very easy. When the diagnosis is correct it is not too difficult to find the proper medicine. Diagnosis is half the cure. But if the diagnosis is incorrect, then even vast quantities of medicine will be of no use to you.
What generally happens is that you become enamored of words. You begin to think, “Ah yes, this is what I have lost. It is God I have lost. It is freedom I have lost.” Then you set out on your search. And it is wrong from the very beginning.
As I talk to you, I look into your hearts and I see that the throne within you is unoccupied. The throne is there, and someone must have sat on it at one time or another, but at present he is away, he is wandering somewhere else. Your heart is that throne; the king, love itself, has left it behind and has gone roaming in some far off place.
The search for love is possible; every child is born with love. Before you can search for something you have to lose it, and although every child is born with love it gets lost along the way, somewhere in the course of his upbringing. Education, society and culture play important roles in this process. And because of this lost love a sort of vacuum, a sort of vacancy, a sort of emptiness is created within you. You are in search of that love – not of God. You have never met God. But if you regain love then you are standing at His door. You have never known God. He is unknown to you; you cannot search for Him. To search for someone, there must be some kind of relationship, some kind of acquaintance. And you have no such familiarity with God.
Truth surrounds you. How will you find it? Truth is there already; the basic problem is that you have no vision. The sun is always shining but you are blind. What should a blind man seek? The sun or sight? if you have no sight, even if the sun is sitting next to you what will you do? You will not be able to see it; you will remain in darkness. Sight is needed. That sight is love. God is ever-present. He is all around you. But you have lost your vision; you have lost the means of experiencing Him.
Love is the ability to experience. Love is sensitivity. Love is the experience in which all your impurities are washed away and you throw open all your doors, all your gates. Then whosoever stands at your door is no longer an enemy or a friend but a beloved, and you open your door to him. When you begin to feel the whole world is yours, when you begin to see the beloved in whosoever comes to your door, when you no longer see strangers or enemies, when you begin to see only friends everywhere – when this phenomenon takes place in you, know that you have found love. And for the man who has found love what else remains to be found? The man who has found love has found the key to the door of God.
Understand the significance of love carefully. Nothing is greater than love, not even God. God is achieved through love, but love is not achieved through God. The presence of God does not guarantee love, but the presence of love will surely bring him to you. As Jesus has said, “Love is God.”
The basic question, the fundamental problem, is seeking love. So let us clarify at the outset how love has been lost, because the way to regain it will only be clear when we know and understand how it has been lost in the first place.
The road you take to find love is the same road on which you lost it. But you have to reverse your direction. You will have to turn around and walk the opposite way. The same ladder leads to heaven or to hell. One end is in hell and the other is in heaven.
You begin to lose love as you become more and more attached to material things. This is hell; this is the end of the ladder that is grounded in material things. But as love grows, God becomes manifest. And this is the other end of the ladder. This is where the other end is fixed. Love is a ladder, a path. If you abandon love you begin a downward journey; as you embrace it you begin an upward path.
If you ask me, I will tell you to forget God, to forget truth. I will tell you to seek only love. All the rest will follow. Just as your shadow follows you, God follows love. But no matter how hard you seek, you will achieve nothing without love. This is because the seeker is dull and insensitive. He has neither the capacity nor the fitness for the search. He is asleep, unconscious. He is full of hatred, anger and hostility; he is submerged in the poison of malice. And only the nectar of love brings forth joy.
Every child is beautiful, lovely. And this is because he is born with love. But then, by and by, a disorder somehow occurs within him. Every child is so lovely; every child is so beautiful. Have you ever seen an ugly child?
The beauty of a child has nothing to do with his physical body, it comes from some inner strength. Within him, his lamp of love burns brightly and its rays emanate from every pore of his body, spreading their luster all around. Wherever he looks, he looks with love. But as he grows he begins to lose this love. And we help in that process.
We do not teach him how to love, we teach him how to guard himself against it, how to be wary of it. We tell him that love is very risky, very dangerous. We teach him to be suspicious, to be full of doubt. We tell him it is necessary to be like this, that people will take advantage of him otherwise. We tell him there is much cheating, dishonesty and treachery in the world, that it is everywhere, and that unless he is on guard people will rob and cheat him. We tell him there are thieves everywhere. We are totally unaware of the fact that God is everywhere, yet we never forget that robbers abound! And so we train children to be on their guard against thieves.
If you want to prepare children in this way, then you cannot teach them love – because love is dangerous. Love means trust; love means faith; love means accepting – and being suspicious is keeping a look-out so no one can steal from you; it is being on guard, remaining constantly alert, as if there could be an attack at any moment from any quarter. So, before any attack comes, you yourself become the aggressor. You see this as the best way of protecting yourself. We train our children to be like sentries. And this is how we do it.
When a child learns to behave in this fashion we say that now he has become mature. But by this time his capacity to love is completely lost. Now he begins to see enemies all around him; he looks on no one as a friend. And when he even begins to doubt his own father we say that he is now fit to enter the world. We say that he is now a child no longer and that no one will be able to cheat him. Unfortunately, he will cheat others now.
Kabir has said to be ready to be cheated, but not to cheat. He says that you lose nothing when you are cheated, but that all is lost when you cheat others.
What does Kabir mean by “all”?
As you practice deception your ability to love diminishes. How can you love someone you are deceiving? And if you are afraid of someone then the flower of love will not be able to bloom in you. It cannot happen because fear is poison. If you are full of fear how can you love? Has love ever been born out of fear? Only hatred is born out of fear; only hostility grows out of fear. And it is because of this fear that you begin to protect yourself.
As a child grows he becomes involved in protecting himself – with money, with a house, with all sorts of things. He makes every possible arrangement to secure himself from attack, no matter from which quarter it might come. But in the midst of all these arrangements we forget that we are closing all our doors, that we are even barring the entry of love. Our protection may now be complete, but it is the same security as that of the grave.
A certain emperor once built himself a palace for his safety and protection. Emperors certainly live in greater fear than others – they have such great material wealth, there are many threats against their lives. They have riches, power, authority; it may be stolen at any time – and their fear is in proportion to their wealth. So, in the palace the emperor built, there was only one gate. There were no windows, no doors; there was no way for an enemy to gain entry.
The king of a nearby kingdom came especially to view the palace. He was very impressed; it was so safe and so well-guarded no enemy could possibly get in. There was only one door, and that was guarded by a carefully selected squad of sentries who had been especially chosen in order of seniority. After all, can a sentry really be trusted? One might be tempted to kill the emperor in the night. So they had been hand-picked according to seniority, and each guard had to keep a keen eye on his junior. The other monarch was so impressed he said, “I shall also have such a palace built.”
A beggar sitting by the side of the road overheard the two rulers talking and began to laugh loudly. Quite startled, they turned to him. The beggar said, “Pardon me, but there is just one thing you have overlooked. I have been sitting here begging, and I have watched this palace being built. There is only one flaw, but it might prove costly one day. If you take my advice you will go inside and stay there; then you will remove this one door and replace it with a wall instead. Then there will be no flaw, and no danger whatsoever.”
The emperor said, “You fool! I understand what you are saying, but I would be as good as dead inside there. The palace would be my tomb.”
The beggar replied, “It has already become a tomb. The grave is always the last door to remain open.”
We are all in the process of dying, and the degree to which we step up measures for our security is in direct proportion to the progress we make in digging our own graves. The reason you look so lifeless is because you have made so many arrangements for your safety.
To be insecure is to be alive.
Life’s MANTRA is to live in insecurity. And, of course, living like this there is no safety. A stone is safe and a flower lives in danger – but a stone is dead and a flower is full of life! If a storm comes, the flower will fall but the stone will remain where it was. Mischievous children may come and pick the flower, but the stone will remain where it was. When the sun sets in the evening the flower will wither, but the stone will remain unaffected, will remain in its place. Would you prefer to be a stone simply because it is safe from such dangers? That is the condition you have chosen! You have become like stones. The flower is always in jeopardy. Love is a flower. And there is no greater flower, no more important flower in this world than love. There is also nothing that is in greater danger.
Love is life. Love means that your doors are open, that you are standing beneath the open sky. There may be great danger being in such a position, but this is the essence of life. Exposed like this, two things can happen – one, an enemy can attack you; two, a friend can come and embrace you. But if you protect yourself from the enemy you are also protecting yourself from the friend. If you build a wall around yourself it means you are building your own tomb. You will always be uneasy in it; you will always feel you have lost something. You have not lost anything. It is just that the flower of your heart has not opened; it is just that you have not been able to love.
We prepare children to live so-called “safe” lives, and the result is that love starts to wither. Then we teach them to be dishonest, and love withers even more. Then we show them how to be egoists, and love dies. There is only one way to be full of love, to be loving, and that is to love oneself. And we teach our children to save themselves; we never teach them to lose themselves, to let themselves go. We tell them it is a question of one’s name, of one’s family, of one’s community, of one’s nation.
Once Mulla Nasruddin’s eldest son ran away from home. The Mulla was very unhappy, but after a while he heard that his son had joined a theatrical company and had become a great actor. Now the Mulla began to praise him. After some time it was announced that the drama company was coming to the town where the Mulla lived. He bought a dozen first-class tickets and invited all his friends. He invited me as well. The Mulla wanted everyone to see what a great actor his son had become. He was very excited; it was a great occasion for him.
On the night of the play we all went to the theater. The play began, but by the time the first act was almost over there was still no sign of the Mulla’s son. The Mulla was perched nervously on the edge of his seat. The first act finished and the second began. The son was not in the second act either. Now the Mulla began to get a bit upset; he became quite dejected. When the third and final act opened his son was still not on the stage. Near the end of the play, when it was almost time for the curtain and the audience was getting ready to leave, the Mulla’s son appeared on the stage with a gun in his hand. He was playing the part of a sentry. He walked back and forth across the stage in front of a gate. Then the curtain began to fall! He had not spoken a single line! The Mulla could not take this. He stood up and cried aloud, “You fool! You may not be allowed to say anything, but at least fire your gun! The prestige of our house is at stake!”
We educate our children in the ways of prestige, pride and vanity. We admonish them never to do anything that might endanger the prestige of the house, of the family, of the name. How pleased you are when your son stands first in his class! You teach him not to love, not to be loving, but when he stands first at school you receive him with kindness and distribute sweets to your friends and relatives.
Do you know what you are doing? You tell your son to try always to be first. But only they who know how to be last receive love. You tell him to compete, to fight, to be ambitious, always to be first no matter what the cost. You are teaching your son politics; you are making him into a politician. And now throughout his life, come what may, he will always try to be first. But one day he will realize that he may have stood first, but that he has lost the real thing: he has lost the ability to love; he has lost the greatest thing in life.
A politician cannot love anyone. He has no friends. He cannot have any friends. Do you think Indira Gandhi can have a friend? How can one who has power and authority have a friend? All who are near are enemies, awaiting her downfall, always ready to throw her out. That is why Indira Gandhi makes changes in her Cabinet so often. It is dangerous to keep a person in the same post too long because he will become too sure of himself. Being sure of his position, he will trip her up whenever he gets the chance and knock her down. This is the tactic used by everyone who has ever risen to the top. How can there be love in politics? Politics is full of hatred, conflict and competition. When you want your son to be competitive you are indirectly teaching him hatred, antagonism and hostility.
You also want your son to amass great wealth – piles and piles of rupees. But don’t you know that the lives of those who acquire great stacks of money are devoid of love? Their lives are empty of love. Those who have real love in their lives have so much genuine riches they are not crazy enough to pursue this other so-called wealth.
Try to understand this point clearly and carefully. Wealth is a substitute for love, and so you will never find love in the life of a miser. He is a miser because there is no love in him. His substitute for love is his wealth.
If love exists in your life then you know you have spread so much love around that those who have received it will care for you if some difficulty arises in the future. And if there is so much love in your life that it takes the form of prayer, then you know that God will look after you. You will think, “If He takes such good care of the birds and plants, why should He be displeased with me?”
But if there is no love in your life then you know that there is no one but your bank balance to look after you. Then your only friend is your wealth. If there is no love in your life who will worry about you in your old age? Who will massage your tired feet? Who will help you? Who will support you in your old age? If there is no love in your life, no one will. Then you will only have your money. It will be your only friend. In a miserly, loveless life there is no support, no help but wealth. So you will find that the heart of a rich man is as lifeless as his grip on his wealth is solid.
Love’s nature is to share; hoarding is difficult for love. The man who hoards does so because he does not have the courage to share. He has no heart, no feeling for sharing. Love is giving away; love is charity itself. Love means sharing with all.
You prepare your son to earn money, to reach a high position in the government, to be a man of prestige, to be an Alexander or a Napoleon or a Birla. You are doing all you can to see that he does not become a man. None of the things I have mentioned are possible if he becomes a man in the true sense of the word. If he becomes a man, then how can he become a Napoleon or a Birla or the president of the nation? If he becomes a man, then all these doors are closed to him. All these doors lead to inhumanity, to savagery, to animalism; they do not lead to the human attributes, to becoming humane. To open these doors, hatred and violence are the keys; love leads to the door of God.
And so love is lost. By and by, a child’s relationship with himself is broken; by and by, his relationship with his heart is cut off. He begins to live without roots; he begins to wander here and there looking for what is missing in his life. But he himself does not know what is missing. He has no knowledge, no awareness of what it is he has lost or when he lost it. He was very small, very young then. When you trained him to move away from love he had no idea at all what you were doing. He trusted you. He believed what his parents said. He began to conform to the society, to the culture; he followed the advice of his elders and of his teachers. He did not know what was happening. In his ignorance, his relationship with himself was cut off; in his unconsciousness, his roots were severed.
In Japan, gardeners give a particular shape to certain trees, and Swami Ram was surprised to see them when he first visited that country. He could not imagine how such trees could exist. The trees were two to three hundred years old and only six to eight inches high! It was hard for him to believe a three-hundred-year-old tree could only be six inches high, so he asked the gardeners to tell him the trick, the secret. The tree increased in size but did not grow high at all! Its trunk thickened but it did not rise upwards at all!
The secret, the gardeners told him, was to keep cutting back the roots. The tree is planted in an iron pot with a broken bottom, they explained. The roots are not allowed to go deep; their tips are snipped periodically.
When roots do not penetrate deep into the earth, trees do not grow high. They grow older and older, their trunks increase in size, they look old and withered, but they cannot grow in height. The only remedy, the only way for them to grow tall is to allow their roots to go deeper and deeper into the earth. A tree grows upward in proportion to the depth of its roots; the ratio is the same. How can a tree grow tall if its roots are trimmed regularly? It will remain stunted. This art, this trick of stunting trees, is very much in fashion in Japan. That day, Swami Ram noted in his diary that Satan was playing the same trick on man.
The whole human race has become stunted, as if someone were continuously pruning its roots. The trees do not know what is happening to them; their roots are hidden in the earth – but the roots of your love have been severed and if you do not take steps to correct this mischief you will never be able to reach those roots again. And then, even if you visit temples and mosques, even if you worship and pray and perform all sorts of religious rites, nothing will come of it. It will all be to no avail. No matter how hard you try, your prayers will not reach God. Only a prayer of love can reach to Him. If love is present, it is not even necessary to pray. Then, even if you say nothing, you are heard. But if there is no love, nothing whatsoever reaches Him.
Now let us try to understand these sayings of Kabir.
Each and every word is invaluable. Before Kabir the Upanishads lose their luster. The Vedas look pitiful and second-rate before him. Kabir is singular, unique. Although he is illiterate he has succeeded in extracting the essence from the experience of his life. He is not a scholar; he has expressed this essence very briefly, not at all in great detail. His words are like seed – mantras:
LOVE’S NOT GROWN IN GARDENS; LOVE’S NOT SOLD AT MARKET.
HE WHO WANTS IT, KING OR COMMONER, GIVES HIS HEAD AND TAKES IT.
In the world of love there is no distinction between king and commoner. Where love is concerned there is no question of poverty or of nobility. In love, the beggar and the king are on the same level.
There is only one way to obtain love. The man who wants love GIVES HIS HEAD AND TAKES IT. The man who wants love will have to lose himself, will have to sacrifice himself for it. He will have to sacrifice his ego, his pretence, his false show, his feeling of “I”. This is what Kabir means by “head.” He will have to sacrifice his head. Love will not be born in you so long as you are not prepared to lose your head.
Go into this a bit more deeply. There are two dimensions to this giving of the head. One aspect is that your ego must fall, must disappear, must go away. Your ego is contained in your head. This is why you often admonish others to hold their heads high. And when you have insulted someone, you will say how you showed him you were somebody, how you made him bow his head. The head has become the symbol of the ego. That is also why you lay your head at the feet of the one to whom you have surrendered. Why the head? There are other limbs to the body, but it is because the head represents the ego. So you bow down and lay your head at the feet of the person to whom you have surrendered yourself completely. And when you become angry with someone you hit him on the head with your shoe. The head is synonymous with the ego. This is its domain.
Kabir says that if you give up the ego it makes no difference whether you are poor or rich, white or black; he says that you can fill yourself with love, that you can take as much as you want.
You cannot purchase love in the market because then there would be a difference between the poor man and the rich man, because then the rich man would be able to buy it but the poor man would be left out. Love is obtained unconditionally; there is no question of paying any price.
There is only one condition to be fulfilled. There is only one barrier. The mind, filled with the ego, thinking it is everything, feeling it is the center of the world, cannot fall in love. It cannot be in love with anyone because the very meaning of love is to make the other the center of one’s life. The other becomes so important that he becomes the center and you remain on the periphery. The man who is full of love says, “I will live and die for the other; I will breathe in and out for the other, and if necessary I will sacrifice myself – but I will save the other.”
Love means the transformation of the center. An egoist considers himself to be the center. He says, “I must be saved even at the cost of the whole world. Even if it is necessary to destroy all, I will save
myself.” The ego is aggressive, and so when the egoist shows his love for someone he destroys him; he tries to destroy the other’s individuality. In this kind of false love-making countless people have lost their individuality.
You say you love your wife or your husband, but everything you do is geared to curbing the other’s individuality. The husband tries to destroy the wife’s individuality, tries to destroy her freedom, her very self. He tries to make his wife his shadow, something to be used whenever he desires, something without its own will, without its own freedom, without its own strength. And the wife tries to do the same thing. Each plays the same political game. All the time the wife is busy trying to make her husband a slave, henpecking him.
In America, a certain woman filed suit against her husband. Her finger had been chopped off in a car accident and she was claiming a million dollars. When he heard the amount asked, even the judge was shocked. He said, “I agree you should receive something since you were not responsible for the accident, but, even considering the harm that has been done to you, the amount seems exorbitant.” “I used to make my husband dance on the tip of that finger,” the wife replied. “It was not an ordinary finger at all!”
Wives try to henpeck their husbands and husbands try to keep their wives in control. This is why they are always quarreling. You will never find a bigger quarrel anywhere in the world than marriage. And it is perennial. All quarrels come to an end at some point or other – even peace treaties are eventually signed and wars finally end – but the quarrel between husband and wife goes on and on forever. It never ends.
Once a policeman arrested a priest for driving without his lights on. When he appeared before the magistrate the priest said, “I did not know the lights were not working, so please forgive me. As I explained to the policeman, there must have been some mechanical failure. Everything worked fine yesterday, so I did not bother to check today.”
The judge replied, “This is not a very grave offence, and I believe you. Yet I also believe the policeman. Do you think the policeman arrested you because he didn’t like you? Has he ever had any trouble with you before? Have you ever done any harm to him?” “I cannot remember any other harm I might have done him,” the priest said, “except that I performed his marriage three years ago. Maybe he is taking revenge on me because of that!”
The institution of marriage has become a sad affair, an affliction, because it is a conflict, a constant quarrel. And what is the cause of this quarrel? It is because one desires to become the other’s master, because one desires to control the other. The desire to become the other’s master is a form of violence, and this desire has no relation whatsoever to love.
You are not able to love, and yet children are born to you! And then the same old game of ownership goes on – this time over them. You suppress them; you dominate them. You are engaged in killing them, in suppressing their selves. You think that children should not be allowed to be free, that it is dangerous. You insist that they obey you, because you think that whatsoever you say is true. But you don’t know what truth is at all! You have no knowledge whatsoever of what is right and of what is wrong! Your own life has been a waste, and yet you claim dominion over a small child? You say to him, “I am your father, so whatever I say is right and you must accept it as such.” What is your
motive? What do you mean by asserting yourself like this? You simply want to turn him into an object, into a thing; you want to kill his sense of freedom, his self-respect.
It generally happens that children who are lifeless, dull and lethargic are praised by their parents for their obedience, and children who are full of life, who are active, who jump up and down, who run here and there are complained about. Then it comes as a great surprise to parents when obedient children turn out to be worthless and the mischievous ones, shine. They shine because they have energy, vitality. They shine in spite of your whole clever conspiracy to control everything around you, to be the master of all.
The seed of love cannot sprout because of this burning desire to be the master, to be the be-all and the end-all. Love is the art of dissolving your ego. If you really love your son you will place your ego at his feet. Then you will not be an egoistic father. Then you will marvel at how your son will reciprocate. As soon as you set your ego aside he will set his aside. Now you will be cooperating with each other.
Before now the son has been feeling sad and troubled; he has just been waiting for the chance to be free. He has been telling himself that soon the opportunity will come, that as time advances you will become weaker and weaker and he will still be a strong young man. Your son will harass you; he will take revenge on you. Then you will think that he has gone astray. But in fact you have only reaped what you have sown. When he was weak you harassed him; now that he is strong and you are weak, he is harassing you. This is the unalterable law of KARMA – you reap what you sow. If you are not egoistical with your son there is virtually no possibility of his being egoistical with you when you are weak, when you are old.
We have invented beautiful ways to harass one another. On the outside they are very attractively painted, and we disguise them with nice names. We destroy and murder in the name of love. We kill in the name of discipline; we murder in the name of obedience. All this shows is ego.
HE WHO WANTS IT, KING OR COMMONER, GIVES HIS HEAD AND TAKES IT.
Whosoever desires love should bear in mind that, whether he desires it or not, he is still going to remain as empty as a clay jug. He will only be filled with sorrow and weeping; he will not be filled with life. Without love, no one has ever attained to joy, to celebration. Nor will he ever. This is a perennial rule of life.
So the first meaning of GIVES HIS HEAD is that a man gives up his ego. Whenever love is present the ego yields. Even if the person is younger than you, even if he is your son you will yield – because when love is present the ego no longer remains. Even if a woman is your wife you will not set yourself up before her, full of ego; you will not set yourself up as her lord and master, as her PATI-DEVATA, as her husband-diety – you will yield. And this phenomenon of love is such that neither the wife nor the husband cowers before the other; in fact, both bow to the god of love. No one bows and scrapes to anyone, but both are yielding. If you like you can say they are yielding to each other, or you can say they are bowing to an invisible god of love that sits within their hearts.
The first meaning of the word head’ is ego; the second, thoughts.
Whether they are relevant or irrelevant, your head is a collection of thoughts. Your mind is nothing but a vast crowd of thoughts. And it is a very busy and active crowd indeed. Because of it your whole energy is wasted, and you have no energy left for love. The head is an exploiter. It drains you to such an extent that the flow of energy is unable to reach your heart. It is all expended in thinking. And ninety-nine percent of your thoughts are useless; they have no substance whatsoever. No harm at all will be done if you stop thinking.
But you do not live in consciousness; you are not aware. When you are sitting quietly, do you ever observe what you are thinking about? Have you ever watched the rubbish that goes on in your mind? What do you hope to achieve by permitting all this rubbish? It goes on during the day and at night when you are asleep; in your waking hours and in your dreams. It runs in circles all the time. And bear in mind that even the most trivial thought consumes energy. Scientists have come to the conclusion that the amount of energy you would expend in one hour digging a pit in a field is the same as the amount you would expend in fifteen minutes thinking and worrying. This means mental activity requires four times more energy than physical activity.
These days, man’s physical activity has decreased, but his mental activity has increased and continues to do so. The head has become an exploiter; it does not allow the energy to flow anywhere else. The head consumes all of the energy itself. The heart is not aggressive. It waits. And because the heart can wait, it does without. Your heart will remain as dry as a desert until the supply of energy that goes to your ego and to your thoughts is cut off. The flow of water will never be able to reach your heart. The seed of love is lying there, and it will only bloom when the water reaches it.
Try to grasp the meaning of the phrase, GIVE HIS HEAD. When thoughts and ego disappear, the head disappears. Then there is a possibility for love; then love will be able to bloom. Now you have removed the obstacle that smothered the seed of love. There is no other impediment but your head. It sits there like a stone, blocking love’s flow.
STUDYING GREAT BOOKS MANY HAVE DIED. NONE EVER BECOME LEARNED.
TWO LETTERS AND A HALF IN LOVE; WHO STUDIES THEM IS LEARNING.
Kabir says many people simply spend their lives reading and reading. They read countless books and scriptures and finally they die, but they do not attain to wisdom. Wisdom has no relation whatsoever to information. As you keep on reading and listening and accumulating facts your memory becomes very full indeed, and you will know much without really knowing anything. Because of this great burden of words you will be under the illusion, under the false impression, you are a man of wisdom.
According to Kabir, a man of letters, a man of information, is a scholar who has only read about love. The Hindi word for love is PREM, and in the Hindi alphabet it is made up of two and a half letters. Kabir says to read these two and one-half letters in a book is meaningless. He says they must be experienced through the book of life, that a man must enter the university of life, that he must attend the college of life. This is the only place words like this can be learned.
Although the word PREM is made up of two and one-half letters, Kabir also wishes to indicate another, deeper meaning. Only when a person falls in love with someone do the two and one-half letters of PREM become complete. One letter is for the lover, the second letter is for the beloved and the half is for that something unknown that exists between the two.
Why does Kabir call it half? He could easily have called it three. There is a beautiful reason for calling it half, for indicating that it is incomplete. Kabir says no matter how hard you try, love never becomes complete, never becomes completely full. You are never totally contented with love. You never feel it is enough; you never feel fully satisfied. No matter how much love you feel or make or show, love always remains incomplete. It is like God. God keeps on expanding and expanding, becoming fuller and fuller, and yet his expanding keeps continuing, keeps going on and on and on.
The fact that love always remains incomplete is also an indication of its everlastingness. Remember, whatsoever attains to completion, dies. Completion is death, because then nothing remains to do, nothing remains to be. There is no more movement, no further progress. Anything that becomes complete is certain to die. What else can it become? What else is left? Only something that lives forever is always incomplete, always half – and no matter how hard you may try to fill it, it will remain incomplete.
To remain incomplete is love’s nature. You can strive as hard as you like after satisfaction, but you will see that each satisfaction only makes you more dissatisfied, only makes you crave for more and more. The more you drink, the more your thirst increases. This is not the water that quenches your thirst when you drink it, this is the water that kindles your thirst more and more. So a lover is never satisfied and his joy is endless. His joy has no end to it, because joy can only come to an end when things reach completion.
A sexual person can be satisfied but a lover cannot. A sexual act has an end to it, a limit, but love has no end, no boundaries. Love is beginningless, just like God. Love is God’s representative in this world. Love is the gateway to that dimension beyond time. Love is the penetration of superman into the world of man.
Love is the symbol of God in the world, and the nature of love is like the nature of God. God will never be completed. If he were to become complete, our world and our universe would be finished. God’s perfection is like a very subtle imperfection. The Upanishads say that even if you remove the perfect from that perfection He will still remain perfect, and if you add the perfect to that perfection even then He will be the same as He was before. He is what He is. With Him, neither increase nor decrease is possible. And the same is true of love. Love will be the same in the end as it was in the beginning.
The love that becomes exhausted, that wears out, is not real love at all. It can only be a strong and violent desire for sexual enjoyment, and that relates to and culminates in the body alone. Anything related to the soul has no end, no point of termination. The body dies, the mind dies, but the soul continues to be. Its journey is infinite; it has no restingplace. If it had a restingplace that would also be its conclusion.
Kabir says that the word PREM is composed of two and one-half letters, and pointing to these two and one-half letters of PREM he makes a deep and significant statement about the incompleteness
of love. Between the lover and the beloved there is an invisible flow, an invisible bridge uniting the two into one.
NARROW IS THE LANE OF LOVE. TWO WILL NEVER FIT.
WHEN I WAS, THE LORD WAS NOT. NOW HE IS; I AM NOT.
The path of love is very narrow. No other is as narrow. And two cannot walk together there.
In the beginning, in the first meeting between lovers, there are two and one-half, but finally the other two disappear and only love remains. The lover feels he is lost, that only the other exists; the beloved feels she is lost, that only her lover is – but in fact both are lost, and only love remains. Both heads disappear and only the one in the middle remains. Only love remains. And so the meeting between God and man never takes place. It cannot. When the moment of meeting comes the man is dissolved; as long as the man is, the moment of meeting never comes.
Look at the whole phenomenon in the following way – if you let a drop of water fall into the ocean it will maintain its own identity only as long as it does not actually touch the ocean. It may only be for a very short distance, but the drop still exists as it falls. There is the ocean and there is the drop. This is exactly what is meant by TWO LETTERS AND A HALF IN LOVE – the drop, the ocean and the fall. The drop is on its way but it is still the drop. It still has its own identity; there is still a short distance between the two. That distance is filled with love, filled with attraction. The drop is in the act of falling but the meeting has not yet taken place. No sooner does the meeting take place than the two are one. Then there is no longer the ocean and the drop. Then the drop will be the ocean and the ocean will be the drop.
In one of his couplets Kabir says how very surprised he is to see the drop merging into the ocean, to see that the drop has now become the ocean.
SEEKING, SEEKING; LONG SOUGHT. NOW HOW TO FIND KABIR?
THE OCEAN FELL INTO THE DROP. HOW TO TAKE IT OUT?
You have to understand Kabir’s point of view. He is speaking from the standpoint of the drop – from your standpoint. And in yet another couplet he says he is surprised to see the ocean merging into the drop and asks how the ocean can be removed again. Here he is looking through the eyes of the ocean.
There are two points of view. One is of the drop – I am lost; only the ocean remains. The second viewpoint is of the ocean – I am lost; only the drop is. The drop has become vast and the ocean has merged into it.
If you understand this correctly, if you can look at this from the viewpoint of the half, then you will see that neither the ocean nor the drop remains. The ocean was the tiniest bit less before its meeting with the drop. It was less by one drop. But that tiny amount is not at all insignificant. The drop may have been very, very tiny before it met the ocean, but the whole ocean itself was less. Now the drop and the ocean are no more as they were. Now both are lost. Now only the merger remains, now only love remains, now only the half remains. The lover is lost, the beloved is lost, the devotee is lost, the Lord is lost, Kabir is lost, God is lost. And only love remains.
How can one experience that infinite and immortal love from the scriptures? How can you grasp this love from the Vedas, from the Koran, from the Bible? How can the master even explain it to you? Then what can the master do? He can only do this much – he can give you a push so that you can experience it. Unless you experience it for yourself there is no other way for you to know love.
NARROW IS THE LANE OF LOVE. TWO WILL NEVER FIT.
WHEN I WAS, THE LORD WAS NOT. NOW HE IS; I AM NOT.
People say they want to seek God. They say, “Where is God? We want to find Him.” They also ask for proof that God exists. They do not understand what they are saying at all. There is only one way to seek God, and that is to lose yourself. You will not have the experience of God as long as you try to save yourself, as long as you try to retain your own identity. You can only have the experience of God when you are not. You will never have proof of God’s existence; you will only have it when you are lost, when you are not.
Whosoever searches for proof that God exists will come to the conclusion that He does not exist. You can only obtain atheism from the scriptures, not theism. From the words of the scriptures you will only be able to conclude that God is not. From words, you will never conclude that God is.
Omar Khayyam has said that he went to many learned men to obtain true knowledge. He says they were very well-read, that he listened to their learned discourses, to their discussions and to their arguments for and against, but that he returned empty-handed, that he obtained no glimmer of true knowledge whatsoever from them. You can never get anything from them. Even if you memorize their words nothing will come of it; you will always come home empty-handed.
Is anything more lowly than a word? Yet it is very interesting that a man with nothing more than a vast storehouse of words is so proud of them and considers himself to be a man of knowledge. It is interesting how such a man thinks he really knows something. This is sheer foolishness.
STUDYING GREAT BOOKS MANY HAVE DIED. NONE EVER BECOME LEARNED.
TWO LETTERS AND A HALF IN LOVE,
WHO STUDIES THEM IS LEARNING.
And then:
KABIR SAYS: CLOUDS OF LOVE CAME ON ME SHOWERING; SOAKED THE HEART, GREENING THE INNER JUNGLE.
Can there be rain from word-clouds? And if rain could pour down from clouds of words would they make your garden green? You cannot cheat the trees. They will not be deceived by a shower of words; they require real water to flower. The water of experience is the real water.
KABIR SAYS: CLOUDS OF LOVE CAME ON ME SHOWERING...
No sooner do you do away with the head than the rains come. The clouds will begin to shower on you as soon as your ego disappears. The clouds of love are always hovering above you. They have not forsaken you, not even for a moment, because love is your innermost nature. Love is the nature of your soul. It is not something you amass on the outside and then distribute to others. Just as heat is the nature of fire and freshness is the nature of water, love is the nature of the soul. But your eyes are not focused on the clouds of love. Your gaze is always downcast. The clouds hover about you, and sometimes you hear their call but your mind is such that you give some other interpretation to what you have heard.
In one of his famous poems Rabindranath Tagore tells of a huge temple served by one hundred priests, of a temple where lakhs of rupees were regularly spent on food and on various rites. One night the chief priest had a dream in which the temple deity said he would visit the temple the following night and that suitable preparations to receive him should be made.
When the priest arose in the morning he said to himself, “A dream is just a dream after all. It cannot be true.” In general, priests never have any faith at all in the deity of their temple, although the devotees who go to the temple may. The priests of the temple have no faith because they see their calling as a profession. Such people never have, nor can they ever have, any faith in the temple deity. And yet the chief priest was somewhat nervous. He began to wonder if perhaps the dream might come true after all. If no preparations to receive the deity were made it would be terrible; if nothing were ready when the deity arrived he would be in great difficulty, so he decided he had better tell his fellow-priests about the dream. He called them together and told them what had happened. “It is only a dream,” he said. “You don’t have to believe it, but if it does come true we could be caught unaware.” The other priests said, “There is no problem. We will make the necessary preparations and if the god does not come we will enjoy the food ourselves.” This is what the priests have always done. They prepare food for their gods and then eat it themselves. They also decided that since the temple had not been cleaned in some time it had better be done as well. No one really had any
faith in the dream, and they all kept remarking to each other, “Have dreams ever come true?” In any case they cleaned the temple and made the other necessary preparations. They lit lamps, burned incense and decorated the temple with flowers.
When evening came there was no sign of the god’s arrival. Evening turned into night and still he did not come. At last the priests began to murmur among themselves, “We have been very foolish. We believed this dream too. Let’s enjoy the food and then go to bed.” They were quite tired after the day’s activity, so they ate their dinner and went to bed.
The god’s chariot arrived at midnight. The rumble of the wheels resounded throughout the temple. One priest was awakened from his sleep by the noise and it seemed to him the chariot was coming nearer and nearer. He called to the other priests, “Listen! Wake up! It sounds as if the god’s chariot is approaching the temple!”
The other priests replied, “Stop all your silly chatter. We are exhausted. There is no chariot. It’s only the wind knocking against the door.” And so, sloughing the whole thing off, they fell asleep again.
The chariot stopped at the gate and the god began to mount the steps. The sound of his footsteps could be heard clearly. And then he knocked at the door. One of the priests said, “Listen, it sounds as if he has arrived. Someone is knocking at the door.”
When he heard this, another priest became a little vexed. “Can’t you see we are tired from the day’s work?” he said. “Stop your prattle. Have you ever known a dream to come true? There is no sound of knocking; it is just the rumbling of thunder. Go to sleep and be quiet!”
When they arose in the morning they saw wheel-marks running up to the steps of the temple. They saw that someone had climbed the steps, that the footprints of the god were there. But as Tagore says, it was too late. They had missed the opportunity.
The clouds of love surround you on all sides. Those who have real vision can see them, but you cannot. Your head is the barrier; it stands in between. And the clouds are unable to shower upon you; and even if there were a shower, the drops of rain would not be able to reach your heart. Your head is like an earthen jug that has been coated in grease and so the drops would scatter everywhere. The rain would be unable to reach your heart. Your heart is the jungle about which Kabir is speaking:
KABIR SAYS: CLOUDS OF LOVE CAME ON ME SHOWERING; SOAKED THE HEART, GREENING THE INNER JUNGLE.
The heart is wild, like a jungle. Intelligence is polished, refined by society, but the heart is a jungle – primitive, uncultured, uncivilized. It is like the wild animals, like the trees, like the clouds in the sky. But the hand of man has not been able to touch his heart; it cannot reach there. Society cannot
move beyond the head; only God can reach your heart. The man who gives up his head, his ego, his thoughts, is drenched by the shower from the clouds of love, Kabir says. The soul is drenched and the jungle becomes green.
A HEART DRY OF LOVE; RAM AGAIN UNTASTED.
THUS IS MAN IN THIS WORLD:
HIS ARISING WASTED.
At the time of your death, Kabir says, you will find that your life has been wasted. If your lips have not uttered the name of God and if your heart is not filled with His love, at the end you will realize that you have missed. Then you will open your door and see how often His chariot has tried to reach the temple of your heart. You will see His footprints on your steps, you will realize that He has knocked many, many times but that every time you have misinterpreted all the signs. “It is the rumbling of the clouds,” you have said. “It is the blowing of the wind. It is the sound of some wanderer.” One by one you have missed the opportunities. And all of this you will realize at the hour of your death.
At the moment of death you will find people weeping, dejected, dismayed. But this dismay is not because of death. It is because people realize they have wasted their lives; it is because they feel that life has been wasted. The opportunity was held out to them but they have let it slip through their hands.
No one is really afraid of death. How can you be afraid of something about which you know nothing whatsoever? You have never encountered death. How can you be afraid of it? How can you fear a stranger? Has death ever harmed you? Has it ever done anything to you to make you weep and tremble and cry aloud? No! The real cause is something else altogether. You realize for the first time that you have wasted your entire life. Then you think, “What can I do now? Now there is no time. Now death is standing in front of me.” This whole feeling of helplessness is nothing but the outcome of an unsuccessful life.
Those who have lived a righteous life; those who have known the secret of life; those in whose lives there has been godliness; those whose innermost throne has not been vacant; those whose lives have been full of love and whose lips constantly form the name of God, welcome death joyfully. The man who has known the secret of life knows no death. Such a man sees death as a restingplace, as a place of deep rest that follows the exertion of life. But you will be afraid. You will be afraid then because at present you are wasting your lives away.
A HEART DRY OF LOVE; RAM AGAIN UNTASTED.
THUS IS MAN IN THIS WORLD: HIS ARISING WASTED.
Never stop looking to see whether or not your heart has become filled with love yet. Time is fleeting. You cannot stop it; no one has ever succeeded in reversing the clock. Time flows on continuously. Every moment life slips through your hands; every moment you move closer and closer to death. Death may come at any moment. And death shows no one forgiveness or mercy. No matter how hard you plead with it, you cannot hold death off a single moment longer.
So keep on searching your heart to ascertain whether or not it has yet become filled with love. And if you find that it is still not filled with love, that it is still a desert where the rain has not yet fallen, then be quick to get rid of your head, to get rid of your ego. This is what meditation is; this is what prayer is. The art of severing the head, of getting rid of the ego, is yoga. No sooner does your ego disappear, no sooner do your thoughts go, than love begins to pour into your heart. God showers continuously, but your head has blocked the access to your heart.
A HEART DRY OF LOVE; RAM AGAIN UNTASTED.
And the name of God, of RAM, automatically springs to the lips of the man whose heart is filled with love. This does not mean you have to keep repeating the name of RAM, it means that your mouth, your lips, your tongue savor the taste, savor the flavor hidden in His name. Your palate will enjoy no other taste so much. The taste of that name will roll on your tongue constantly, just as a sweet held on the tongue melts slowly, sending its sweetness vibrating through the body. The name of God has a kind of sweetness; it has a particular taste of its own.
There is no point in simply repeating God’s name, nor is there any point in putting a sheet on your bed with the word God’ printed on it so that others can read it. This will serve no purpose whatsoever. The name of RAM has to send thrills pulsating through your whole body.
ROUSED, ECSTATIC WITH HIS NAME, LOVE-DRUNK, OVERFLOWING, REVELING IN HIS VISION.
WHY BOTHER WITH LIBERATION?
Kabir is saying something very unique here. He is saying that a man who becomes saturated with the taste of that name becomes so aroused, becomes so ecstatic from having drunk so much, that he begins to overflow. You will only be able to love others when you become so overwhelmed by the love of God that it begins to overflow from your very being. This is the state of an ecstatic man. A moment comes when you have so much love you will go mad if you do not share it, when you are so filled with love you will be in great difficulty if you do not empty yourself. In another poem Kabir says to empty yourself with both hands.
But your present condition is quite the opposite. Each of you is like an empty bowl. You wander about like a beggar, beseeching others to fill your bowl with love. You are beggars. You ask everyone you meet to toss you a scrap of love. Your eyes are desperate for love; they are begging for love, and
even if someone bestows a little smile on you, you are thrilled. There is no end to your beggarliness. If someone tosses a stone in your begging-bowl you think you have been given a diamond.
Among yourselves you beg love from each other all the time. You clamor after it. And bear in mind that those from whom you are begging are as empty of love as you. They can only give you consolation; they cannot give you love. Even if they want to give you love, they cannot. You are beggars standing before other beggars with your begging-bowls.
Every beggar is an egoist; every beggar thinks he is an emperor. But inside he is still a beggar. He speaks of giving only so he can get. You give a little love to someone else, but you only do so because you want love in return. It is a bargain. The other is only trying to barter in love; he is only trying to exploit you too.
In this world everyone begs love from someone else – the son from the father, the father from the son, one friend from another – and not one single person sees that the person from whom he is begging has also come to him to ask for love. That is why their kind of love is a failure. Initially, this sort of deception can work for a few days, but how long can any deception last? Very soon you will realize that the other is also a beggar, and then you will be in difficulty.
You see a woman and you think she is full of love; a woman sees you and she thinks you are full of love too. Each of you tries to deceive the other. It is all a deception. The whole thing is like putting a lump of dough on a hook to catch a fish. The dough is just an outer covering; there is a hook inside. In such a situation, love between two people can be considered to have lasted a long time if it lasts two or three days, because no sooner do two people get close than each quickly realizes the other is also a beggar. Both of them have spoken of giving love, but in fact each has approached the other begging for love. Everyone keeps on promising he will give love.
You even ask for love from small children! There is no limit to your beggarliness. A mother looks at her newborn child and wants him to smile, and so she teases him into smiling. Smiling is forced on the child. The mother tries to teach the child to smile, and so in a few days he begins to learn the art of politics. He will soon understand that it is advantageous to smile. He will learn that if he smiles his mother is pleased, and that if he does not smile she is displeased, and so he will begin to smile more often. But that smile will be forced, just a put-on smile, just a show.
Under your influence, young children soon become clever and cunning. It is a kind of SATSANG, a kind of learning not unlike that of disciples who learn just by being in the presence of the master. And when children smile they are doing so out of selfishness. They smile because they want something from you. When they do not want anything they will not smile, no matter how much you try to make them. “What is the point of smiling if I don’t want anything?” they think. You must have observed how cleverly they can flatter you when they want something from you. Then they try to please you in every possible way – laughing and dancing and looking very happy.
Everyone is a beggar. And everyone will remain so as long as he has A HEART DRY OF LOVE. But when a man knows himself, when he knows his situation accurately and is able to rid himself of his thoughts and of his ego, it is a different matter.
What is so difficult about ridding yourself of your thoughts and of your ego? What have you ever attained or achieved through them? You have achieved nothing whatsoever, and yet you cling to
them! You are like a drowning man clutching at a straw. And if you say to such a man, “You fool! That is only a straw; it will never save you!” he will shut his eyes. If he sees it really is just a straw his only hope will be shattered. People live in hope. You all think something may happen and so you hold on a little longer. Your hopes have not been fulfilled so far, but you say, “Who knows? Some miracle may happen tomorrow and my hopes will be fulfilled.”
If your hopes have not been fulfilled today, how will they be fulfilled tomorrow? You will have to transform yourself. You have not transformed yourself thus far and you have seen that nothing has happened; you have not transformed yourself thus far and although you have tried to fulfill your dreams for countless births you have failed. You simply go on repeating the same folly from birth to birth.
ROUSED, ECSTATIC WITH HIS NAME, LOVE-DRUNK, OVERFLOWING, REVELLING IN HIS VISION.
WHY BOTHER WITH LIBERATION?
But the man who loses his head, who drops his ego, is filled with ecstasy – king or commoner. He is filled with delight. And love begins to radiate from every pore of his body.
WHY BOTHER WITH LIBERATION?
Such a man does not even ask for liberation. Nor does he pray to God to grant him freedom, to give him MOKSHA. He says, “Who cares about liberation! I couldn’t care less. I simply want to see You!” Devotees of God do not demand liberation, nor do they ask about it. They simply say, “We only wish to see You. We only want to see You once to be totally satisfied. We are not concerned with liberation at all. We have no desire for liberation whatsoever!”
This must be carefully understood, because it is quite possible for the desire for liberation to become a subtle form of ego. In ninety-nine cases out of one hundred this is generally what happens. When you say, “I want to be liberated,” it is the “I,” the ego, that desires liberation. And then your liberation, your MOKSHA, becomes just an extension of your ego. In this instance you want to save your “I.” You are prepared for the body to perish, but you want to preserve your “I.” You call this “my” liberation. But bear in mind there is only one kind of liberation, and that is liberation from “I,” liberation from the ego itself.
There cannot be any such thing as “my” liberation. How can “I” be liberated? “I” is the bondage! “I” can never be free. There is no liberating “I,” there is only liberation from “I.” That is why devotees often achieve the liberation yogis are unable to attain. A yogi says, “I want liberation. I desire to be liberated,” but his liberation is linked with his “I.” It seems to be the last desire of the “I.” But no matter how purified it may be, it is still a desire. Chains may be forged of gold, but they are still chains.
ROUSED, ECSTATIC WITH HIS NAME, LOVE-DRUNK, OVERFLOWING,
REVELLING IN HIS VISION.
WHY BOTHER WITH LIBERATION?
Such a man says, “I care nothing about liberation; I do not even ask for it. I only want to see Your face.” Such a man is even ready to forego liberation, and in so doing he becomes liberated. That is the only liberation – when there is no desiring at all. The desire to be liberated is not present in such a man. He only desires to see Him; he only desires a glimpse of Him. A devotee is satisfied with very little, and so he receives everything. But a yogi demands all. Bear this in mind – as you become satisfied with less and less you will receive much more. But when you become satisfied with whatsoever you are.…
I say to you, do not even ask to see His face. You should not even say, “I only want a glimpse of Your face.” Why should you even hold on to that desire? Only say, “Whatever Thy will may be it is fine with me. If I get a glimpse it is okay; if I do not, even then it is okay.” That very moment you will be liberated.
TALE OF LOVE, UNTELLABLE. NOT A BIT’S EVER TOLD.
THE SWEETS OF A DUMB ONE – HE ENJOYS... AND SMILES.
These SUTRAS are filled with love. Kabir says that whosoever gives up his head attains love, that clouds of love shower down on such a man, drenching his soul – so much so that it overflows into an abundant sharing with others. He also says love is such freedom that not even the desire for liberation remains. Love is the highest kind of liberation, and when one achieves love even the desire for MOKSHA, for ultimate freedom, disappears.
It is difficult to put what Kabir wishes to express into words. It is virtually impossible. Only he who knows, knows. Only he who lives in love knows. It is a matter of personal experience. That is why Kabir says love is like a sweet tasted by one who is dumb. When a man who is dumb eats a sweet, he simply enjoys it and smiles. If you ask him, “What is the matter? Why are you smiling?” he cannot express his feeling in words, he can only keep on smiling. And so the man who has drunk pure love also smiles. He is also dumb; he is also at a loss to express his joy. He is so filled with the taste that even the experiencer has disappeared. If you can understand his smile then you will know it is the only way he can indicate his feeling of great joy.
Go to the enlightened ones, to the men of wisdom. Don’t worry too much about what they say, but be alert and thorough enough to see what they are. Their very beings are indicative. What they are is not something that can be put into words. The enlightened man is like the man who is dumb and eats a sweet; he simply smiles after he has tasted it.
To sit at the feet of the enlightened man, at the feet of the masters, is the only meaning of the word SATSANG. You should sit at the feet of those who have tasted that sweet, who have tasted the
sweetness of love. Their lives are filled with ecstasy; their lives are in flower. You should inhale their fragrance; you should drown yourselves in their taste; you should merge totally into their joy. Don’t be too concerned about what they say. Be alert. Understand what they are. And perhaps you will understand their secret. If you are able to understand them, you will be able to progress, you will be able to move forward.
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