I.20. MAN NA RANGAYE KAPADA

THE YOGI DYES HIS GARMENTS,

INSTEAD OF DYEING HIS MIND IN THE COLORS OF LOVE:

HE SITS WITHIN THE TEMPLE OF THE LORD,

LEAVING BRAHMA TO WORSHIP A STONE.

HE PIERCES HOLES IN HIS EARS, HE HAS A GREAT BEARD

AND MATTED LOCKS, HE LOOKS LIKE A GOAT:

HE GOES FORTH INTO THE WILDERNESS, KILLING ALL HIS DESIRES,

AND TURNS HIMSELF INTO AN EUNUCH.

HE SHAVES HIS HEAD AND DYES HIS GARMENTS;

HE READS THE GITA AND BECOMES A MIGHTY TALKER.

KABIR SAYS: "YOU ARE GOING TO THE DOORS OF DEATH,

BOUND HAND AND FOOT."

III.102. HAM SE RAHA NA JAY

I HEAR THE MELODY OF HIS FLUTE, AND I CANNOT CONTAIN MYSELF:

THE FLOWER BLOOMS, THOUGH IT IS NOT SPRING;

AND ALREADY THE BEE HAS RECEIVED ITS INVITATION.

THE SKY ROARS AND THE LIGHTNING FLASHES,

THE WAVES ARISE IN MY HEART,

THE RAIN FALLS; AND MY HEART LONGS FOR MY LORD.

WHERE THE RHYTHM OF THE WORLD RISES AND FALLS,

THITHER MY HEART HAS REACHED:

THERE THE HIDDEN BANNERS ARE FLUTTERING IN THE AIR.

KABIR SAYS: "MY HEART IS DYING, THOUGH IT LIVES."

Man is a rainbow, all the seven colors together. That is his beauty and that is his problem too. Man is multi-faceted, multi-dimensional. His being is not simple, it is a great complexity. And out of that complexity is born the harmony we call God: the divine melody.

So the first thing to be understood about man is that man is not yet. Man is only a possibility, a potentiality. Man can be, man is a promise. The dog is, the rock is, the sun is... man CAN BE. Hence the anxiety and anguish -- one can miss too; there is no certainty. You may flower, you may not flower. Hence the shivering, the shaking, the trembling inside: "Who knows whether I will be able to do it or not?"

Man is a bridge between the animal and the divine. The animals are tremendously happy -- of course not aware, not CONSCIOUSLY happy, but tremendously happy, unworried, non-neurotic. God is tremendously happy and conscious. Man is just in between the two, in limbo, always wavering -- to be or not to be?

Man is a rainbow, I say, because a rainbow will give you the total perspective in which man can be understood -- from the lowest to the highest. The rainbow has seven colors, man has seven centers of his being. The allegory of the seven is very ancient. In India, the allegory has taken the form of seven chakras: the lowest is MULADHAR and the highest is SAHASRAR and between these two are five steps, five more chakras. And man has to pass through all these seven chakras -- seven steps towards the divine.

Ordinarily, we are stuck at the lowest. The first three -- MULADHAR, SVADHISTHAN and MANIPURA -- are animal chakras. If you live in the first three you are no more different than the animals -- and then you are committing a crime. Not that you are actually committing a crime -- you are committing a crime because you will not be able to be what you were meant to be; you will miss the possibility. If a seed does not grow to be a flower, it has committed a crime -- against nobody; against himself. And the sin that one commits against oneself is the greatest. In fact, we commit sins towards others only when we have committed the first, fundamental sin against ourselves.

The first three chakras are concerned with food, money, power, domination, sex. food is the lowest, sex is the highest, in the lowest three chakras. This has to be understood. Food is the lowest -- a food-obsessed person is in the lowest category of animals. He simply wants to survive. He has no purpose, he just wants to survive to survive. If you ask him for what, he has no answer to give to you.

One day, Mulla Nasruddin told me, "I wish I had more land."

I asked him, "But why? As it is, you have enough."

He said, "I could raise a lot more cows."

I asked him, "And what would you do with them?"

He said, "Sell them and make money."

"And then? Then what you are going to do with that money?"

"Buy more land."

And I asked him, "For what?"

"To raise a lot more cows."

This way it goes, just a vicious circle in which you never come out: you eat to live, you live to eat. This is the lowest possibility. The lowest form of life is the amoeba. The amoeba simply eats, that's all. An amoeba has no sex life, an amoeba goes on eating whatsoever is available -- the amoeba is exactly the symbol of the lowest man. The amoeba has no other organs, only the mouth; his whole body functions as a mouth. He goes on digesting whatsoever comes close by; whatsoever comes close, he simply digests it. From the whole body he absorbs it; his whole body is a mouth. He becomes more and more, bigger and bigger; then comes a point where he is too big and he cannot manage -- then he splits in two. Then there are two amoebas instead of one; then they start doing the same thing. The amoeba simply eats and lives, and lives to eat more.

A few people live at this lowest level. Beware of it -- life has something more to give to you. It is not just survival, it is survival for something significant. Survival is necessary but is not the end unto itself; it is just a means.

The second type, a little higher than the food-obsessed, is the power-maniac, the politician. He wants to dominate people. For what? He feels very very inferior deep inside: he wants to show to the world that "I am somebody; I can dominate, I can put you in your right place. He has not put himself in HIS right place and he tries to put the whole world in ITS place. He is the ego-obsessed person. He can move in any direction: if he moves into money, he will go on hoarding money -- money becomes the power symbol. If he moves into politics, he cannot contain himself until he has reached to the very end -- and there is nothing.

Once I had a cat -- a very foolish cat, almost a politician. She would go and climb on the trees, and in that she was perfect. And she would go to the topmost branch of the tree and then she would be stuck there and she did not know how to come down. And it was a problem almost every day -- somebody had to go up the tree to bring her down. She would be stuck there and she would cry and make noise in agony. And she never learned. So I used to call that cat "the politician."

He goes on -- prime minister, president, Adolf Hitler, Richard Nixon -- he goes to the highest top and then there is nowhere else to go and he does not know how to climb down. No politician ever knows how to climb down. He learns only one art: how to go on climbing up and up. Then there comes a moment when there is no more "up".... Then, great frustration.

It is said that Alexander went to see an astrologer. The astrologer looked at his hand and said, "Alexander, everything is okay, you will become the greatest conqueror in the world. But remember, there is only one world to be conquered." And it is said, Alexander became very sad. The astrologer asked, "Why have you become so sad, so suddenly?" He said, "What else should I do? If there is only one world, then once I have conquered it, what am I going to do? It makes me feel very sad."

The climber.... In animals you can observe the pecking-order. If you see a group of monkeys you will find one as the president or the prime minister or whatsoever you call the king of the monkeys, and all the monkeys following him. He is the leader, he dominates. If you come across tigers you will find one tiger dominating the whole herd. To dominate somebody else, to try to conquer somebody else, is a very animal instinct.

The real man tries to conquer himself, not others. He wants to know himself. He does not want to fulfill some inner gap by dominating somebody else. The real man loves freedom for himself and for others too.

Then third is sex -- and I say it is better than food, than politics, because it has a little higher quality: it shares. It has something higher. In food, you simply absorb; you don't share. In domination, you destroy; you don't create. Sex is the highest possibility on the lower plane -- you share, you share your energy, and you become creative. As far as animal existence is concerned, sex is the highest value. And people are stuck somewhere with these three.

The fourth is ANAHATA chakra. The first three are animal, the last three are divine, and in between these two is the fourth, ANAHATA -- the heart chakra, the lotus of the heart, the chakra of love. And that is the bridge. Love is the bridge between the animal and the divine. Try to understand it as deeply as possible, because that is the whole message of Kabir -- the message of love. Below the heart, a man is animal; above the heart, he becomes divine. Only in the heart is a man human. That's why a man who can feel, who can love, who can pray, who can cry, who can laugh, who can share, who can have compassion, is the really human being. Humanity has dawned in him, the first rays of the sun have entered in him.

Then fifth is VISUDDHI, sixth is AJNA, and seventh is SAHASRAR. With the fifth, love becomes more and more meditative, more and more prayerful. With the sixth, love is no more a relationship. It is not even a prayer -- it has become a state of being. It is not that you love somebody, no. Now it is something like YOU ARE love. It is not a question of loving -- your very energy is love. You cannot do otherwise. Now love is the natural flow -- just as you breathe, so you love; it is an unconditional state. And with the seventh is samadhi, SAHASRAR: you have arrived home.

In Christian theology you can find the same allegory in the story that God created the world in six days and on the seventh day he rested. Those six days are six chakras -- the six centers of being. The seventh is rest: one has arrived home, one rests. That allegory has not been understood well. Christians, and particularly Christian theologians, never go very deep. Their understanding remains superficial -- at the most, logical, theoretical, but never touches the real point. God created the world: first he created matter, and last he created man. For five days he was creating everything else in the world -- matter, animals, birds -- then on the sixth day he created man. And in the last moment of the sixth day he created woman. Now this is very symbolic: woman is the last creation -- even man is not the last. And the allegory is still more beautiful because it says he created woman out of man. That means woman is a refinement of man, a more purified form.

First: a woman means intuition, poetry, imagination. Man means will, prose, logic, reason. These are symbols: man means an aggressive quality, woman means receptivity. Receptivity is highest. Man means logic, reasoning. analysis, philosophy; woman means religion, poetry, imagination -- more fluid, more flexible. Man is fighting with God. Science is purely a male by-product -- man fighting, struggling, trying to conquer. Woman never fights; she simply welcomes, she waits, she surrenders.

And the Christian allegory says God created man first. Man is the highest in the animal kingdom -- but as far as humanity is concerned, woman is higher. Christian theologians have interpreted it in an absolutely wrong way -- they have interpreted in a male chauvinist way. They think man is more important, so God created man first. Then animals must be even more important! The logic is false. They think man is the real thing, woman is just an appendix. At the last moment, God felt that something was missing so he took one bone out of man and created the woman. Woman is not to be thought very significant -- just a helpmate, just so that man feels good, otherwise he will be alone. The story is analyzed in such a way that it seems that woman is less important than man -- just a toy for man to play with, otherwise he will be alone. God loved man so much that he thought he would be sad and lonely.... No, this is not true.

Imagination comes only when will is surrendered. The same energy that is will becomes imagination, and the same energy that becomes aggression becomes reception, and the same energy that fights becomes cooperation. The same energy that is anger becomes compassion. Compassion comes out of anger; it is a refinement of anger, it is a higher symphony out of anger. Love arises out of sex; it is a higher reach, more purified.

God created woman after he created man, because woman can be created only afterwards. First you have to create the crude energy and then you can refine it. Refinement cannot come first. And in this allegory there is a message -- that every man has to become feminine before he reaches to the seventh. This is at the sixth center. In yoga, the sixth center is called AJNA chakra -- it means the center of will. AJNA means `order, commandment'. It is the most powerful center, the sixth, and many become stuck there. Then they go on playing with spiritual energies and go on doing foolish things. At the sixth center, man has to turn into a woman and his whole will has to be used for only one thing -- and that is, he has to will surrender. To will surrender is the greatest thing in the world; and this can be done only if you have willpower -- not ordinary, EXTRAORDINARY willpower.

Ordinarily, you think people who surrender are weaklings -- you are wrong. Only very strong people can surrender, surrender needs strength, great strength. If you surrender out of weakness, your surrender is meaningless, impotent. If you surrender out of strength, then your surrender has meaning, significance. At the sixth center, when will comes to its ultimate focusing, surrender is possible. Out of will is created surrender: out of man, God created woman.

At the sixth center... now if you ask the brain surgeons they will also agree with me -- they say the brain is divided into two hemispheres: man and woman, the left and the right. The left brain is male and the right brain is female. The right brain is connected with the left hand; that's why the left hand is not appreciated -- even condemned. The right hand is associated with the left brain -- hence, right seems to be right and left seems to be wrong. It is a man-oriented world, male-dominated world. Right hand is the symbol of male, left hand is the symbol of female. And your head is divided into two hemispheres.

A poet functions from a different part of his head than a logician. A poet is more feminine. It is not just a coincidence that if you look at great poets you will find great femininity, grace, beauty, a charm, a tremendous attraction, a charisma, feminine charisma. If you look at painters you will find them a little effeminate; their dress, their long hair, their way of walking, is more feminine.

Have you ever heard of a bodhisattva the Chinese called Kuan-Yin? In India, there was a very compassionate bodhisattva or Buddhist saint. But when Buddhism reached China, it seemed strange to the Chinese that a man should be so compassionate. So they thought that the saint must be a woman! And so they depicted the saint as a woman and worshipped him as a woman, down the centuries.

The story is of tremendous import. Buddha looks more like a woman than like a man -- his face, his grace. The sixth center has been surrendered. Logic has been surrendered to love, argument has been surrendered to feeling; aggression has become reception. conflict has turned into cooperation. Now there is no struggle between the part and the whole; the part is flowing with the whole, the part is in a let-go -- the whole has possessed it.

That is the meaning of the Christian allegory that God created man first, and then woman out of man. This is to pay tremendous respect to feminine qualities: they are higher than man, they come out of man, they flower out of man. And then, on the seventh day, God rested. What else can you do when you have come home? SAHASRAR is the center of rest, absolute rest -- you have arrived; now there is nowhere to go.

The lowest -- MULADHAR -- is the center of unrest, the highest is the center of rest, and between these two there are seven divisions. You can call them seven colors -- yes, man is a rainbow. Or, you can call them seven notes of music. Eastern music divides sound into seven notes: SA, RE, GA, MA, PA, DHA, NI -- these are the seven basic notes. And out of these seven basic notes all music is created -- all symphony, all melody, all song, all dance.

Remember, seven is a very significant number.

And one thing more, before we enter into the sutras. To be more modern and contemporary, I would like to divide these seven centers in this way. The first I call NO-MIND. `No-mind' means mind is fast asleep -- MULADHAR. it is there, but so fast asleep that you cannot even detect it. In the rock, God is fast asleep. In the man he has become a little alert -- just a LITTLE alert, not very much. In the rock he is fast asleep, snoring. If you listen closely you will hear the snoring... God snoring. That's why rocks are so beautiful -- so deeply silent, no turmoil, no anxiety, nowhere to go. This I call no-mind. I don't mean by `no-mind' that they have NO mind; I simply mean the mind has not manifested yet. The mind is waiting in seed, the mind is getting ready to awake, the mind is preparing, the mind is resting. Sooner or later there will be the morning and the rock will become a bird and will start flying, or will become a tree and will start blossoming.

The second state I call UNCONSCIOUS MIND. In the trees, the mind is there -- not like the rock, God has become a little different from the rock. Not conscious, UNconscious. Trees feel -- they cannot feel that they feel, but they feel. Listen to the difference. If you hit a tree she feels it, but she cannot feel that she feels it. That much awareness has not happened. Feeling has come in, the tree is sensitive. And now there are modern experiments proving it, that trees are tremendously sensitive.

This I call unconscious mind. Mind is there... almost like one is asleep. In the morning one remembers that it was a beautiful night and "I slept deeply, the sleep was very profound." But you remember in the morning, not when the actual sleep is happening; you remember later on, retrospectively. Mind was there in sleep, but was not functioning at that moment; it only functions retrospectively, later on. In the morning you remember -- a beautiful night, such a soothing and satiny night, such deep silence and such happiness -- but you recognize it in the morning.

The third state is SUBCONSCIOUS mind. Subconscious mind is in the birds, animals. It is like dreaming. In a dream you become a little more conscious than you become conscious in your sleep. Let us say the rocks are in a coma; in the morning they will not even be able to remember how profound was the sleep -- it is a coma. The trees are in a sleep; when they awake, they will remember. The birds and the animals are dreaming -- they are very close to humanity. I call this subconscious mind.

The fourth I call CONSCIOUS MIND. That's where man is. Not very conscious; just a flicker, just a small wave of consciousness -- and that too happens only when you are in tremendous danger, otherwise not. If somebody suddenly comes and is ready to kill you with a dagger, you will become conscious. In that moment there will be tremendous awareness, intelligence, radiance. Thinking will stop. You will become a flame. Only in rare moments do you really become conscious; otherwise, you move almost like a somnambulist. I have heard...

In 1959, two drunkards in the French town of Vienne opened what they thought was a door to the street. Actually it was the window of a room four storeys up. With a gay song on their lips they marched out, arm in arm over the sill to the street below. A beat policeman, hearing the thuds and rushing to help, was dumbfounded to watch them careering away, still singing and obviously in tip-top condition. "We missed our step," they explained.

They were not aware at all. Had they been aware, they might have died. They were not aware; they simply thought they had missed a step. Four storeys!

And this is your situation too. Your whole life is almost that of a drunkard. You go on stumbling here and there, missing one step here, another step there. Your whole life is nothing but misery upon misery, stumbling, bumping into each other. You may call it love, but what it comes to is just bumping into each other. It creates misery.

Only consciousness can give ecstasy. Ecstasy is the shadow of consciousness. This is the fourth stage in which ordinarily human beings live and die. This is a sheer wastage. Rocks can be forgiven and trees can be forgiven and birds can be forgiven, but not man -- because you have the first glimpse: now it is your responsibility to grow it, to make it more solid, to make it stronger. You cannot say to a rock: "You missed," but you can say to a man: "You missed."

Man is the only responsible animal -- he can be asked, he will have to answer: that is the meaning of responsibility. One day or other, he will have to answer to God or to the center of this existence or to existence itself: "How did you miss? You were given the rudimentary beginning, you could have grown it. You were given the seed, you could have blossomed. Why did you miss?"

That's the anxiety of man, the agony, the trembling, the anguish -- because man is the only animal in this world who can become ecstatic, who can achieve to conscious blissfulness, who can become SATCHITANAND: who can become truth, consciousness, being, who can become bliss, who can come to the ultimate.

The fifth I call SUBSUPERCONSCIOUS MIND. At the fourth stage -- the conscious mind -- your consciousness is just a very flickering thing, very momentary, with no stability, comes and goes, and is beyond your power; you cannot recall it when it is needed. All religions exist between conscious mind and superconscious mind. All techniques of yoga, all techniques as such, are nothing but to transform your consciousness into superconsciousness. Gurdjieff calls it self-remembering. Kabir calls it SURATI YOGA -- `surati' also means remembering. Jesus says again and again: Be aware! Be awake! Watch! Buddha says: Be alert. Krishnamurti goes on talking about awareness; for forty years he has been talking about only one thing, and that is awareness. One word is the whole message: that word is the bridge between conscious mind and superconscious mind.

When your consciousness has become a stable factor in you, an integrated factor in you, a crystallized factor in you, and you can depend on it.... Right now, you cannot depend on it. You are going along, very conscious, and somebody hits you -- immediately the consciousness is gone; it is not dependable. Somebody says a simple word, somebody says to you, "Are you an idiot?" -- and consciousness is gone. Just the word "idiot" and your eyes are bloodshot, and you are ready to be killed or to kill.

Even people who seem to be very very alert and aware may be just alert and aware because they have escaped the situations. Their alertness is not real. You can go to the Himalayas, you can sit in a cave -- nobody will come to call you an idiot. Who will take such a bother to come to the Himalayan cave to call you an idiot? Of course you will not get angry. Your state of awareness in a Himalayan cave is not worth much, because there is no test for it, no possibility to destroy it. Hence, Kabir says: Be in the world. Don't be of the world, but be in the world, live in the world. Live in the ordinary situations where everything provokes you to be unconscious and everybody helps you to be conscious.

If you understand it, the world is a great device of God to make you more conscious. Your enemy is your friend, and the curses are blessings, and the misfortunes can be turned into fortunes. It depends only on one thing: if you know the key of awareness. Then you can turn everything into gold. When somebody insults, that is the moment to keep alert. When your wife looks at somebody else and you feel hurt, that is the moment to keep alert. When you are feeling sad, gloomy, depressed, when you feel the whole world is against you, that is the moment to be alert. When you are surrounded by a dark night, that is the moment to keep your light burning. And all these situations will prove helpful -- they are meant for it.

From conscious mind to superconscious mind is all yoga, meditation, prayer, awareness. Subsuperconscious mind is an integrated phenomenon, but you will still lose it sometimes. Not ordinarily when you are wakeful, but when you go to sleep you may lose it. Subsuperconscious mind will help you while you are wakeful, and sometimes even in dreams you may remember -- but not in deep sleep. When Krishna says in the Gita, "The yogi is awake even when the whole world sleeps," he is indicating towards a higher state which I call the sixth -- SUPERCONSCIOUS MIND. Then one remains alert even while asleep; deep asleep, but awareness remains there. This is the sixth. And out of this sixth, the seventh grows spontaneously -- you have not to do anything for it.

That seventh I again call NO-MIND, to make the circle complete. The first is the no-mind of a rock and the last is the no-mind of a god. To show this unity, we have sculptured gods in stone. To show this unity, this circle complete, we have made stone statues of God to show that stone is the first and God is the last and both meet somewhere. Again, no-mind -- call it soul, God, enlightenment, nirvana, salvation, or whatsoever you choose to call it.

These are the seven stages. And this is the rainbow a man is. One thing more, then we enter into the sutras, and that is: not a single color has to be denied. All the colors have to be absorbed in the rainbow, and all the notes of music, all the seven notes of music, have to become part of the melody, and all these seven chakras from MULADHAR to SAHASRAR, they have to become a unity. It is not that you have to deny some chakras, because that denied chakra will not allow you ever to become whole -- and one who is not whole can never be holy. They all have to form a hierarchy, a unity; they all have to belong to one center.

A real man of religion lives the whole rainbow, from the rock to God -- from no-mind on this end to the no-mind on the other end. He is the whole spectrum. He lives life totally. Nothing is denied, everything is used. Nothing is denied at all; if something feels like a jarring note, that simply means you have not yet been able to utilize it. It can be used, the poison can become medicinal -- you have to know how to transform it. And sometimes the nectar can be poisonous if you don't know how to use it.

If you know how to use anger, you will see anger gives you a sharpness of being -- just as if somebody has sharpened a sword. Anger rightly used gives you a sharpness, a radiance, a tremendous vitality. Sex rightly used makes you so full of love that you can go on sharing with all and sundry and it is never exhausted. Sex rightly used gives a rebirth to yourself. Ordinarily, it reproduces children; extraordinarily, it reproduces your innermost being.

Everything that you have has to fall into a unity.

Once a very rich man asked Pablo Picasso to make a portrait of him, and as Picasso was well-known he demanded a very fantastic price for it -- millions of dollars. The rich man said, "That's okay, you just do the portrait."

The portrait was finished. Came the rich man. He was not satisfied; he said, "For that much money... and what have you done? Just an ordinary canvas and a few colors."

Picasso said, "Just a few colors and an ordinary canvas? Wait." He went into his studio, brought a big canvas and many tubes of colors and brushes and gave them to him and said, "You can make your portrait yourself. And I will not charge for it at all. You can take these colors, these brushes and this canvas as a gift from me."

Then the rich man understood. It is not the colors, it is the combination. It is not the canvas, it is not the brush, it is the artist behind it -- one who has combined all together and has created a new unity which never existed before. Those colors were separate, that canvas was just dead. Now it has become alive; now it speaks a language, sings a song. It is not just colors -- a greater harmony has descended in those colors, a music has arisen out of them.

Let me tell you that whatsoever you have, all has to be used -- nothing is useless. Never throw anything away, otherwise you will repent one day. All has to be used. Just become more insightful, more mindful, become more aware, and start looking into things of your inner being and how to bring them to a higher harmony -- that's all. Right now you ar a crowd. Right now you are not an individual. You are not a rainbow -- all the colors are falling in separate dimensions, moving away from each other; they don't have a center. Right now you are a noise, not music -- but remember, in the noise all the notes are present. Rearranged, arranged in a better, aesthetic, artistic way, they will become beautiful music. All that is needed is a deep aesthetic look into your being.

Now the sutras.

MAN NA RANGAYE YOGI RANGAYE KAPADA

THE YOGI DYES HIS GARMENTS,

INSTEAD OF DYEING HIS MIND IN THE COLORS OF LOVE...

Kabir says: O fool, rather than dyeing your mind in the love of God, rather than dyeing your being in the radiance of love, you simply go on dyeing your clothes. Religion happens from the inside out; it does not happen from the outside in. It arises in the center of your being and spreads towards the periphery -- not otherwise, not vice versa. Religion never arises from the periphery. If religion arises from the periphery, it will remain peripheral -- it will never touch your soul, and it will never bring any transformation to you. That's how it has been happening all over the earth.

A child is born -- it is accidental whether in a Hindu or a Christian or a Mohammedan house -- and immediately the society, the parents, jump on him and they start dyeing his clothes. They tach him: You are a Christian. He does not know anything about Christ. In fact, he is not even thirsty to know; that desire does not even exist. He has not entered life at all, and you start saying to him, "You are a Christian," and you go on forcing on his mind that he is a Christian. You take him to the church, you force him to read the Bible, you force him to go to the Sunday-school, and you condition his mind.

By and by, continuous repetition changes the periphery. The cloth is dyed. He becomes a Christian without ever falling in love with Christ. He becomes a hypocrite, he becomes a pretender. You have destroyed his being -- rather than being a help, you have been tremendously harmful. You were not his friend. You have destroyed the very possibility: one day he was going to search for religion, but the search has to be one's own; nobody can force it from the outside.

If you are thirsty, I can show you the way. If you are not thirsty, you may stand just on the bank of the river and you may not be able to see that the river is flowing just in front of you. Only thirst gives you eyes to see the water; when the thirst is not there, it is meaningless. We are all religious people -- somebody is Hindu, Mohammedan, Jaina, Buddhist -- and we are all false religious people: our clothes have been dyed, conditioned.

Kabir says: MAN NA RANGAYE YOGI -- better color your consciousness, dye your consciousness, rather than going on arranging your periphery. Start from the center, start from being. Don't start from behavior, start from being. Don't try to cultivate a character, try to bring awareness.

Remember these two things: character and consciousness. The society insists that you should have a character. Jesus, Buddha, Mahavira, Kabir, they insist you should have a consciousness -- not character; character is just peripheral. If you have consciousness, you will be good, naturally good; there is no need to bother about character. But if you don't have any consciousness, your character will be just a false thing hanging around you. It will not be true, and it will become a bondage to you, and you will have to find subtle ways to avoid it -- because it has no intrinsic relationship with you. The society says, "This is good," so you do it. You do it half-heartedly, you do it without any heart in it, you do it as a duty -- and deep down, you want to do just the opposite. And you will find, if you are clever, you will find ways to go on doing the opposite and go on pretending. How to be in two worlds; a double-bind -- that's what all your character, all your conditioning, comes to. Man is split.

People say, "This is good; it has to be done, otherwise you will be thought bad" -- out of fear, you follow it. Deep down you know that this is not good, deep down you know something else is good, but you cannot follow that -- out of fear. Fear cannot give character. Fear only gives impotence, makes you weaker.

Kabir says:

THE YOGI DYES HIS GARMENTS,

INSTEAD OF DYEING HIS MIND IN THE COLORS OF LOVE:

HE SITS WITHIN THE TEMPLE OF THE LORD,

LEAVING BRAHMA TO WORSHIP A STONE.

And Kabir says: God is within you, you are within him, and you go on worshipping in a ritualistic way. You go on seeking and searching. Somebody is going to Kaaba and somebody is going to Kashi and somebody is on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and somebody is going to Giranar. What nonsense! Kabir says: He is within you -- where are you going? There is no need to go anywhere. In fact, stop all going and close your eyes and look within and he is there: the Lord of Lords is always present within you. He is born in you, you are his temple.

HE SITS WITHIN THE TEMPLE OF THE LORD,

LEAVING BRAHMA TO WORSHIP A STONE.

And you leave this Lord, your innermost being, and you go on worshipping things, man-made things, man-made gods.

HE PIERCES HOLES IN HIS EARS, HE HAS A GREAT BEARD

AND MATTED LOCKS, HE LOOKS LIKE GOAT...

Right is Kabir. He says: Whatsoever you go on enforcing from the outside, will never make you human. You will remain animal. Just look -- I told you that the first three chakras are animal: food, domination, sex, pleasure, indulgence -- these are the first three chakras. And now go into the scriptures and see what they say about paradise -- all these three things, nothing else. In paradise you will have beautiful women, more beautiful than you can ever have here, with golden bodies -- they don't perspire. And they don't age; they remain fixed at the age of sixteen -- at least in the Hindu paradise they never go beyond sixteen. Eternally young.... This mind, who has conceived this paradise, must be hanging around the lower centers.

In the Hindu paradise they have wish-fulfilling trees -- KALPATARUS. You just sit underneath them and all your desires are fulfilled. Not a single moment is lost. You desire; here you have not even desired, and it is fulfilled. Great opportunity to indulge -- because here on the earth if you desire something it will take years for the fulfillment. If you want a big car you will have to earn money, steal money, exploit, so something -- and then too it is not certain. If you are fortunate, after a few years of struggle you may have a big car. Not so in the Hindu paradise: the desire arises -- a big car -- the image arises, and simultaneously comes the car. Now, this paradise cannot be very high. It shows from where it has arisen -- the lower animal centers.

In the Mohammedan paradise even worse things are possible, because in the Mohammedan countries.... This is something: all races and all religions that have come out of Judaism, somehow have always been homosexual. In the Mohammedan countries homosexuality was so prevalent that that too is provided for in their paradise. Not only beautiful women but beautiful boys will be available. This seems ugly; just the very idea seems nauseating. But those three lower chakras -- whatsoever their desires are, they have been projected.

Kabir says:

HE PIERCES HOLES IN HIS EARS, HE HAS A GREAT BEARD

AND MATTED LOCKS, HE LOOKS LIKE A GOAT...

It is very symbolic. He says: Your whole idea of religion is obsessed so much with the lower centers that you are not a man yet. You may be just a goat -- very animalistic.

HE GOES FORTH INTO THE WILDERNESS, KILLING ALL HIS DESIRES,

AND TURNS HIMSELF INTO AN EUNUCH.

And Kabir says: Repression is not BRAHMACHARYA. Repressing your desires and destroying your desires is not the way of celibacy, because if you repress your desires you will remain hung-up with them. Whatsoever is repressed, you have to repress it again and again and again, and whatsoever is repressed, you have to sit on it continuously; otherwise there is fear -- if you move somewhere else, it may bubble up again.

Repression can never bring freedom. Repression makes you a slave. Repress anything, and that will become your master. So the so-called celibates in the monasteries -- the BRAHMACHARIS -- they are continuously obsessed with sex. Their whole obsession is sex, their mind is completely sexual -- it has to be so. Or, if you are mad, and you are REALLY against the body and you start destroying the body, the only thing that you can succeed in will be that you will become a eunuch.

Yes, that too has happened. In Russia there has been a Christian sect; for hundreds of years they have existed, and their number has been great. They cut their sexual organs -- actually cut. Stupid, because just by cutting your sexual organs you don't go beyond sex. You simply become incapable of sex -- but to become incapable is not to go beyond. Incapacity is not transcendence.

Kabir says: Be natural. Let this sexual energy be understood more, in a deeper way; let it be transformed, channelled to higher parts in your being: let it move from the third center to the fourth, from the fourth to the fifth, and you will see -- the sexual energy is not your enemy; it is a great reservoir, a great gift from God. It has tremendous value. Without it there is no possibility of spiritual growth.

Have you ever heard about any impotent person becoming enlightened? I have never come across any. Otherwise, impotent people would be the most enlightened people in the world. They don't have energy -- they should reach first. But it seems they never reach -- because without energy there is no possibility of movement, without energy there is no growth. You have to ride on the waves of energy.

Kabir is in tremendous love with life and all that life is. He says: Use all. Use it for higher purposes, go on finding higher goals, go on finding better and better goals, higher harmonies -- but never deny anything, never say no to anything. Anything that God has given to you must have a purpose behind it: find out the purpose. Don't be on a hurry to cut anything.

HE SHAVES HIS HEAD AND DYES HIS GARMENTS;

HE READS THE GITA AND BECOMES A MIGHTY TALKER.

KABIR SAYS: "YOU ARE GOING TO THE DOORS OF DEATH,

BOUND HAND AND FOOT."

And Kabir says: People read the scriptures -- Gita, Koran, Bible -- they become very proficient, very logical, argumentative, talkative, but they don't know anything. Knowledge is one thing, and to know, another. to know means to come face to face with reality, to have an encounter with God. Knowledge means to collect information. You can collect, you can use your mind as a computer, you can go on feeding it; it can collect all the knowledge that is available in the world. Do you know? -- a single mind can contain all the libraries of the world. Given enough time, a single mind is enough to contain all the libraries. So much information can be collected. Yet you will remain ignorant; behind all those curtains, decorated curtains of information, you will remain ignorant -- because you have not tasted, you have not known yourself. Unless you know yourself, all knowledge is futile.

KABIR SAYS: "YOU ARE GOING TO THE DOORS OF DEATH,

BOUND HAND AND FOOT."

Go on talking about the Gita and go on talking about the Koran and go on talking about the Bible -- but I can see you are simply going into death and nowhere else, because you have not yet contacted the source of life.

I HEAR THE MELODY OF HIS FLUTE, AND I CANNOT CONTAIN MYSELF:

HAM SE RAHA NA JAY.

Says Kabir: I cannot contain myself. I have heard his melody, I have heard his flute. It is not from the Gita, it is not from the Koran, it is from his lips directly.

I HEAR THE MELODY OF HIS FLUTE AND I CANNOT CONTAIN MYSELF:

THE FLOWER BLOOMS, THOUGH IT IS NOT SPRING;

AND ALREADY THE BEE HAS RECEIVED ITS INVITATION.

Just as I told you, when you reach the fifth state -- subsuperconscious mind -- or what in yoga is called VISUDDHI chakra, or what in the Christian allegory is Good Friday.... Jesus is crucified on Friday, the fifth day of the week. It is very significant, allegorical. Jesus is crucified when he is at the fifth, VISUDDHI chakra -- subsuperconscious mind. Your ego dies only at the fifth -- never before.

At the fourth you are so unaware, you cannot catch hold of your ego. It is very subtle. At the fifth your awareness is more bright; you can look deep into the phenomenon of the ego, you can catch hold of it. And this is the beauty of it -- once you have caught hold of your ego, it dies on its own accord. In fact, the moment you have seen it through and through, it is no more. It is just a shadow. It existed because of your unawareness. And when the ego dies -- or, in the Christian terminology, when Jesus is crucified -- then the melody is heard.

Below the fifth, you go on hearing your own mind, your own chattering. It is all nonsense. You are almost insane; you go on hearing your own insanity, and you go on chewing it again and again and again. Whatsoever you call thinking is nothing but chewing the same things again and again. Some day, write it down on a paper. Whatsoever comes in the mind, just go on jotting it down. Don't try to improve it, don't fill the gaps, and you will be surprised how the mind jumps from one thing to another... meaningless -- just a junkyard, a rubbish heap. And you will not be ready to show that paper to anybody, because whomsoever you will show, he will say, "Some madman has done this." Try it. That madman is within you.

Up to the fourth, you are a madman -- and because of this madness and constant noise that you mind makes, you cannot hear the flute. God is continuously playing on his flute: HAM SE RAHA NA JAY. Kabir is saying: Now it is impossible to resist. I cannot contain... he has called me. I have heard his notes, his flute is ringing in my ears.

I HEAR THE MELODY OF HIS FLUTE, AND I CANNOT CONTAIN MYSELF...

This happens at the fifth center -- subsuperconscious mind. The melody comes, surrounds you like a fragrance, cleanses you, refreshes you, rejuvenates you, gives you new elan, new zest, new enthusiasm. The word `enthusiasm' is beautiful: the root means `God within'. It comes from THEO: theo means God. ENTHUSE means `God has entered within'. God within -- that is the meaning of enthusiasm. Only at the fifth, one becomes full of enthusiasm -- God has entered, the melody has entered. You are surrounded by something unknown, the mysterious has happened. The impossible has happened: only at the fifth do you become religious for the first time. And of course this religion is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan. This is simply religion. You have heard his flute: HAM SE RAHA NA JAY.

And says Kabir: Now there is no way to remain where I am. It is pulling me beyond myself. Now I cannot resist. The pilgrimage has started, the odyssey has begun.

THE FLOWER BLOOMS, THOUGH IT IS NOT SPRING...

And Kabir says: This is a miracle. The spring has not come and the flower is blooming. In fact, in that world beyond the fifth, it is always spring. Below the fifth it is never spring. Below the fifth it is always a dark night of the soul. Below the fifth it is always desert. Beyond the fifth it is always spring. Kabir says:

THE FLOWER BLOOMS, THOUGH IT IS NOT SPRING;

The miracle is happening...

AND ALREADY THE BEE HAS RECEIVED ITS INVITATION.

At the fifth you receive the invitation -- from the seventh. It comes from far away because there is still one barrier, a very thin barrier. You can see through it, it is very transparent. It is not much of a barrier, it is not a China Wall; it is pure glass. Unless you come very close you will not know it. The sixth is a very thin barrier, a screen. At the fifth, one starts feeling that one has arrived. By and by, one becomes aware that the melody is coming from very far away; the home is not yet come... THE BEE HAS RECEIVED THE INVITATION.

Now the God has called forth, the God has provoked and challenged. Now, for the first time, God becomes a reality. Up to now it was just a symbol -- a meaningless word, too much used and abused, too much used by the priests and the politicians and made dirty because of that use. For the first time, now God is not a theological word, it is not a symbol, it is reality -- crystal clear. You can feel the impact, you are thrilled... God starts pulsating in your heart: HAM SE RAHA NA JAY.

And Kabir says: Now it is impossible to stay here, I have to go. Now there is no way. I am being pulled, I am helpless. This is the point from where grace starts. Let me tell you: you have heard about the principle of gravitation. Up to the fifth, you are pulled downwards -- that is the principle of gravitation. Beyond the fifth, you are pulled upwards. That is the principle of grace. Science knows only one; religion knows both.

I have heard about a Sufi mystic who was staying in a house. The people with whom he was staying were afraid because he was a madman, as all really religious people always are. And he was very unpredictable and he could do anything, so they were worried, and they put him in the basement so that he could not escape in the night, could not create any scene -- he might start singing and dancing, and the neighborhood would gather, and it would not be good.

Suddenly in the middle of the night they heard a great laughter, belly laughter, coming from the terrace. They rushed. He was laughing there and rolling on the terrace. They asked, "What has happened?" He said, "A miracle. I fell upwards."

The principle of grace -- one starts falling upwards.

He said, "You had put me in the basement... HAM SE RAHA NA JAY... but I cannot be there. I am falling upwards -- how can you hold me there? And I am laughing, because what will you think of it? You will not believe me -- that one can fall upwards. That's why I am laughing. But trust me, believe me, it has happened. I fell from the bed in the basement, opened my eyes and I was on the terrace."

After the fifth, this miracle happens -- you start falling upwards: the principle of grace.

... AND ALREADY THE BEE HAS RECEIVED ITS INVITATION.

THE SKY ROARS AND THE LIGHTNING FLASHES...

Now you are entering into the inner sky. You have seen the outer sky and you have seen the outer lightning; you don't know anything about your own inner sky which is vaster than the outer, which is greater than the outer.

THE SKY ROARS AND THE LIGHTNING FLASHES,

THE WAVES ARISE IN MY HEART...

And I am become oceanic -- waves upon waves are rising in my heart and I am reaching to higher peaks every moment.

THE RAIN FALLS; AND MY HEART LONGS FOR MY LORD.

And when you are at the fifth, from the sahasrar, the seventh, something starts falling on you like rain. Thirsty for millions of years you have been, thirsty and hungry and dying... and suddenly nectar starts showering on you.

THE RAIN FALLS; AND MY HEART LONGS FOR MY LORD.

WHERE THE RHYTHM OF THE WORLD RISES AND FALLS,

THITHER MY HEART HAS REACHED...

And then an upsurge arises in you. Up to the fifth you have to work your way: from the fifth, God takes charge of you. Up to the fifth you have to search him; from the fifth he holds your hand. Up to the fifth you can go astray; beyond the fifth there is no way of going astray.

The sixth comes spontaneously. By and by, become more and more suffused with the beyond, luminous with the beyond, you become more and more ecstatic with the beyond -- the benediction, the beatitude. Now it is not work: you start singing and dancing. You start enjoying. Now those days of SADHANA are over, now you have nothing to practice. God has taken possession of your heart -- now he will do; now you can trust and leave it to him. One relaxes totally. This is what leg-go means. Not that the journey has ended -- the traveler is gone. Traveling continues now but the traveler is gone. Now there is nobody who is journeying. The journey continues... and now there is a beauty to his journey, because there is no effort.

THERE THE HIDDEN BANNERS ARE FLUTTERING IN THE AIR.

And you can see the hidden banners fluttering in the air -- the faraway goal is not so far away now.

From the fifth you move to the sixth -- sixth is superconscious mind. From the sixth, a sudden jump into the seventh. It is sudden, remember; it is not gradual. Up to the fifth, effort is needed. From fifth to sixth, no effort is needed. From sixth to seventh there is no gradual progression -- a sudden jump, instantaneous, immediate; not even a split-second is needed.

KABIR SAYS: "MY HEART IS DYING, THOUGH IT LIVES."

In a way, I am dying. The old is going, the new is born. In a way, I am no more, and in another way, I am -- for the first time. This is the crucifixion and the resurrection. At the fifth, Jesus is crucified. In his crucifixion he relaxes -- in that relaxation he moves beyond the sixth. In the seventh, he is resurrected. Jesus is gone, Christ has come. Buddha is gone -- the old Buddha, Gautam Siddhartha, is gone -- now a totally new being, nameless, formless, is born.

KABIR SAYS: "MY HEART IS DYING, THOUGH IT LIVES."