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OSHO

KABIR

THE PATH OF LOVE

Chapter 7: A Harmony Of Love And Renunciation

    Energy Enhancement           Enlightened Texts           Kabir            The Path of Love     

I. 107. calat mansa acal kinhi

I HAVE STILLED MY RESTLESS MIND,
AND MY HEART IS RADIANT:
FOR IN THATNESS I HAVE SEEN BEYOND THATNESS,
IN COMPANY I HAVE SEEN THE COMRADE HIMSELF.
LIVING IN BONDAGE, I HAVE SET MYSELF FREE:
I HAVE BROKEN AWAY FROM THE CLUTCH OF ALL NARROWNESS.
KABIR SAYS: I HAVE ATTAINED THE UNATTAINABLE,
AND MY HEART IS COLORED WITH THE COLOR OF LOVE.
I. 105. jo disai so to hai nahin

THAT WHICH YOU SEE IS NOT:
AND FOR THAT WHICH IS, YOU HAVE NO WORDS.
UNLESS YOU SEE, YOU BELIEVE NOT:
WHAT IS TOLD YOU, YOU CANNOT ACCEPT.
HE WHO IS DISCERNING KNOWS BY THE WORD;
AND THE IGNORANT STANDS GAPING.
SOME CONTEMPLATE THE FORMLESS,
AND OTHERS MEDITATE ON FORM;
BUT THE WISE MAN KNOWS
THAT BRAHMA IS BEYOND BOTH.
THAT BEAUTY OF HIS IS NOT SEEN OF THE EYE,
THAT METER OF HIS IS NOT HEARD OF THE EAR.
KABIR SAYS:
HE WHO HAS FOUND BOTH LOVE AND RENUNCIATION
NEVER DESCEND TO DEATH.
IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL MORNING, and the sun was just rising on the horizon, and the first rays of the sun were playing with the almond leaves, and I saw an owl settling on the almond tree. He said, "Getting dark; is this a good place to rest until dawn?" Only one rabbit was listening to him. The rabbit said, "Sir, it is dawn! The sun is rising. You have it the wrong way round."
The understanding of an owl is totally different: the night is day for him, and the day is night; and in the morning he settles for the night. Evening is his dawn. And this much gap exists between the mystic and the non-mystic. What is dawn for a mystic is a dark night for you, and what is a dark night for the mystic is all that your life consists of. Hence, the misunderstanding.
Mystics have always been misunderstood. They say something -- we understand something totally different. Misunderstanding is so natural between a mystic and a non-mystic that understanding seems almost a miracle. And whenever it happens that understanding flows between a mystic and a non-mystic, the non-mystic is no more a non-mystic; he is transformed by that very understanding.

"Kindly let me help you or you will drown," said the monkey, putting the fish safely up a tree.

Now, he is trying hard to be compassionate, trying to save the fish from drowning. He is bound to kill the fish -- out of compassion. This has to be taken in very deeply; this will be the turning-point.
Now, Kabir is a mystic, one of the greatest. What he is trying to say, in the first place, is much distorted the moment he says it -- because he has known it in a state where words never penetrate, where silence is eternal. He has known, experienced it, encountered it, but in a moment when he was not a mind.
Then he wants to convey it: the mind has to come in, the mind has to do a certain role. The mind tries to convey it, but in that very effort it is distorted. Now the silence has to enter sound, the silence has to enter its opposite; the wordless has to become confined to the word, the indefinable has to be reduced to a definition; and something mysterious has to become an explanation... all is lost. If not all, then almost all. Only a flicker of truth remains, just a ripple. While in his own experience it was a great ocean, now it is just a ripple.
Still the mystic has to say it. He has to share it. It is part of his experience to share it. It is just as a flower opens and shares its fragrance. It has to be done; nobody can contain it in himself He owes it to humanity and to all those who are still struggling in the dark. Maybe he cannot convey the whole light, but even a reflection of it may be helpful to many. Even a distorted form of it may help many to seek, to search, to enquire. It may make many thirsty for it. So the mystic has to say it. And whenever a mystic says it, he cries -- because he can see what it was in his experience, and what it has turned out to be in his words: ninety-nine percent is lost. And then when you hear the word, you translate it again according to your experience.
First, the experience; then the mystic has to translate it according to his mind. And the mind is given to him by the society, the mind is conditioned by the society. The mind is nothing but an experience of living with people. He has to translate it -- that which is known in tremendous aloneness, that which is experienced in absolute solitude, has to be brought into the mundane world, has to be reduced to a mass language, a mass medium. Much is lost.
And then you hear the word, and rather than listening to the wordless, you catch hold of the word, which is the non-essential. The essential is lost again. And then you translate the word according to your own mind, according to your own experience. Now you are a thousand miles away from the original experience.
I have heard...

A great Zen Master, Sozan, was asked to explain the ultimate teaching of the Buddha. He answered, "You won't understand it until you have it." But then what is the point in understanding it? When you have it, you have it; there is no need to understand it. When you don't have it, you cannot understand it, and the need exists to understand it. This is the paradox: you can understand it only when you have it. There is no way to understand it before it; only the experience will explain it to you. Nothing else can do that work, no substitute is possible. But then there is no need -- when you have it, you have it. When it is there, it is there. There is not even any desire to understand it; it has happened, you have known, it has become you.
It is just as when you eat food: when you eat food, you don't become food. Have you watched it? Otherwise you would have become a banana. You eat a banana; you don't become a banana, the banana becomes you. And exactly the same happens when you have known God: God becomes you. When you have known truth, truth becomes you; digested, it runs in your blood, it becomes your bones, it becomes your marrow, it becomes your presence. There is no need to understand it. In fact, there is nobody to understand it, nobody is left behind it, you have become it. Your understanding has become it. The need exists because we don't understand. So we go on seeking for explanations, and no explanation can explain it.
This is the paradox of religious experience: those who know need no understanding about it. They are tremendously contented by knowing it; it is more than enough. They may dance, they may sing, they may laugh, but they are not in any way seeking to explain it. They may live it, they may keep quiet about it -- they may sit silently, or they may become madly ecstatic about it -- but they don't bother to explain it.
That's why all the great scriptures of the world: the UPANISHADS, TAO TE CHING, Jesus' sayings, Buddha's DHAMMAPADA, are simply statements, not explanations. The UPANISHADS don't prove God, they simply assert; they say: It is so. It is not an argument. They are not proposing any hypothesis, they are simply declaring: It is so. It is a declaration. They don't produce any proof for why they declare it, why they declare that it exists. They simply say: It is so -- take it or leave it, but it is so. And there is no need for any proof: they are the proof.
But for those who are still in the dark night of the soul, stumbling, groping, some explanation is needed. It will be very, very far away from the truth, it will be a LIE -- but still it is needed.
So mystics speak. They have to speak, they have to outpour their beings, knowing that it may help few. It helps only a very few people. It helps only those people who are ready to trust -- otherwise it never helps. If you argue it is lost -- because a mystic cannot argue, he cannot convince you. In that way the mystic is very fragile; in that way, logically, he is very fragile: he cannot argue and he cannot prove. You can come close to him, you can feel his being, you can look into his eyes, you can hold his hand, you can fall into his love, you can trust this madman, the mystic, you can go with him on an unknown journey. It is going to be a courageous adventure of trust. If you doubt, suddenly you are cut off. If you doubt, then there is no possibility of any bridge. One has to trust.
If you trust the word of the mystic, then there is a possibility it may create a little ripple in you. Otherwise, with doubt, even that ripple disappears.
Listening to Kabir, or to Christ, or to Krishna, remember it -- they have to be heard in a certain way; it is no ordinary listening. They have to be heard in such love, trust, that you don't stand separate from them, that you become all ears, that you become feminine, that you become just receptive, that you simply drink. You don't have any ideas and you don't try to translate it. Rather than being in a hurry to translate it inside you, to interpret it, and to think whether it is right or wrong, you simply listen as you listen to music.
When Ravi Shankar is playing, you don't bother about whether he is right or wrong. What do you mean by "right" or "wrong"? Music is music -- good or bad, but not right or wrong. You don't bother; you simply listen. and because the music has no language, you cannot translate it. You are simply in the presence of the music, surrounded by it, overwhelmed by it, taken off your feet to a faraway journey by it. But you are not deciding whether it is right or wrong, whether it appeals to your logic or not. You listen from the heart.
The mystic has to be listened to as if you are listening to music. and yes, I say to you: It is a music, far deeper than any musician can create. Once you start translating it, things become difficult.
Even these beautiful translations of Rabindranath Tagore are not true -- cannot be. Kabir's sayings are in Hindi; then they were translated into Bengalese; then from Bengali, Rabindranath translated them into English. They are faraway echoes, and much is lost. For example: I have stilled my restless mind, and my heart is radiant: for in Thatness I have seen beyond Thatness, in company I have seen the Comrade Himself.'
`I have stilled my restless mind'... CALAT MANSA ACAL KINHI: now the original has a totally different taste to it. If I have to translate, it will say, "My Lord, so you have done it? You have made my moving mind unmoving?" That is the meaning of it: CALAT MANSA ACAL KINHI? "The mind that was always moving, always moving... my Lord, so you have done it? You have made it unmoving?" That would be truer to Kabir. CALAT MANSA ACAL KINHI? Kabir is amazed! Kabir says, "My God, what have you done? I have been trying and trying and trying, and I could not still it, and you have stilled it? And it was so difficult, not even conceivable. Even a single thought was so difficult to drop, and now it is dropped completely, now it is nowhere! I cannot find it. All those vibrations of the mind, all those waves, continuous waves, all those thoughts, thought-processions -- all have disappeared. So you have done it? CALAT MANSA ACAL KINHI? Rabindranath translates it: I HAVE STILLED MY RESTLESS MIND. Now he has missed the whole thing. He says, I HAVE STILLED MY RESTLESS MIND. No; Kabir is not saying that. The sentence can be translated this way too. So I am not saying that the translation is linguistically incorrect; it is mystically incorrect.
It can be translated this way too: CALAT MANSA ACAL KINHI? because Kabir is not saying anything about who has made it unmoving -- I or you. He has not said anything. It can be translated as: I have stilled my mind. But that is impossible -- because "I" is the mind, so "I" cannot still itself. That will be pulling yourself by your own shoestraps -- Operation shoestraps. You are bound to fail; it is not possible. Only God can still.... So I say it is linguistically correct, but mystically incorrect.
Only God can still the mind. It is a gift. It is a grace that descends on you, it is not something that YOU do -- because whatsoever you do, YOU will remain. Your doing cannot dissolve you. Your doing will strengthen you more and more. Your effort will become a food to your ego.
How can you still your mind? Who is this one who is going to still the mind? It is mind itself. It will be just like a dog chasing its own tail. Hence, I say it is mystically incorrect. I don't know much language, but I now what mysticism is. I may not be well informed about mysticism -- but there is no need to be well informed about mysticism; it is my experience.
Information is knowledge received by tuition; knowing is knowledge unfolded in intuition. I am a mystic, I am not a poet. Rabindranath was a great poet, and he has seen to it that the translation should remain poetic, linguistically correct, but he has missed something of tremendous value.
Let me repeat it: CALAT MANSA ACAL KINHI? Oh my God, it is amazing. It is a miracle. I could never have believed that it could happen. It is incredible. So you have done it?! And I am simply amazed.... I cannot believe it, and it has happened. I am nowhere; you have stilled me? Your grace is great.
Kabir is grateful; this is a song of gratefulness. And Kabir does not believe in methods. He does not believe that man has to do something to attain to God. What can man do? The human hands are so small; their reach cannot be very big. Our reach will be OUR reach; how can we reach God through human reach? It is impossible. Only God can reach us. We can be available, that's all. We can bow down, surrender, that's all.
Kabir does not believe in effort, he believes in effortlessness. That's what he calls SAHAJ SAMADHI, spontaneous ecstasy. Kabir is a lover; his path is the path of love. Love knows no effort.
Have you not observed it in your own life? Can you do anything about love? If I say to you, "Go and love that man," what will you do? You will say, "What nonsense! How can I go and love like that?" You cannot command anybody to go and love somebody. If love happens, it happens; if it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. There is no way to produce it on order. And that is one of the miseries of the world; we have all learned to produce it on order, so of course it is false.
The mother says to me child, "Love me; I'm your mother!" And the child is helpless, and the child is so dependent that rather than becoming a lover to his mother, he becomes a politician. He starts pretending: "Yes, I love you." He smiles. We corrupt small children, we corrupt them into politicians. He does not mean it at all, but he has to do it; the mother says, "I am your mother and you have to love me." Now how is one supposed to love? What can you do to love somebody? You can pretend, you can act, you can play a game of love, but it will not be love at all. And the child starts playing a game of diplomacy. He becomes political. When the mother comes he smiles; the smile is just on the lips.
You cannot force the heart to smile. You can, at the most, exercise the lips.
And he looks at the mother with adoring eyes, false. And he says again and again to the mother, "I love you" -- and so on and so forth. He has to love the father, and the brothers and the sisters. He really hates all the brothers and all the sisters, because they are competitors. In fact, every child wants to be alone; he hates the siblings, he has to compete with them. But he has to love. "This is your younger brother" -- so he has to love. He hates this younger brother, he wants to kill this younger brother. Because of this younger brother he is no longer so important as he used to be. He is no more the center of attention of the family. He is discarded on the periphery; this younger brother, this enemy, has taken the central place -- now he manages, he dictates and dominates from the central stage. He is now not more than a secondary character: how can he love this younger brother? But he has to show love... otherwise he will be in difficulty. And this is how love is falsified, from the very beginning.
Then for your whole life you will go on loving in the same false way. You will go on pretending, and you will never allow the real love to take possession of you. And you will always be afraid of the real love, because real love will look like a flood -- dangerous, coming from the unknown, uncontrollable. You have learned a trick.
Of course, your love is so small that it can be controlled. It is so false; it can be controlled. It is in your hands, you can do whatsoever you want to do with it. Real love is greater than you; it is huge, enormous. It simply overfloods you, you are simply taken away. You are no longer standing anywhere. You lose your being in a real love; it is great, it pours from the heavens.
And the same is true about meditation: real meditation pours from heaven. It is not something that you do, it is something that happens. On your part only one thing is needed, and that is: you have to remain receptive, flowing, ready to go with God. If God is going north, you go north.
When the weather-vane points to the north, it does not make the north wind blow, remember. When the weather-vane points to the north, it does not make the north wind blow. It simply records that the north wind is blowing.
And so is meditation, and so is love, and so is prayer: it does not make God flow towards you, it simply records that God is flowing towards you, that God is blowing towards you. Meditation is not a method -- not for Kabir. That is the difference between Patanjali and Kabir. Patanjali is methodical; he believes in methodology. Kabir believes in love. What Patanjali calls "SAMADHI" Kabir will call "artificial SAMADHI". Against Patanjali, Kabir says, "Think of the SAHAJ: the spontaneous, the simple, that which is not created by you, that which is not manufactured by you -- because whatsoever YOU manufacture is going to be useless, worthless. You ARE worthless, so whatsoever you manufacture is going to be naturally worthless. Your signature will be on it."
SAHAJ SAMADHI means: it is not made by you. It is not homemade, it is God-given. The signature is not yours, it is God's. That's why I say the path of Kabir is the path of love.
I have stilled my restless mind.... No: "The mind has become still. I have seen my mind becoming still, I have watched it happening. My God, you have done it? And my heart is radiant."
When the mind is silent, the heart is radiant. When the mind is chattering, the heart is dead. You cannot exist in the heart if you exist in the mind. If you exist in the mind.... Mind is very jealous and very possessive; it does not allow you to move towards the heart. The mind is a very jealous wife: it absorbs you totally, it does not leave a single moment to move towards the heart. And even if you start thinking about the heart, the mind creates a false heart in the head. The mind even starts manufacturing feelings.
Sometimes somebody comes to me and says, "I have fallen in love with you, Beloved Master." I say, "Really?" He says, "I think so." Now, a feeling cannot be a thinking. Either you have fallen in love with me, or you have not fallen in love with me. But you cannot THINK that you have fallen in love with me. Thinking is a false thing, but the mind produces pseudo-coins to deceive you. It says, "You need love? Okay, have it" -- and it creates a thought of love, it creates a thought of feeling. Mind is tremendously inventive; it can go on playing games. And this has to be watched, otherwise you will always be lost in the head. The head is very tricky and it goes on tricking you again and again. It is a tremendous trap, it can create anything. It is very efficient in producing false goods.
One young man was saying to me that he could not cry, his tears had become dry. And he said, "I'm trying hard, because now I have understood that crying is needed, that crying will relax me, that crying will make me more available to feelings. So I am trying hard."
I said, "If you try hard, you may succeed -- and that is the danger. The mind can even produce tears. It can force the eyes to flow in tears, and it will not have any relationship with your heart. And once you have succeeded in forcing the eyes, you will think that now you have succeeded. And the mind has deceived you."
One has to be very, very watchful. Kabir says: Only when God stills your mind does it happen. So what is to be done on our part? Kabir says: On our part we have to be receptive ends. On our part we have to be just welcoming, watching, waiting. On our part we are not to do anything -- because ANY doing is our own undoing. And this is difficult. Try it. It is very easy to do something; the greatest difficult thing in the world is not to do anything. Not to do is the greatest achievement. Zen people call it ZAZEN: sitting silently, doing nothing.
I haven come across a very beautiful Zen story. Listen to it attentively; it is YOUR story.

Behind a temple there was a field where a lot of squashes were ripening. One day a fight started. Now, you know, squashes are squashes... a great fight. The squashes split into two groups and made a big racket shouting at each other. And of course they used to live in a temple, they were growing in a temple, so those two groups must have been religious: Christian and Jew, Buddhist and Jaina, Hindu and Mohammedan -- something like that. A great theological debate arose. The head priest heard the uproar. He yelled and scolded them saying, "Hey, you squashes! The idea of fighting among yourselves! And in a Zen temple?! Everyone do ZAZEN! Sit silently doing nothing."
The priest taught them how to do ZAZEN: "Fold your legs like this; sit up and straighten your back and neck." While the squashes were sitting ZAZEN, their anger subsided and they settled down. Then the priest said, "Everyone put your hands on the top of your heads." When the squashes felt the top of their own heads with their hands, they found some weird thing on their heads. It turned out to be the vine that connected them together. They started laughing. They said, "This is really ridiculous! We are one, and we were fighting unnecessarily."

Sitting in ZAZEN, one finds that the universe is one. Sitting silently, one finds that there is no conflict anywhere, that the enemy exists not; that enmity is just our own illusion, created by us; that tension, ambition, struggle, is all just a mind game. There is nobody to struggle against; the whole is one. When you come to know that the whole is one, that we are connected with each other, that we are together, that I am part of you and you are part of me, that we are members of each other, then suddenly you have opened. This understanding comes not by any effort, but just sitting silently, effortlessly, just waiting -- alert, of course. Because you can fall asleep, then nothing will happen.
Two things are easy: doing something is easy or falling into sleep is easy. Whenever you are not doing something, suddenly you feel sleepy. You know only two ways: either do something -- then you can remain awake; or don't do something -- and you start feeling sleepy, you start feeling like falling into sleep. Just between the two is the thing: don't do anything, be as quiet as you are in sleep, and yet as alert as when you are doing something -- as alert as if you are fighting your enemy with a sword, and as quiet as if you have fallen asleep. Where sleep and awareness meet together, there is SAHAJ SAMADHI, there is that spontaneous ecstasy. And in that moment you suddenly feel your whole energy has shifted towards the heart. The head disappears; you become headless.
Just the other day, Savita was saying that she was very much puzzled: she had seen me in a sort of dream or reverie, without a head. I said, "Perfectly true, Savita. You have achieved a great SATORI, a great experience. I am without a head! And you are also without a head, and everybody is without a head."
This happens when the energy starts moving towards the heart: one day suddenly you realize that there is no head. Not that your physical head disappears -- it is there, but no more the center of your being; it is there, but no more on the central stage, no more the controller, no more the manager, no more the boss.
The mind settled, the moving has become non-moving. The mind, when it is not moving, is a no-mind -- because movement is the mind itself. When your mind is not moving, where will the mind be? Thought, to be, has to move. If there is no movement in your mind and all thought processes have stopped, mind has disappeared -- because mind is nothing but a thought process. "When the mind is not, my heart is radiant": then suddenly a sun rises in your heart. You are full of light, you are full of joy, you are full of love.

... FOR IN THATNESS I HAVE SEEN BEYOND THATNESS...

And there, you come across the beyond. THERE, THROUGH THAT MOMENT, you come to see that which is, the reality. Through the mind you have always come across your own projections. Through the mind you never come to the real. The mind goes on creating ideas about the real. You never face reality as it is; there is always a screen of thought, and the thought always goes on distorting the reality. You never see that which is, you are not objective. Your imagination goes on working, your wish-fulfillment goes on working, your desires go on coloring things. You can never see things as they are unless the mind is completely put aside. When you see through the heart, you see the reality.

... FOR IN THATNESS I HAVE SEEN BEYOND THATNESS...

In that tremendous light, radiance of the heart, I have looked into the depth, I have looked into the beyond.

... IN COMPANY I HAVE SEEN THE COMRADE HIMSELF.

And NOW I KNOW that whosoever is around me is nobody else but You. In company I have seen the Comrade Himself: now my wife is no more my wife -- it is God playing the role of my wife. And my son is no more my son; and my husband is no more my husband -- it is God playing the role of my husband or my son. Even the enemy is no more the enemy, but God playing the role of my enemy to make life a little more exhilarating, to make life a little more rich, to make life a little more creative, dynamic. To enrich life, God has taken so many forms.

... IN COMPANY I HAVE SEEN THE COMRADE HIMSELF.
LIVING IN BONDAGE, I HAVE SET MYSELF FREE...

Now there is no need to go anywhere. Kabir says: Living in bondage, I have set myself free. Now this is a far greater freedom than the freedom that exists against bondage. This is true freedom: it is not against bondage, it is simply beyond bondage. If you can be free even in a prison, only then are you free. Then your freedom has a spiritual quality. Then you can be chained on the outside, and still, deep inside, you are as free as a bird in the sky. And then you are not fighting, even with chains.
I have heard....

Once Diogenes was caught by a few people, robbers. Diogenes was a very healthy mystic. In the West, he seems to be the only person who can be compared to Mahavira in the East. He used to live naked, and he had a beautiful body. It is said that even Alexander was jealous of him. And he was a naked fakir; he had nothing other than his glory, than his own beauty. He was caught: he was meditating under a tree in a forest, and a few robbers caught him. And they thought, "It is good. We can get a good price for him. He can be sold in a slave market." But they were afraid, because the man looked very strong. The robbers were at least half a dozen, but still they were afraid. And they approached very cautiously because he could be dangerous. He alone seemed to be enough for six people.
Diogenes looked at them and said, "Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid, I'm not going to fight you. You can come close to me, and you can put your chains on me."
They were surprised. They chained him, they made him a prisoner, and they took him away to the marketplace. On the way he said, "But why have you chained me? You could have just asked me, and I would have followed. Why make such fuss about it?"
They said, "We cannot believe that somebody is so willing to become a slave!"
And Diogenes laughed and he said, "Because I am a free man, I am not worried about this." they could not understand. Then, in the marketplace, standing in the middle of the market, he shouted, "A Master has come to be sold here. Is some slave desirous of purchasing him?" Look what he said: "A Master has come to be sold here. Is some slave desirous of purchasing him?"

A Master is a Master. Real freedom is not against bondage, real freedom is beyond bondage. If your freedom is against bondage, you are not really free. You can escape to the Himalayas just because you are afraid of the marketplace and the wife and the children, but you are not really a free man. The Himalayas cannot become your freedom. You are afraid of the wife; and if the wife comes to see you in the Himalayas, you will start trembling. Your henpecked husband will suddenly be there.
It is said about Swami Ramateertha: he traveled all around the world preaching the message of the East. He was a great thinker, a great mystic. Then he came back. He was staying in the Himalayas with his disciple, Punsi. One day, Punsi reports in his diary, his wife came to see him. And Punsi says, "I have seen Ramateertha meeting thousands of people, men, women of all sorts, but suddenly I felt a shadow falling on him -- the wife -- and he became a little afraid." And he said to Punsi, "You tell my wife that I don't want to see her."
Punsi was shocked. He said, "Sir, if you are afraid of your wife, then I would also like to go away from you. Then you are no more my Master. Why should you be afraid of the poor woman? And she has come from a faraway village, from Punjab. You left her, you left her with the children, and she has been carrying on somehow in poverty, in tremendous need, with no complaint. And she has come just to touch your feet, just to see you, and she will be gone by the evening -- and you don't want to see her? There must be some subtle fear in you; you are still afraid of her. You are still a husband then. Then you have not become a real sannyasin."
Ramateertha listened to Punsi's words, became aware, and said, "You are right. Call the woman: not only will she touch my feet, I will touch her feet too. This may be a message from God. This may be my last fear; it must be somewhere in my unconscious. You are right."
Since that day, Punsi wrote in his diary, Ramateertha had a luminosity that never was there before. Since that day he was really free; he was freedom. The last shadow of bondage disappeared: he accepted his wife too. Now there was no grudge, no complaint, no fear, no escape.
That's what I mean when I say freedom should be beyond bondage, not against bondage. A freedom against bondage is afraid of bondage, and a freedom which is afraid is not freedom at all. Freedom and fear never exist together. Fear is the death of all freedom, and freedom is possible only when all fear has disappeared, utterly disappeared.
That is the meaning of Kabir:

LIVING IN BONDAGE, I HAVE SET MYSELF FREE...

Now there is no question. Now this freedom has no conditions about it: "I should live in the Himalayas, then I will be free"; "I will live in a Catholic monastery, then I will be free"; "I will avoid women, then I will be free"; "I will not touch money, then I will be free" -- all nonsense, all rubbish, created by the cowardice of man, created by fear.

LIVING IN BONDAGE, I HAVE SET MYSELF FREE:
I HAVE BROKEN AWAY FROM THE CLUTCH OF ALL NARROWNESS.

This is freedom: to be free from all narrowness. If you are a Hindu, you cannot be free, you are very narrow. You are in a tunnel called Hinduism. If you are a Mohammedan, you are not free. If you think you are man, you are woman, you are not free -- tunnels, all tunnels, all of them. If you think you are a negro or a white man, then you are not free -- tunnels, all tunnels, all of them. If you think you are a communist or anti-communist, if you have some ideology to define you, you are not free.
Freedom means no definition. Undefined you are... as vast as existence itself. And that is the truth, you ARE that. TATWAMASI: you ARE that. You are the whole, not a iota less. The part is the whole: let me declare it. It is very unmathematical to say that the part is the whole, but mysticism is unmathematical. If you go to the mathematician he will say, "How can the part be the whole? The part has to be the part. The part can never be the whole, and the part can never be equal to the whole, and the part has to be smaller than the whole." Certainly, it is mathematically right, but mystically it is nonsense.
The part is the whole, EQUAL to the whole, not a little smaller, not a single iota less. Because the part is not separate from the whole, how can the part be smaller than the whole? Just think of a wave: the mathematician will say, "The wave is less than the ocean"; the mystic will say, "The wave IS the ocean!" How can it be smaller than the ocean? Can you take the wave away from the ocean? Can you take it away? Can you hold it in a box? Then you will know that the moment you take the wave away, it is no more the wave. The wave exists only in the ocean, as the ocean; it cannot be taken away. The wave is nothing but the ocean waving.
The wave is an activity of the ocean. It is not separate, there is no division. The wave is the ocean, the part is the whole; and when you remember this, then you declare, like Christ, "My God and me are one"; or, like el-Hillaj Mansoor: "ANA'L HAQ" -- I am the Truth; or, like the Upanishads, "AHAM BRAHMASMI" -- I am God, I am absolute, I am the whole.

I HAVE BROKEN AWAY FROM THE CLUTCH OF NARROWNESS.
KABIR SAYS: I HAVE ATTAINED THE UNATTAINABLE...

Listen to the beauty of it:

I HAVE ATTAINED THE UNATTAINABLE,
AND MY HEART IS COLORED WITH THE COLOR OF LOVE.

Why call it unattainable if you say, "I have attained?" That's where logic and mysticism go on separate ways, part company. The logician... if you go to Arthur Koestler and you ask him about this sentence from Kabir where Kabir says, "I have attained the unattainable," he will say, "Absurd! If it is unattainable, then certainly, how can you say you have attained it? If you say you have attained it, then how can you call it, in the same breath, unattainable?" He will say this is mystification, this is madness.
But listen... it is not mystification. Kabir is trying to say something of tremendous value. He has to use this absurd expression because that is the only way to express it. Truth can be expressed only through paradox.

I HAVE ATTAINED THE UNATTAINABLE...

What does he mean then? He calls it "unattainable" because you cannot attain it. You cannot achieve it, you cannot make it a goal, you cannot make any effort to attain it, there is no methodology to attain it. There is no way to attain it -- hence he calls it "unattainable". But still it is attained. One day, suddenly, it comes as a gift -- not as an attainment. Not that you have attained; you are simply amazed, you cannot believe your own eyes -- it is there, it is showering all around you. And the paradox is: the more you try to attain it, the less will be the possibility for the gift to come to you.
When you drop trying to attain it, when you forget all about attaining, when you have understood that it cannot be attained, when this understanding has penetrated to the very core of your being, and you are relaxed, and there is no desire to attain, to go anywhere, to be somebody, to have something -- some experience of God, MOKSHA, NIRVANA -- when all these desires have disappeared.... Because you know it is unattainable; it cannot be desired, it cannot be made an object of ambition, because all objects of ambition will create ego -- and through ego it is not possible. How, through the ego, can you become vast? The ego is the tunnel; how can you remain in the tunnel and yet attain to the vast sky? Impossible.
Understanding this: "I am the root-cause of my misery, I am my confinement," one relaxes. When the relaxation is perfect, when the relaxation is UTTER, then it comes as a gift.
So Kabir says, "I have attained the unattainable -- not that I have attained it; I have been given it, it is a grace. God has descended on me."
That's why I say Rabindranath has not translated it rightly. CALAT MANSA ACAL KINHI? "So, my God, you have done it? I had lost all hope. I had even stopped praying for it; it was meaningless. For thousands and thousands of lives I was searching for it, and then I dropped all -- the whole search. And now that I have dropped all search you have done it? You surprised me! When I was trying, you were frustrating me. And now I am no longer trying, and you have done it? When I was thinking I was capable of having it, when I was thinking I deserved it, you never listened to me. You were so far away. And now that I think I don't deserve it, that I am not worth of it, suddenly you are here."

I HAVE ATTAINED THE UNATTAINABLE,
AND MY HEART IS COLORED WITH THE COLOR OF LOVE.

Only when God has happened is your heart colored with the color of love, never before it. Or, when your heart is colored with the color of love, God is attained, never before it. And please don't make a puzzle out of it: don't start asking which is first, the hen or the egg. Don't ask that.
Either move through love, and you will attain to God, or move through God, and you will attain to love. They come together; it is one package. The hen and the egg are not separate -- the egg is nothing but a way for the hen to produce more hens, and the hen is nothing but a way for the egg to produce more eggs. They are not separate. The egg is the hen unmanifest, and the hen is the egg manifest. They are two ends of one thing, of one phenomenon. So are God and love.
That's why Jesus says, "God is love." And I say to you: Love is God. Both mean the same. God is one end of the same energy, of the same vibration, and the other end is love. You start from anywhere.
Please start; don't just sit and think, "Which is first? From where should I start?" People who think about from where they should start never start. Thinkers never start. Only non-thinkers take the jump.
Somebody comes to me and I enquire, "What about sannyas; are you ready to take the jump?" and the person says, "I will think about it." Thinkers never take any jump. Thinking means making everything certain before it has happened. Thinking means trying to make the unknown known before going into it. Thinking means: "I should make all the arrangements. I am not moving into some gamble." Thinking is cowardly. Thinking IS cowardly, thinkers are cowards.
And what can you know in this mysterious life? What can you know? Nothing is known.
I have heard....

In a jam-packed bus, a young secretary was having difficulty fishing for a quarter in her purse to pay her fare. A stalwart gent standing next to her volunteered: "May I pay your fare for you?"
"Oh no," she stammered, "I could not let you do that. After all, you are a total stranger."
"Not really," he told her. 'You have unzipped me three times."

But that's what we call acquaintance, knowledge. Do you know your wife? Do you know your husband? Do you know your child? Do you know your mother? Do you know me? What do we know? All knowledge is so superficial. But still, the thinker thinks that first he has to make everything certain, first he has to become in every way knowledgeable. He has to have the map, the guide, the possibilities, the dangers, the benefits -- and then he will move. Then you may move into anything, but you cannot move into sannyas: it is a gamble. Then you cannot move in God: it is the ultimate gamble. That which you see is not -- so what will you think? And what CAN you think?

THAT WHICH YOU SEE IS NOT:
AND FOR THAT WHICH IS YOU HAVE NO WORDS.

That which is you cannot see because of your thinking. Thinking is the greatest foolishness of man. Then you carry ideas in your head, and you are always looking through those ideas.
I have heard....

Commuters from Connecticut have become used to horrendous railroad service, but when a local limped into Grand Central an hour and a half late on a scheduled forty-minute run, even one meek little schnook from Mount Vernon protested.
The conductor reminded him, "We are always late when it is snowing."
"I know that, " persisted the schnook. "But this morning there is not even a cloud in the sky!"
"We are not responsible for that," concluded the loyal conductor. "Snow was predicted."

That is the way of knowledge. You go on looking for things which are predicted, but not for things which ARE. You go on looking for things for which you have been trained, but not for those things which are. You go on looking for that for which society has prepared you, but not for that which is the reality. No society has yet been able to prepare you for reality -- because society is a myth. Society is a fiction, society is a lie.

I have heard a very rare incident, and it is true; reliable sources say it is so.
When Darwin came across a small island in his journeys, they were traveling in a very big ship. The islanders had never seen such a big thing. They had known only very small boats where two persons, at the most, could sit -- just fishermen's boats. When this big ship landed near the island, Darwin reports in his diaries, the islanders did not see it! Nobody was attracted. People were working on the shore and fishing -- and such a huge ship, and nobody even looked. They were surprised: "What is the matter? Are these people mad?" they should have run, they should have gathered in a crowd. The whole small island should have gathered there; that's what Darwin was expecting.
When they went on land and they enquired, then, by-and-by, the islanders became aware of the ship. And then the chief said, "Because we have never seen such a thing, we never expected it."
And unless you expect a thing, how can you see it? When you expect a thing you start seeing things. If you are moving through a monastery and you don't know that it is a monastery, you may see something else which is not there. If you know it is a monastery -- it may not be a monastery -- you may start seeing things which are not there. If you go through a cemetery and you don't know, you will not see ghosts. But if you know that it is a cemetery -- it may not be, you may be misinformed -- you will start seeing ghosts. Your vision is clouded by what you expect. Your vision is not clear.

THAT WHICH YOU SEE IS NOT:
AND FOR THAT WHICH IS YOU HAVE NO WORDS.
UNLESS YOU SEE, YOU BELIEVE NOT:
WHAT IS TOLD YOU, YOU CANNOT ACCEPT.

And Kabir says, I know -- whatsoever I am saying you cannot believe it, because you have not seen it. How can you believe it? I can understand your difficulty. When I tell you, "Take the jump into sannyas," I know your difficulty. You have not seen it; how can you trust it? You don't know me either; how can you trust me? You don't even know yourself; how can you trust yourself? I can understand your confusion, your difficulty. And those who take the jump have not taken the jump through any conclusion on their part. They have taken the jump in spite of all the fears, doubts. In spite of their minds they have taken the jump. It is not that they have become convinced; there is no way to become convinced. What I am talking about is something you experience -- only then do you know. So how can you become convinced about it? There is no way to make you convinced a priori, beforehand.

Kabir says: "I know."

UNLESS YOU SEE, YOU BELIEVE NOT:
WHAT IS TOLD YOU, YOU CANNOT ACCEPT.
HE WHO IS DISCERNING KNOWS BY THE WORD;
AND THE IGNORANT STANDS GAPING.

For one who knows, even a slight hint is enough: even the word will give him the message of the wordless. But he knows already; he is the discerning one, he has awakened.
Kabir and Farid met once and didn't talk. For two days they remained silent together. Sometimes they laughed, sometimes they hugged each other. Holding hands they sat there, looking at the moon and the sun. And the disciples were very worried: "What has happened to these two people?" They were both always talking.
Farid was a great Master; so was Kabir. And Farid was traveling around the country, so his disciples said, "Kabir's ashram is close by. It will be a beauty to see you together. It will be a great experience for us." And they were hoping secretly that when these two persons would meet, there would be some communication between the two, a dialogue, and they would be benefited tremendously. So Kabir's own disciples said to him, "We have heard that Farid is passing by. We should invite him. It will be a great event for the ashramites to see you both together, having a chit-chat. We will be benefited tremendously."
Kabir laughed. Farid was invited. Farid stayed in Kabir's ashram for two days, but not a single word was uttered by the two. The disciples became very, very bored. they were expecting very much; they were frustrated, of course. They kept watch day and night because maybe when they were gone they might talk. so they never left them, they never went to sleep. Even when Kabir and Farid were sleeping, they were waiting. But not a single word was exchanged.
Then Farid left, Kabir came to say good-bye; not even then was a single word uttered. They hugged each other and departed.
The moment they departed from each other, the disciples jumped. Farid's disciples jumped on him and they said, "What happened to you? We had never known that you are such a dumb fellow! Why did you keep quiet? Why did you torture us so much? That silence was very heavy, and we were waiting for some communication between the two of you."
Farid said, "But what to say? He knows." And so was the case with Kabir. He said, "What to say? To say something to him would simply prove that I don't know. He knows, I know, and we know the same thing. We looked into each other's eyes -- and it was finished. what is the point of repeating? It would be a repetition, and meaningless."
When somebody knows, even a word is not needed -- or even a word is enough.

SOME CONTEMPLATE THE FORMLESS,
AND OTHER MEDITATE ON FORM;
BUT THE WISE MAN KNOWS
THAT BRAHMA IS BEYOND BOTH.

A few think God has form -- SAGUNA; a few think God is formless -- NIRGUNA. Kabir says: God is beyond both, and God is within both, and the within is the beyond He is in forms, and yet formless. He manifests Himself in so many millions of forms, and yet remains unmanifest.

THAT BEAUTY OF HIS IS NOT SEEN OF THE EYE...

If you want to see Him, these eyes won't be of any help.

THAT BEAUTY OF HIS IS NOT SEEN OF THE EYE...

... in fact, you will have to close these eyes. You will have to open the eyes of your consciousness, of your awareness. These physical eyes will not do.

... THAT METER OF HIS IS NOT HEARD OF THE EAR.

That melody, that music, that meter, that song, is not heard by these ears. You will have to move withinwards. He is singing there within you, not outside. These ears can hear only the outside music. You will have to move withinwards; the singer is there, the musicians is there. He is continuously singing a song. That song is your very life.
But you have to listen in a totally different way, and you have to see with a totally different quality.

KABIR SAYS:
HE WHO HAS FOUND BOTH LOVE AND RENUNCIATION
NEVER DESCENDS TO DEATH.

Remember, the highest harmony is between love and renunciation. Look at this tremendously seminal sutra: love and renunciation, together. That's my whole teaching too.
People come to me and they say, "If you simply teach meditation, it would be enough. Why do you teach love too? We have never heard saints talking about love. why do you talk about love? Or even if saints talk about love, they don't talk about ordinary human love."
Just one day when I said: "God is love, and don't write love with a capital l," one woman wrote a letter of protest. She wrote, "Why? Why not write the letter I with a capital? Why do you insist that the I should be written in lower-case?" I can understand her protest. With a capital L, love is something divine, not human. With a capital L, your love is dropped out of it; it is the love between Krishna and his GOPIS, the love between God and His devotees -- not the love that happens between you and your child. That is a lower-case-l love. Yes, it is good if I say love with a capital L and say it is God -- "But ordinary love, human love you call divine?" That is difficult, that looks like a sacrilege -- but that is my whole effort here.
There is no capital L. Even God should be written with a lower-case g -- because this whole existence is divine. The whole existence... in the very ordinary the extraordinary is present. Look into the lower-case l: the capital L is present.
In the ordinary pebble, in the ordinary rock, He is as much present as in a Kohinoor. There is no distinction for Him. The whole existence is precious with His presence.

KABIR SAYS:
HE WHO HAS FOUND BOTH LOVE AND RENUNCIATION...

Very difficult to understand, the very extreme of illogic.... We can understand love, but then what about renunciation? We can understand renunciation, but what about love? They seem to be the greatest contradictions possible. When you love, how can you renounce? And when you renounce, how can you love?
Try to understand it. Ordinary love is a sort of sleep: you become attached to the object of love, you start feeling jealous, you become possessive -- and your possessiveness and your jealousy really poison the whole love. They destroy it. Love is destroyed by jealousy, possessiveness. The moment you try to possess your love-object, you have denied love, you have already denied. You have declared that you don't love.
Love is possible only if there is no possessiveness and no jealousy. That means love has attained to renunciation. You love the person but you renounce possessiveness; you love the person but you renounce jealousy; you love the person but you don't want to make a slave out of him or out of her; you love the person but you respect his or her freedom; you love the person but your love does not become an imprisonment. You love, and yet you remain unattached. You love, you love tremendously, but still you don't cling: that is renunciation.
Love the world, and don't be attached. Be in the world, but don't be of the world -- that is what renunciation is. That's what I call sannyas: a great harmony between love and renunciation; a great harmony between this world and that; a great harmony between God the creator, and the world, the created; a great harmony between the body and the soul a great harmony, with no conflict; the disappearance of all conflict.
If your love is so great that it can contain renunciation, only then is it love. If your renunciation is so great that it can contain love, only then is it renunciation. And a man who can be loving and yet in renunciation is the greatest growth, the destiny. That is the destiny we are seeking. And unless it is attained, you will never feel fulfilled. God is the lover and the sannyasin.
Look... He loves the world, otherwise the world could not be. He loves the world... and yet you cannot find Him anywhere. He is completely absent; His renunciation is UTTER. He loves the world; He goes on creating it. He loves tremendously, otherwise why should He create? He cares tremendously, but is so unattached that He never comes in the marketplace to declare, "Look, I am the creator."
He has no I. He is the creator without ever feeling, "I am the creator." His renunciation is utter, his love is utter.
A sannyasin will be a miniature of God: his love will be total, his renunciation too.

AND KABIR SAYS:
HE WHO HAS FOUND BOTH LOVE AND RENUNCIATION
NEVER DESCENDS TO DEATH.

He goes beyond death; he becomes deathless. He has attained to the nectar of the divine. He has attained to the elixir. For this elixir, the alchemists all over the world have been searching and searching. This elixir can happen in you. Just one combination is needed, one great synthesis: the synthesis between love and renunciation.

Next: Chapter 8: God Still Hopes, Question 1

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