What dealings can you ever conclude
with someone who is unaware
of the feelings in loving?
The owl stares at the sky,
sitting blind to the rays of the sun.
Man is a quest, an eternal inquiry, a perennial question. The quest is for the energy that holds existence together – call it God, call it truth, or whatsoever you like to call it. Who holds this infinite existence together? What is the center of it all, the core of it all?
Science, philosophy, religion, all ask the same question. Their answers may differ but their question is the same. Religions call it God. Scientists will not agree with the word God – it looks too personal. It looks too anthropomorphic, man-oriented. They call it electricity, magnetism, energy fields, but only the name is different. God is an energy field.
Philosophers go on giving different names to it: the ultimate stratum, the absolute, the brahman. From Thales to Bertrand Russell, they have supplied many answers. Sometimes some philosopher says it is water, liquidity; sometimes somebody else says it is fire – but the quest has been eternal. What holds this infinite universe together?
Bauls call it love, and to me, their answer seems to be the most pertinent. It is neither personal nor impersonal. It has something of God in it, and something of magnetism in it also; something of the divine, and something of the earth.
Love has two faces. It is Janus-like: one face looks to-wards the earth, the other face looks towards the sky. It is the greatest synthesis conceivable: it comes out of lust and moves towards prayer; it comes out of mud and becomes a lotus facing the sun.
This word love has to be understood. What do we mean by the word love? One thing we certainly all mean is that it has a pull in it, great energy. When you fall in love, it is not that you do something – you are pulled in. It has a magnetic force. You gravitate towards the object of your love, you gravitate almost helplessly, you gravitate even against your will. It has a pull, a magnetic field – that’s why we call it “falling in love.” Who wants to fall? But who can avoid it? When the energy calls you, suddenly you are no longer your old self. Something bigger than you is pulling you, something greater than you is invoking you. The challenge is such that one simply runs into it headlong.
So the first thing to understand is: love is a great energy pull. The second thing: whenever you fall in love, suddenly you are no longer ordinary – something miraculously changes in your consciousness. Love transforms you. Falling in love, a violent man becomes kind and tender. A murderer can become so compassionate, it is almost impossible to believe. Love is miraculous – it transforms the baser metal into gold.
Have you watched people’s faces and eyes when they fall in love? – you cannot believe that they are the same persons. When love takes possession of their souls they are transfigured, transported into another dimension; and suddenly…and with no effort of their own. As if they are caught in the net of God. Love transforms the baser into the higher, transforms earth into sky, transforms the human into the divine.
These two things: first, love is an energy field – scientists will agree. Second, love is a transforming force – it helps you to become weightless, it puts wings on you. You can move towards the beyond. Religious thinkers will agree that love is both God and electricity; love is divine energy. Bauls have chosen love because this is the most significant experience in man’s life. Whether you are religious or not makes no difference – love remains the central experience of human life. It is the most common and the most uncommon. It happens to everybody, more or less, and whenever it happens it transmutes you. It is common and uncommon. It is the bridge between you and the ultimate.
Remember the three L’s: life, love, light.
Life is given to you, you are alive. Light is present, but you have to make a bridge between life and light. That bridge is love. With these three L’s you can make a total way of life, a way of being, a new way of being.
Bauls are not philosophers. They are more like poets – they sing, they dance, they don’t philosophize. In fact, they are almost anti-philosophical, because they have come to see that whenever a man becomes too head-oriented he becomes incapable of love – and love is going to be the bridge. A man who becomes too head-oriented goes farther away from the heart, and the heart is the center which responds to the call of love.
A head-oriented man is cut off from the universe. He lives in the universe, but he lives as if in a deep stupor. He lives in the universe, but he lives as a tree that has lost its roots. He lives only in name: the sap of life is no longer flowing. He has lost contact, he’s unconnected. That’s what alienation is.
The modern man feels too alienated, feels too much an outsider, does not feel at home, at ease with life, existence, the world. He feels almost as if he has been thrown into it, and it is a curse rather than a blessing.
Why has this happened? – too much head orientation, too much training of the head has cut all the roots from the heart. There are many people…I have observed thousands of people who don’t know what the heart is – they bypass it. The heart is throbbing, but their energy no longer moves via it. They bypass it, they go directly to the head. Even when they love, they think that they love. Even when they feel, they think that they feel. Even feeling is via thinking. Of course, it has to be false.
Thinking is the great falsifier, because thinking is man’s effort to understand the universe, and love is God’s effort to understand man. Let me repeat it: when you try to understand God, or existence, or truth, it is your effort – a part, a very tiny part trying to grasp the whole, the infinite whole. The effort is bound to be doomed. It’s impossible. It cannot happen in the nature of things.
Love is when God has found you. Love is when God’s hand is searching for you, groping for you. Love is when you are allowing God to find you. Hence, you cannot manage love. You can manage logic; you can be very, very efficient as far as logic is concerned. The moment love arises, you become absolutely inefficient. Then you don’t know where you are, then you don’t know what you are doing, then you don’t know where you are moving, then you don’t know any control. Logic is controlled, love is uncontrolled. Logic is manipulated, love is a happening. Logic gives you a feeling that you are somebody, love gives you a feeling that you are nobody.
Love arises in you when you allow God to enter you. When you are trying on your own, then the whole effort is absurd.
I have heard:

Mulla Nasruddin sidled up to a guest at one of his daughter’s social evenings. He had heard him addressed as doctor and now he said diffidently, “Doctor, may I ask a question?”
“Certainly,” he said.
“Lately,” said Mulla Nasruddin, “I have been having a funny pain right here under the heart….”
The guest interrupted uncomfortably and said, “I am terribly sorry Mulla, but the truth is I am a Doctor of Philosophy.”
“Oh,” said Nasruddin, “I’m sorry.” He turned away, but then, overcome with curiosity, he turned back. “Just one more question doctor. Tell me, what kind of disease is philosophy?”

Yes, philosophy is a kind of disease – and not just an ordinary kind of disease; it is more cancerous than cancer, more dangerous than all the diseases put together. A disease can cut only one root. Even all the diseases put together cannot cut you completely from existence. Philosophy cuts you, uproots you utterly.
What is disease? When one connection is loose with existence, you feel ill. When the head is unconnected, then there is headache. When the stomach is unconnected, then there is stomachache. Somewhere, you have become autonomous; you are no longer in the ocean of the interdependence of existence. There exists disease. Disease has a certain autonomy, independence. When you have a cancerous growth inside you, that growth becomes a universe unto itself. It is unconnected with existence.
An ill person is one who is unconnected in many ways. When a certain disease becomes chronic, it simply means that that root is completely destroyed. Even the possibility to replant it in the earth no longer exists. You will have to remain alive only partially; a part of you will remain dead. Somebody is paralyzed – what does it mean? The body has lost contact with the universal energy. Now it is almost a dead thing – hanging, unconnected. The sap of life no longer flows in it.
If this is what disease is, then philosophy really is the greatest disease there can be – because it disconnects you utterly. And not only that – it disconnects you with such logic that you never become aware that you are ill. It disconnects you with such justifications and rationalizations that you never become aware that you are missing. It is a very self-justificatory illness, it goes on supporting itself. Philosophy means that a man has become completely head-oriented. He looks towards existence through the eyes of logic and not through the eyes of love.
When you look through the eyes of logic, you will know a few things, but those few things will not give you the vision of reality. They will be only abstractions.
When you look through love, then you know the reality as it is. Love is falling together with the universe, falling in a togetherness. It is orgasmic: you are streaming, and the existence has always been streaming, and both streamings meet and mingle and are infused in each other. A higher synthesis arises: the part is meeting in the whole and the whole is meeting in the part. Then something arises which is more than the part and the whole together – that is what love is. Love is one of the most significant words in human languages because love is existential language.
But somehow, from the very childhood, we are being crippled. Our roots with the heart are cut. We are forced towards the head and we are not allowed to move towards the heart. It is something humanity has suffered for long, a calamity – that man has not yet become capable of living with love.
There are reasons. Love is risky. To love is to move into danger – because you cannot control it, it is not safe. It is not within your hands. It is unpredictable: where it will lead nobody knows. Whether it will lead anywhere, that too nobody knows. One is moving into utter darkness, but roots grow only in darkness. If the roots of a tree become afraid of darkness and don’t move underground, the tree will die. They have to move into darkness. They have to find their way towards the deepest layers of the earth where they can find sources of water, nourishment.
The heart is the darkest part of your being, it is like a dark night. It is your very womb, it is your earth. So people are afraid to move into darkness, they would like to remain in light. At least you can see where you are and what is going to happen. You are safe, secure. When you move in love you cannot calculate the possibilities, you cannot calculate the results. You cannot be result-oriented. For love, future does not exist, only the present exists. You can be in this moment but you cannot think anything about the next moment. No planning is possible in love.
The society, civilization, culture, church – all force a small child to be more logical. They try to focus his energies in the head. Once the energies are focused in the head, it becomes very difficult to fall towards the heart. In fact, every child is born with great love energy. The child is born out of love energy. The child is full of love, trust. Have you looked into the eyes of a small child? How trusting! The child can trust anything: the child can play with a snake, the child can go with anybody. The child can move so close to a fire that it can become dangerous – because the child has not yet learned how to doubt. So we teach doubt, we teach skepticism, we teach logic. These seem to be measures for survival. We teach fear, we teach caution, we teach prudence – and all these together kill the possibility of love.
I have heard:

Doctor Abrams was called to Mulla Nasruddin’s shop where the Mulla was lying unconscious. Doctor Abrams worked on him for a long time and finally revived him.
“How did you happen to drink that stuff, Nasruddin?” he asked the Mulla. “Didn’t you see the label on the bottle? It said ‘poison.’”
Nasruddin said, “Yes Doctor, but I didn’t believe it.”
Doctor Abrams asked, “Why not?”
Nasruddin said, “Because whenever I believe someone, I am deceived.”

By and by people learn how not to believe, how not to trust, how to become chronic doubters. And this happens so slowly, in such small doses, that you are never alert to what is happening to you. By the time it has happened, it is too late. This is what people call experience. They call a person experienced if he has lost his contact with his heart; they say that he is a very experienced man, very clever, very cunning – nobody can deceive him.
Maybe nobody can deceive him, but he has deceived himself. He has lost all that was worthy, he has lost all. And what is he saving?
Then a very peculiar phenomenon happens: people cannot love people because people can be deceptive. They start loving things. Because there is a great need to love, they go on finding substitutes. Somebody loves his house, somebody loves his car, somebody loves his clothes, somebody loves money. Of course, the house cannot deceive you, the love is not risky. You can love the car – a car is more reliable than a real person. You can love money – money is dead, it is always under your control. Why do so many people love things rather than persons? And even if they sometimes love a person, they try to reduce the person to being a thing.
If you love a woman, you are immediately ready to reduce her to being your wife, that is, you are ready to reduce her to a certain role: the role of a wife – which is more predictable than the reality of a beloved. If you love a man you are ready to possess him like a thing. You would like him to be your husband, because a lover is more liquid, one never knows…. A husband seems to be more solid. At least the law is there, the court is there, the police are there, the state government is there to give a certain solidity to the husband. A lover seems to be like a dream, not so substantial. Immediately people fall in love they are ready to get married – such fear of love! And whomsoever we love, we start trying to control. That’s the conflict that goes on between wives and husbands, mothers and sons, brothers and sisters, friends – who is going to possess whom? That means: who is going to define whom, who is going to reduce whom to a thing? Who will be the master and who will be the slave?

Mulla Nasruddin sat moodily over his drink and his friend said, “You look pretty down in the mouth, Mulla. What is the matter?”
Nasruddin said, “My psychiatrist says I am in love with my umbrella and that is the source of my troubles.”
“In love with your umbrella?”
“Yes, isn’t that ridiculous? Ah, I like and respect my umbrella, and enjoy its company – but love?”

But what else is love? If you enjoy the company of your umbrella, and if you respect and like your umbrella, what else is love? Love is respect, tremendous respect. Love is a deep liking, and love is sheer joy in the presence of the one you love. What else is love? But people love things – a deep need is somehow fulfilled by substitutes.
Remember, the first calamity is that one becomes head-oriented. The second calamity is that one starts substituting love-needs with things. Then you are lost, lost in the desert land. Then you will never reach to the ocean. Then you will simply dissipate and evaporate. Then your whole life will be a sheer wastage.
The moment you become aware that this is what is happening, turn the tide, make all efforts to again contact the heart. That’s what Bauls call love – to make contact with the heart again, to undo that which has been done to you by the society. Undoing that which has been done by the society is true religion, undoing all the nonsense that has been done by your well-wishers. They may be thinking that they are helping you, and they may not be knowingly destroying you. They may themselves be victims of their parents and their society. I’m not saying anything against them. Great compassion is needed for them.
Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples that a man only becomes religious when he is able to forgive his parents.
Forgive? Yes, that’s how it is. It is very difficult. The moment you become aware, it is very difficult, almost impossible to forgive your parents because they have done so many things to you – unknowingly of course, behaving unconsciously of course, but still they have done. They have destroyed your love and they have handed you dead logic. They have destroyed your intelligence and they have given you, as a substitute, intellect. They have destroyed your life and aliveness, and they have given you a fixed pattern to live, a plan to live by. They have destroyed your direction and have given you a destination. They have destroyed your celebration and they have made you commodities in the marketplace. It is very difficult to forgive them. Hence all the old traditions say: respect your parents.
It is difficult to forgive them; it is very, very difficult to respect them. But if you understand, you will forgive them. You will say the same as Jesus said on the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Yes, those are exactly the words. And everybody is on the cross – and the cross is not prepared by your enemies, but by your parents, by your society…and everybody is crucified.
The head has become so dominant that it does not allow any spontaneity. It has become dictatorial. It does not allow the heart even to utter a single word, it has forced the heart to be completely quiet. You will have to listen again to the heart. You will have to start dropping logic a little. You will have to take a few risks. You will have to live dangerously. You will have to move towards the unknown, and you will have to love persons and not things. You will have to be ready not to possess anybody because the moment you possess, the person is not there. Only a thing can be possessed.
Try to understand it as deeply as possible: the moment you fall in love with somebody, immediately your whole conditioning starts trying to possess him. Resist that temptation; the devil is tempting you – the devil of the society, the devil of civilization and the church. The devil stands in a very religious garb, and the devil goes on quoting scriptures. Beware!
Whenever you start possessing you are killing love. So either you can possess the person or you can love the person – both together are not possible.
So this is the alternative: a man who wants to become a Baul, a lover, has to drop all possessiveness. Resist all temptation to being possessive because that temptation comes from the ego.

Once Mulla Nasruddin said to me, “It is remarkable sir, how congenial we are. After all, we have practically nothing in common.”
“Oh yes we have,” I replied. “We have one very important thing in common: I think you are wonderful and you agree with me.”

The ego goes on agreeing for wrong things, because the ego can exist only with the wrong. It feeds on the wrong. So whenever you feel that your ego is fulfilled, beware! – you have eaten something wrong, you have swallowed something wrong. Whenever you feel egoless, relax. Now you have eaten the right, something which is in tune with your nature.
Ego arises out of disturbance, but ego has its own logic. It goes on saying that you are important, that you are the most important man in the world, and you have to prove it. And we are all trying to do this one way or the other – somebody by possessing more money, somebody by possessing a beautiful woman, somebody by possessing prestige, power, somebody by becoming a president or a premier, somebody by becoming an artist, a poet, somebody by becoming a mahatma – but we are all trying in some way or other to prove our innermost fantasy, that we are the most important person in the world. Then you cannot be a lover.
Ambition is poison for love. A lover is not in any need to prove. In fact, he knows that he is loved, and that’s enough.
Try to diagnose it very carefully. When you are not loved – and how can you be loved if you don’t love? – when you are not loved and you don’t love, suddenly a great need arises to perform, to do something to show the world that you are important, that you are needed. There is a great need to be needed. You feel futile, impotent, useless, if you are not needed. The need in itself is not wrong; it is a love-need to be needed. If a woman loves you, you are fulfilled – somebody needs you, you are significant. Then you don’t bother about the crowd. You don’t go into the marketplace and shout, “I am important!” Then you are not ambitious, you don’t collect money like an obsession.
If somebody loves you, in that love you are dignified, in that love you become a sovereign. Love makes you an emperor, a sovereign. Love fulfills you so deeply and so greatly – then there is no need to perform or do anything. Ego simply does not exist with love. But if that need is unfulfilled, then you will try to fulfill it somehow: you would like to become a very famous man so many people need you.
But remember, to be loved by one and to be needed by millions is not the same. Even a single person’s love, even a single glance of love is enough; and you can collect millions of people and they can all look towards you, but that will not be satisfying. That’s what politics is, and what the politician is trying to do.
I have never come across a politician whose heart is functioning. The heart is totally dead – but the need is there to be loved, to be needed, somebody to look to. Where to fulfill it? He gathers crowds. Through the crowds he tries somehow to fulfill the love-need. But that crowd does not love him, that crowd is not bothered by him, that crowd is after its own needs. Because he’s in power he seems to be important. They pay their respects to the chair, and the chairman is deceived. Once the chairman is not in the chair, they don’t bother about him.
Have you ever observed that once a politician is out of power he is simply forgotten? Nobody remembers him. He may live for thirty or forty years, nobody will know about him. By and by, he will recede into darkness. Only once, when he dies, will there be a small notice in the newspapers, that the ex-president or ex-premier is dead.
The man who ruled over Russia before Lenin, Kerensky, lived for fifty years after it like a small New York grocer, and nobody knew about him. He was the prime minister of Russia, the most important man – the revolution happened and he was thrown out of power. He escaped. He lived for fifty years. Only when he died did people become aware that Kerensky had been alive for all those fifty years.
Power cannot fulfill a love-need. You can possess great kingdoms – that will not fulfill your love-need. But if you possess one heart which throbs in tune with you, then you are fulfilled.
The Bauls sing:
O my heart,
let us go then on a promenade
to the grove of Krishna’s love.
The breeze of joy will calm your life.
In that woodland,
eternally bloom five scented flowers.
Their fragrance will enchant
your life and soul,
giving them sovereign dignity.
Enter the temple of love, and you always enter it as a sovereign. Enter into the world, the world of things, and you always enter as a beggar. The world reduces everybody to be a beggar, love raises everybody to be an emperor. Love is an alchemical phenomenon. Even if one heart has flowed towards you, God has reached through that heart. Somebody looked towards you with love; in that moment God looked at you. Watch the eye full of love, the hand full of love, and you will find God throbbing there – because it is always God who loves. To love is to become God, to allow love to happen is to become God.
Whenever you fall from the peak of love, then it is something else: you become possessive, you become a husband and a wife. Then you are no longer in the grip of God. But whenever you reach to the peak – maybe for a single moment sometimes it happens: when two persons are in absolute harmony, no barrier, no fence even exists between them; they are not throbbing as two centers, they become one center – in that moment, God happens. When love happens, God happens. When God descends on earth, his name is love.
Each fruit is open to two frontiers,
and borne on a pair of trees.
Listen carefully….
Each fruit is open to two frontiers,
and borne on a pair of trees.
Have you ever seen one fruit born on a pair of trees? One fruit is born on one tree; two trees are not needed for one fruit. Love is that fruit which is born on two trees, never on one tree.
Each fruit is open to two frontiers,
and borne on a pair of trees.
Deep meditation reveals the knowledge
beyond any doubt.
When you love somebody and somebody loves you, then there comes a moment when these two trees are not two trees; then they become one tree. That tree is the tree of love, and on that tree of love is fulfillment, is fruition, is flowering.
The two who are wholly present
can bring forth a fruit
to offer the master.
They are conscious and fruitful.
Let me repeat: “The two who are wholly present….” In love, two persons are simply present to each other, doing nothing. Love knows nothing of doing. When two persons are deep in love, they are simply present to each other. They face each other, just present, as if two lamps are burning, illuminating each other, or two mirrors are facing each other, reflecting each other in a millionfold ways. Two lovers are just in each other’s presence, saturated by the other, penetrated by the other. In that state a moment arises – the climax, the peak moment – when the fruit is born: when they are no more two, when all distinction is lost, when the egos don’t exist, when they have become pure presences.
Then, the fruit is born.
The two who are wholly present
can bring forth a fruit
to offer the master.
…And that is the fruit to be offered to the master, to God. “They are conscious and fruitful.”
In that peak of love, they are totally conscious and fruitful. Remember, love is not something like unconsciousness. Ordinarily, when you are in love, you become more unconscious. Then it is lust. Then it is the very lowest denominator. Then it is the lowest rung of the ladder. Of course it belongs to the ladder, but it is the lowest rung. At the highest rung there is tremendous consciousness – and if you cannot be conscious in the presence of your lover, where else are you going to be conscious? If the presence of your lover is not worth being conscious, then where else will you find the treasure to be conscious? If you love the person, if you really love, a peak of consciousness arises. You would just like to observe, to see your beloved or your lover; you would like to be with a pure presence. And they help each other to be more and more conscious – because when the one becomes more conscious, it is immediately reflected in the other. The other becomes more conscious, and it works like a chain reaction. Higher and higher they go, and then there comes a moment when the fruit is born. That fruit is called love. That love you can offer to the master of the world. No other fruit will do.
“They are conscious and fruitful.” And in that peak of consciousness they are fruitful. Otherwise, people live a fruitless life. People live an unfruitful life, people live without fruition. Nothing is born out of them; they simply live and die. There is no meaning and no significance in their lives. The significance arises only when two trees have become one tree, and when on that one tree the fruit of love is born.
…conscious and fruitful.
The well never sinks into the water.
The Bauls say, “You see? Go and see a well full of water – but it never sinks into the water.’’ This is very mysterious. When you are absolutely drowned in oneness, for the first time you are. You never sink into it. You are merged, all boundaries lost, but then happens a paradox: the paradox of being lost completely and yet being, for the first time, yourself. When you are lost completely, you are for the first time your reality. You are full, surrounded by tremendous force, but you are not sunk in it. You are one with it, but for the first time your flame burns. Without any ego, your being is revealed.
Bauls sing:
Let ripeness appear in its own time
for the full flavor of the fruit.
A green jackfruit can be softened by blows,
but not made sweet.
And they say, this love you cannot force. There is no way to manipulate it. There is nothing that you can do about it. All that you can do is to allow.
Let ripeness appear in its own time…
It will come in its own time. What do you do when you watch over a tree, an apple tree? What do you do? You don’t pull the fruits, you don’t force, you just watch over it. You take care, every care that is needed – you protect the tree, you water the tree, you provide fertilizers and manure. Everything that you can do, you do; but what can you do to force it? That is just helping the tree to ripen in its own time. Then the fruit comes, then you watch. One day it is ripe, sweet.
Let ripeness appear in its own time…
…So Bauls are not for any sort of yoga. They are against yoga. That’s why I told you in the beginning that they belong to the tradition of Tantra, not to the tradition of Veda, yoga – no. In fact, the Bauls’ tradition is more ancient than the tradition of Veda and yoga.
Historians say that Tantra is pre-Aryan. When the Aryans came to India, Tantra was in existence here and Shiva was their God. When the Aryans came to India they overran India, they defeated the people who were living here. Their religion was crushed, their scriptures destroyed, and by and by even their gods were absorbed into the pantheon of the Aryans. Shiva was their God. It took a very long time for him to be absorbed. He was alien, but he had to be absorbed because he was very influential. And when all his followers were absorbed into the world of the Aryans, they brought their gods also.
Tantra belongs to Shiva, and the Baul is an offshoot of the same tree. Tantra says, “Everything happens in its own right time, you need not force it. Your force will not help, it will be a disturbance. It may destroy, but it can never be creative. One has to be very effortless, spontaneous. One has to be in a let-go.”
Let ripeness appear in its own time
for the full flavor of the fruit.
A green jackfruit can be softened by blows,
but not made sweet.
The Bauls say, “We are not searching for liberation.” A lover, a seeker of love, never talks in terms of liberation. He says, “It is tremendously beautiful. All that is, is already beautiful. There is no need to be liberated from it. All that is needed is how to be in it, totally absorbed.” The world is not a bondage for the Baul, and there is no need to struggle against it. In fact, the Baul says, “We love the bondage of the world because these fetters are also created by you, my Lord.”
The heart, a lotus, continue flowering,
age after age, you are bound to it,
and so am I…
The Baul says to his God,
You are bound to it, and so am I,
and with no escape.
The lotus blossoms, blossoms, blossoms;
there is no end to it.
But all these lotuses have one type of honey,
with one particular taste.
The bee is avid and unable to leave,
so, you are bound and I am bound.
Where is freedom then?
It is a great play of hide and seek between the energy that God is and the energy that you are. It is the same energy in a great hide and seek. It is a great play. There is no need to end it. Let lotuses flower and blossom for ever and ever. The world is beautiful: that is the basic Tantra attitude. Yoga says: one needs to be liberated. Tantra says: for what, from whom? The bondage is beautiful because it is God’s. Yoga will say: drop, by and by, all your attachments and finally, one has to go beyond love. The Bauls say: all attachments are beautiful. Go deeper into them so you don’t remain with the periphery but you reach to the center. On the periphery is attachment, at the center is love.
The bee is avid and unable to leave,
so you are bound and I am bound.
Where is freedom then?
For the Baul, life is not a serious thing. It is fun, it is laughter, it is joy. So you will not find anything like the seriousness of a churchgoer, or the long faces of so-called religious people in the world of the Bauls. They love laughter, they love fun. They enjoy small things with tremendous respect. Ordinarily, religions are very long-faced, very somber, serious, because they have to be – they are against life.
I have heard:

One friend of Mulla Nasruddin was amazed to see that the Mulla had hitched his prize-winning possession, his prize-winning bull to the plow and was guiding it across his fields.
He said, “Mulla, have you gone crazy? That bull is worth twenty-five thousand rupees! Why are you letting him pull a plow?”
“That bull,” said the Mulla grimly, “has got to learn that life is not all play.”

There are people who become disturbed the moment you laugh; they would like to teach you that life is not all play. These people are themselves ill. They have missed life and they would not like anybody else to enjoy it. The priests are ill people – they would not like you to enjoy. They have missed and they are jealous of you. And they have staked too much: their egos are fulfilled only because they have been against life. They have chosen ego against life. If you choose life they will be against you. They will go on curbing you, they will go on condemning you, they will go on creating guilt in you. No greater calamity, no bigger calamity can happen to humanity than has happened through religions. The calamity is that they have created a guilty conscience. So whenever you are enjoying, deep down somewhere you start feeling guilty, as if you are doing something wrong. Whenever you are healthy, you start feeling something is wrong. Whenever you are dancing, you start feeling something is wrong. Whenever you laugh, you can never laugh totally because deep down something goes on pulling you back: “What are you doing?”
From the very childhood, whenever you were happy there was somebody to teach you that life is not all play: “Stop laughing! Be serious! When will you be mature? Be grown up! Enough is enough! Drop all this nonsense of childhood.” Somebody was always round the corner to teach you. They have lost. They could not enjoy so they cannot allow others to enjoy. This is how, from generation to generation, diseases are being transferred.
Take hold of your own life. See that the whole existence is celebrating. These trees are not serious, these birds are not serious. The rivers and the oceans are wild, and everywhere there is fun, everywhere there is joy and delight. Watch existence, listen to the existence and become part of it. Then you become a Baul, then you become a lover – because love can exist only with a deep respect for fun, with a deep respect for delight. Love cannot exist with a serious mind. With a serious mind, logic is in tune. Be non-serious. I’m not saying not to be sincere. Be sincere, but be non-serious. Sincerity is something else; seriousness is totally different. Be sincere with existence, then you will be true; you will become part of this cosmic leela, this cosmic play.
The Bauls sing:
How can you walk the ways of love
carrying stolen loot with impunity?
In the forest of Brinda,
loving is worshipping.
The forest of Brinda, where Krishna played with his lovers, friends, girlfriends; where he danced, where the raas happened…. This word raas is very beautiful: it means the divine celebration, the divine dance.
How can you walk the ways of love,
carrying stolen loot with impunity?
In the forest of Brinda,
loving is worshipping.
As the essence of purity in the brilliance of the sky,
love transcends lust, evolving ecstasy.
The bellows breathe into the fire of life
and stabilize mercury.
Beautiful – the saying is very beautiful.
The bellows breathe into the fire of life
and stabilize mercury.
Even mercury becomes stabilized. So what about lust? Don’t be worried. Let there be a goal to your love, a center to your love, a target for your arrow – and love transcends lust. Yoga will say: transcend lust, fight with lust. It is a negative approach. The Bauls say: love, and love transcends lust. It is a positive approach.
Tell me, my silent master,
O my lord,
what worship may open me
to my beloved’s lotus bloom?
The stars and the moon eternally move
with no sound at all.
Each cycle of the universe in silence prays,
welling up with the essence of love.
It is what physicists call electricity, gravitation, energy field. What religious people call God, Bauls call love.
Each cycle of the universe in silence prays,
welling up with the essence of love.
Trees are in love with the earth, the earth is in love with the trees. The birds are in love with the trees, the trees are in love with the birds. The earth is in love with the sky, the sky is in love with the earth. The whole existence exists in a great ocean of love. Let love be your worship, let love be your prayer.
The song for today is very small, but a diamond – very precious. And Bauls know how to be precise. Just the other night I was reading De Gaulle’s life, and he had a motto on his table. I loved it; Bauls would also appreciate it. The motto is: Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life.
What dealings can you ever conclude
with someone who is unaware
of the feelings in loving?
The owl stares at the sky,
sitting blind to the rays of the sun.
The Bauls say it is impossible to communicate:
What dealings can you ever conclude
with someone who is unaware
of the feelings in loving?
It is impossible to commune with someone who has not known love. How can we talk about God? How can we talk meaningfully about prayer? How can we say anything about the truth? – because he’s completely unaware of his own heart. He does not know the language; he has lived in the head. He’s like the owl: “stares at the sky, sitting blind to the rays of the sun.”
In Indian mythology the owl is a symbol of knowledge, learning, learnedness. People who are too learned, too much in their heads, accumulating information and data, are like owls. They cannot see that the sun has risen. They can go on looking and staring at the sun, and still they remain oblivious to the rays of the light.
The Bauls say: a man who lives in the head – a pundit, a scholar – a man who thinks only in terms of concepts, abstract theories, doctrines, dogmas, who has memorized the Vedas, the Koran, the Bible, will not be able to understand anything about love. Even if you speak, he will immediately misunderstand. If you talk about love he will make a theory out of it, and love cannot be managed in a theory. If you say something about prayer he will try to make that prayer look like a hypothesis, and prayer is not a hypothesis. A man of logic always reduces everything to his logic.
I have heard:

A devout clergyman making a tour of the Holy Land arrived at the Sea of Galilee. His heart thrilled: “Perhaps one of these very wavelets had touched the feet of the master himself….” A boatman approached. The clergyman addressed him in choicest Arabic, a pocket dictionary of Arabic terms in his hand.
“What is the matter?” complained the ferryman. “Can’t you talk United States?” He was an American making his living boating tourists.
“So,” exclaimed the clergyman, “this is the Sea of Galilee where our savior walked upon the waters.”
“It is.”
“How much will you charge me to take me to the exact spot?”
“Well, seeing as you look like a clergyman, I won’t charge you anything.”
After reaching the place, the clergyman glanced around with great satisfaction, consulted his texts and commentaries, and at last signaled that he was ready to return to shore.
“Cost you twenty dollars to take you back.”
“But you said you would charge nothing!”
“That was to bring you here.”
“And you charge everybody twenty dollars to take them back?”
“That, or more.”
“Well then,” said the devout one, reaching for his pocketbook, “no wonder our savior got out and walked.”

Everybody goes on interpreting everything according to his own way. Our interpretations are our interpretations.

It happened one day: Mulla Nasruddin hailed a taxi just outside the ashram. “Take me to the ashram, driver,” he demanded, hopping into the cab.
The disgusted hackie got out, opened the door and snapped, “You are in front of the ashram, fellow!”
“Okay,” grumbled the Mulla as he got out, “but next time, don’t drive so fast.”

If you are drunk, then you are going to interpret everything through your drunkenness. If you are drunk with logic, love cannot penetrate your skull. Then you have a very thick head, dense – it is impossible for love to penetrate. Then you are like the owl.
The Bauls say communication is possible only when there exists a common language. So if you want to understand the Bauls, you will have to love – because there is no other way to understand love than to love. If you want to understand the man of prayer, pray. Move into prayer, have a taste of it. Put aside all your logic. Don’t try first to be logically convinced, then you will pray; then nobody has ever prayed – because the first thing is that it is impossible, it cannot be done.
Nobody can logically convince you that prayer is meaningful. The very logical framework of your mind prohibits it. So you are asking the impossible. If you say, “First it has to be proved that love is God, then I will love,” then you will have to wait, and you will have to wait for eternity – it is not going to happen. The day it happens, it will happen in the only way it can happen, and the way for it to happen is to put aside your logic. Logic is irrelevant. You just love, have a taste of it. Move into the world of the lover. Let his singing surround you. Have a feel, and that will become the proof, and that will become the conviction. Then you can bring your logic in and your logic will start proving it, but not before. First the taste, the experience; then the logic. Logic is a good servant but a bad master.
What dealings can you ever conclude
with someone who is unaware
of the feelings in loving?
The owl stares at the sky,
sitting blind to the rays of the sun.
Love is a radical change in your innermost core of being. The head is just on the periphery. The head is just like waves on the ocean; love is like the depth. In the depth there are no waves, and in the waves there is no depth. Thoughts are like waves just on the surface. There is no way for a wave to know the depth while remaining the wave. The wave can know the depth, but then it has to disappear in the depth. It will no longer be a wave, but then it can come back to the surface. But then that wave will itself become a Baul; no other wave will listen to it. Other waves will call that wave mad because she will talk about depths, and waves only know shallowness, they don’t know depths.
Love is an experience – existential, like taste. If you have not tasted salt, there is no way to explain it to you. If you have tasted it, there is no way to forget it. If you have tasted it, then too there is no way to explain it to somebody else who has not tasted it.
How to explain to somebody else who has never known anything salty? What to say? It is not that you don’t know – you know, it is just on the tip of your tongue. You know what saltiness is, but how to say it to somebody else? The only thing is to offer him a little salt. But if he says, “First let me be convinced that there exists something like salt, then only will I take it” – if he is that cautious, it is impossible. Then he will have to remain without any experience of salt.
And to remain without experiencing love is to remain dead – because only a lover goes on dropping his dead selves, because only a lover moves, because only a lover is dynamic. Logic is dead, love is alive.
I am reminded of a saying of Browning. He used to say, “The life process is to rise on the stepping-stones of our dead selves to higher things.”
…The life process is to rise on the stepping-stones of our dead selves to higher things….
Logic belongs to the past; love belongs to the future. Logic is just moving in the old circle again and again and again. Love moves into new territory. Being yourself is never static, being in love is also never static. It is always ecstatic – not static but ecstatic: out of stasis, out of standing still.
Be moving. One never arrives, though one is always arriving.
Enough for today.

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