The guest is inside you

FRIEDRICH Nietzsche declared that God is dead and hence man is free. That has been one of the most ancient arguments: if God is, man cannot be free. How can man be free if God is? Then God is the master and man is the slave. Then God decides, man has only to follow. Then God has will and man has no will; man is only a plaything in the hands of God. So either God is, or man is free.

If man is free, there can be no God at all.

Charvakas in ancient India, Epicurus in Greece, and then Nietzsche, Marx, Diderot, Freud, Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, they all have been repeating the same argument again and again in different words. The argument seems to be very appealing. The argument proposes freedom for man: man Gan be free only if God is removed. Then there is nobody above man. Then there is nobody to dominate man, nobody to decide for man. If there is nothing higher than man, then freedom is absolute. But howsoever appealing the argument, it is fundamentally wrong; it is based on wrong premises.

The declaration that God is dead is in a sense true: the false god, the man-made God, is certainly dead. The god of the temples and the churches and the synagogues and the mosques and the gurudwaras is certainly dead. The god that man has imagined in his own image, the god that man has made according to his own wishes, the god that is nothing but a projection of man's mind and desires, that god certainly is dead.

But that god had really never existed; it is dead because it has never existed in the first place. And it is good that the man-made god is dead, because when the artificial is removed the natural can sprout. When the false ceases the true can explode. The untrue MUST cease for the truth to be.

I look at atheism with great respect, because it removes the false. It has a great work to do. Its work is not against God; its work really is for God, because it destroys all man-made idols of God. And then, in that emptiness, the time God can become manifest, can be revealed.

All the great saints have been against the false god. They will agree perfectly with Nietzsche, Freud, Jean-Paul Sartre. Of course, they will agree for a totally different reason: not that the true God is dead, not that the true God can ever be dead. To say that God is dead is a contradiction in terms if by God you mean the true God, the God 'that which is'. It is a contradiction in terms because God is nothing but life, and how can life be dead? It goes on and on, it is an unending process. Life is a pilgrimage with no beginning and no end; God is another name for life.

Those who know, they know God as the fragrance of life, the perfume of existence, the very ground of being. For them, God is not a concept, not a theory, not a hypothesis. For them, God is an existential experience. For them God is not separate from man, for them God is man's innermost core.

Hence how can man's freedom and God be antagonistic? Without God there would be no freedom, because without God there would be no man. Without God there would be no inner core to your being. Without God you would be hollow; you wouldn't have any meaning, any significance. Without God you would be just accidental, a plaything of circumstances. With God you have a certain significance, some meaning, some poetry.

With God you are free because God is your freedom. God gives you space to grow; God is the space to grow in. Because there is something higher, you can grow, you can reach for it, but the higher is not separate from you. The higher is nothing but your own depth trying to manifest itself. The higher is not something like a goal to be achieved. It is more like something which is already there and has only to be recognized. The height and the depth are one and the same. Your innermost core is also the innermost core of the whole existence.

To think of God and man is wrong. God is man fulfilled, man is God on the way. Man is the journey, God is the reaching, the arrival. Man is like a seed and God is like a flower... one chain of growth.

God is not to be worshipped but realized. There is no need to make temples for God. You have to learn how to look within you. The temple is already there: your body is the temple! That's what Kabir goes on saying again and again: your body is the temple. God has already chosen it as its abode.

God is already in you, God exists as you. Hence there is no question of any conflict between you and God; there cannot be. Without God you would be just a flower without fragrance. Without God you would be a temple without any deity, empty. Without God you would be just pure accident, with no significance at all. It is only with God that you become part of the great symphony of existence, that you become something which is needed, utterly needed; that without you existence will miss something, that without you existence will be less.

God is not an ideal as we have been thinking down the ages. And it is good that that God is dead; now we can declare the birth of a new God. Now we can declare the true God. The true God is always your interiority, your subjectivity.

Jean-Paul Sartre, one of the most important atheists of this age, says that we cannot allow God to exist because His existence reduces us to objects. He becomes the subject - He is omniscient, He goes on looking at us, and because He looks at us and we cannot look at Him, we are reduced to objects, things, commodities.Whenever you look at a thing you cannot look at its interiority, you can look only at its outer core. By looking, you reduce everything to a thing.

That's why in all the cultures, in all the societies down the ages, looking at somebody for a certain period is thought to be unmannerly. For almost two or three seconds you can look and there will be no objection, that is casual; you are passing by and you look at a person, just a casual look, a glance. But if you stare it is offensive. Why? Why is looking at a person for too long offensive? It reduces him into an object: you become the seer and he becomes the seen. And who are you to reduce him into an object? It is offensive!

Jean-Paul Sartre also says that that is one of the reasons why lovers always go on fighting, because they both go on looking at each other, reducing each other into things, and nobody likes it. The man does not like to be reduced into a thing, neither does the woman like it. And they are lovers so they stare at each other - it is offensive; even in love it is offensive. Deep down somewhere your being revolts against it.

Women are far more sensitive, naturally. They are more graceful. When they are making love they close their eyes; they don't reduce the man who is making love to them into an object. Man is a little crude: he likes to see while he is making love. Even while he is making love he wants to see, he would like to keep the light on. And there are extremists also who would like it to be photographed, so they can make an album and later on they can look at it.

But the woman feels offended. Certainly she is more sensitive, and her sense of propriety is far more refined than the sense of man. You kiss a woman, she immediately closes her eyes - she gives you the freedom of being a subject.

Jean-Paul Sartre has some truth in his statement that lovers are always in conflict because they reduce each other into things, and nobody wants to be a thing. Then what to say about God? - He reduces the whole humanity, all beings, into things. He is the eternal subject and we are objects.

Hence Sartre says we cannot allow God to exist. Even if He is, He has to be killed, He has to be destroyed.

There have been thinkers like Immanuel Kant, Schiller, Hegel, who say: If there is no God He has to be invented, because without God man will lose all significance. And they are also right: even if there is no God he has to be invented, for man's sake. It is better to have an invented God than not to have any. At least He will give an appearance of significance to life, a certain rhythm. The noise will start looking at least like music. The accidental will not be accidental any more, some meaning will arise. Hence they say if there is no God, He has to be invented.

And on the other pole, Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud say: Even if there is God, He has to be killed, because if He remains man is reduced into an object. Man loses all freedom, man loses all will. But both are wrong, because both are thinking in terms of God as if God is the other.

Kabir says - just as all the mystics of all the ages have been saying - God is not the other. He is you. He is your inside. He is your subjectivity, so how can He reduce you into an object? He is not separate, so how can He take your freedom away? He need not be invented because He is already there. And He need not be killed, because in killing Him you will be simply committing suicide - and that is impossible; nobody can commit suicide. You can drop one body, you will immediately enter into another womb. Suicide is impossible. You can pretend the game of committing suicide but you can never succeed in it, because nothing can be destroyed. Not even a grain of sand can be destroyed.

Physicists say there is no possibility of destroying anything. Neither can something new be created nor can something existent be destroyed. If this is so even about a grain of sand, what to say about the being of man?' - that is the highest flowering - how can it be destroyed?

Life is eternal. Life is immortal. It changes forms, certainly, just like the waves in the ocean go on changing but the ocean remains. Bodies come and go, minds come and go, but your innermost witness remains always there. And that witness is God.

Hegel, Kant, Schiller, are wrong; so is Freud, so is Nietzsche, so is Jean-Paul Sartre. They both accept the same premise: that God is the other. And God is not the other. God is your very soul.

God is already in you... just a little alertness.

Wake up and see! You need not wait for the Guest. The Guest has already arrived in the very being of the host. The Guest is found in the host.

THE GUEST IS INSIDE YOU - says Kabir - AND ALSO INSIDE ME; YOU KNOW THE SPROUT IS HIDDEN INSIDE THE SEED.

Exactly like that - just as in the seed the sprout is hidden - in you is hidden God. Of course if you cut the seed, if you dissect the seed, you will not find the sprout - or will you? You can cut the seed; you will not find anything at all: no sprout, no foliage, no branches, no flowers, no fruits, nothing at all, because the seed is the unmanifest. It needs growth, it needs a right soil, it needs a gardener.

It needs great art to help the unmanifest to become manifest; to bring that which is hidden to the world, great skill is needed.

Buddha has called religion nothing but skill, art, UPAYA, a methodology - a methodology to bring the unseen into the world of the seen, to bring the invisible into the world of the visible. In the seed the flowers are there, but they are invisible. A proper context will be needed where they can become visible.

Exactly in the same way, God is in you; you are the seed of God. God is not to be worshipped but revealed. You have to grow and become a God! You are not to seek and search for a God somewhere, already ready-made. You have to grow; growth is religion. You have to grow into a God.

You are carrying the seed, you have to find a soil - you have to find a buddhafield. You have to find a gardener, a Master. You have to find a commune where many trees are blooming, so that hope can arise in the heart of the seed that "Yes, if other seeds can become trees, GREAT trees, why can't I?"; so that longing can arise in the heart, so the heart becomes aflame, afire, athirst. In that very thirst, in that very longing, the seed has started moving towards the flowers.

It is a long journey, but an inner journey. You can make the whole journey by sitting silently, not going anywhere, because the going has to be something inner. It is not in space, it is in consciousness.

The original is:

SAHAB HAM MEN SAHAB TUM MEN, JAISE PRANA BIJ MEN.

The Master is in me and the Master is in you just as life is hidden in the seed.

It is because of too many analytical approaches, too many logical approaches, that we are missing God. It is because of too much scientific upbringing. A kind of 'scientism' has arisen in the world, a very vulgar religion; it is not scientific really, it is scientism. People have started believing in science as if it is a religion. It is just a very crude methodology to know about matter. It is so crude that it cannot grasp the subtler aspects of life.

If you behave in a crude way with the seed - with a knife you can cut it you will simply be destroying its possibility. You will be killing it. By cutting it you will not find anything in it, and of course then you can say, "Because I don't find anything in it - no life, no flower, no fragrance - hence it is decided that there is no flower, no fragrance, no fruit, no trees. They are all just imagination."

That's what science has done to religion: it dissects and cannot find the subtle. Through dissection the subtle cannot be found, never, never. It dissects man and cannot find the soul. The soul is unavailable to dissection. You will find the bones and the blood and the marrow and everything; all that which is measurable you will find if you dissect the body of man. But you will not find the immeasurable - and that's what really is valuable.

SAHAB HAM MEN SAHAB TUM MEN...

Kabir says: And remember, God is not separate from man. He is in me, He is in you, He is in everybody. Wherever life is, God is. God is synonymous with life. He is in the trees and in the birds and in the animals. Wherever life is, God is. Howsoever rudimentary the life may be, God is there.

... JAISE PRANA BIJ MEN.

God is hidden in everything, in every being, as life is hidden, GREAT life is hidden, in the seed.

Unimaginable it is! If you just see the seed, you cannot believe that a great tree is going to be born out of it, a great tree which will whisper with the clouds, a great tree which will try to reach to the stars, a great tree which will become shelter for hundreds of travellers, a great tree which will become a nest for thousands of birs, a great tree with all the colors, green and red and gold. Looking at a seed, you cannot imagine it. Even if you look through a great microscope you will not find it there. It IS there, and yet you cannot find it there.

Why is it so? It is there, but not yet manifest. find a right soil, help it to become manifest. Help the seed to die!

When the disciple comes to the Master, he comes to die. the disciple is one who decides to die in the Master. In that very death is resurrection. In that very death, life starts manifesting itself in its multi-dimensionality. Dying, one attains to higher life; one has to go on dying on lower planes. the moment you die on the lower plane, you assert from the higher, and there are planes and planes....

Go on dying always to the plane you find yourself to be in, so that you can move to the higher. You have to leave the lower step, only then can you reach to the higher step. If you cling to the lower you cannot reach to the higher.

THE GUEST IS INSIDE YOU, AND ALSO INSIDE ME; YOU KNOW THE SPROUT IS HIDDEN INSIDE THE SEED.

WE ARE ALL STRUGGLING; NONE OF US HAS GONE FAR.

LET YOUR ARROGANCE GO, AND LOOK AROUND INSIDE.

The mind is very arrogant: without knowing a thing, it starts proving, this way or that way. There are arrogant atheists who try to prove that there is no God, and there are arrogant theists who try to prove that there is God. Proving or disproving, it is the same mind and the same arrogance. Neither is the theist religious nor the atheist.

The religious person is one who is not arrogant. The religious person is one who is not trying to prove for or against, who is not trying to come to some conclusions through reasoning; one who is available, open, ready to see. Unclouded are his eyes - unclouded because he has no ideas, no ready-made formulas; unclouded because he has no already arrived at conclusions; unclouded because he has no a priori approach; unclouded because he is innocent, childlike, ready to see but with no prejudice, with no ideology.

The religious person is never a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian or a Parsee. A religious person is simply a vulnerable consciousness, an open heart. The religious person is a quest, an enquiry - and enquiry cannot begin with already arrived at conclusions.

If you have already come to a conclusion your enquiry is finished. You are dead! If you already know that God is, without knowing, if you already know that God is not, without knowing, you are being simply stupid - not religious or theist or atheist, but just simply stupid.

The real enquirer will say, "I don't know." Unless he has realized he will not say, "I know." Even when he has realized, the emphasis will not be on 'I', but on knowing. To be exactly true, he will not say "I know"; he will say, "Knowing has happened."

WE ARE ALL STRUGGLING; NONE OF US HAS GONE FAR.

Neither the believer nor the unbeliever - nobody has gone far. They are all tethered to their conclusions, and hence the struggle is absolutely unnecessary and foolish. We are struggling because we are tethered.

I have heard an ancient parable....

A few friends were celebrating the birthday of one of their most beloved friends. They drank, they ate, they danced. It was a full-moon night. They went to the river, but the boatman had gone. It was late night, the full moon in the sky, the river... beautiful... the silence. And they were all drunk, singing, dancing, in a really joyous mood. They entered the boat, they took the oars in their hands, they started moving to the other shore. For hours and hours they thought they were travelling.

When it was getting closer to the morning and the cooler winds started blowing, they came to their senses a little bit. One of them said, "We must have travelled at least a few miles. We have been in the boat the whole night. Somebody should get out and see where we have come. Now it is time to go back home."

So one of them got out and started laughing madly. The others asked, "What is the matter?"

He said, "You all come out and see what is the matter."

They all got out, and they all started laughing and rolling on the bank, because they had forgotten one thing, a simple thing: the boat was tethered to the bank with a chain. The whole night they struggled and they were thinking that they were travelling, but they had not gone even an inch. They had remained on the same spot.

This is the situation of all those who go on struggling in their minds, who go on arguing, reasoning and thinking that they are coming closer and closer to truth.

If you are tethered to your prejudices... And everybody is tethered, because the society never allows a child to grow without prejudices. Every society tries to contaminate the child, to pollute his mind, to condition him, to hypnotize him. That's why you find Hindus and Mohammedans and Christians, and you don't find human beings anywhere. The world is ugly because human beings are missing.

The world would be a blissful place, a paradise, if Mohammedans, Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, would disappear and only human beings would be left.

A child is born as a human being, but we condition him. we stuff his mind with beliefs. And the child is very impressionable; he is very, very soft. You can engrave anything on his mind and he will have to carry it for his whole life - unless he is very intelligent and fortunate enough to drop all the nonsense that the parents and the society have given to him. Unless he is like a Buddha or a Jesus or a Kabir or a Nanak, he is bound to remain tethered to the prejudices given to him. For his whole life he will struggle and he will never reach anywhere. And when death will come he will not be able even to laugh; he will have to cry because his whole life has been a wastage, a sheer wastage, a great opportunity lost.

Get rid of all your prejudices. Get rid of all that you have not known and others have given to you.

Get rid of all your knowledge. If you really want to know one day the first thing is not to get rid of ignorance, the first thing is to get rid of knowledge. Knowledge is ignorance, the real ignorance. If you get rid of knowledge, ignorance is innocence.

Then you are left with just an enquiry, a question mark in your heart: "Who am I? What is this existence?" And because you don't have any conclusion, you can start moving. Because you are not tethered any more to any prejudice, you can enquire, you can search, you can seek.

WE ARE ALL STRUGGLING; NONE OF US HAS GONE FAR.

We have not been able to go far because of an unnecessary struggle.

The original is:

MAT KAR BANDA GUMAN DIL MEN, KHOJ DEKH LE TAN MEN!

We have become too arrogant in the head. The head is full of holy cowdung, full of bullshit.

Scriptures, philosophies, ideologies are all just rubbish, because you have not known them. You have been made into a parrot.

MAT KAR BANDAGUMAN DIL MEN...

Don't be arrogant in the head, don't be an egoist in the head. Don't think that you know. Don't think that your scripture can supply you with the truth. No Vedas, no Koran, no Bible can give you the truth. Truth has to be achieved through individual effort.

Truth has to be achieved by everybody on his own; it is untransferable. Buddha cannot give it to you.

He knows, he has arrived, but he cannot give it to you. Hence his last words, his departing words to his disciples: "Be a light unto yourself." The disciples were crying, naturally; the Master was leaving.

The Master had said goodbye to them. He had said, "Now this body is tired, and I would like to leave it. My work is finished." They started crying. Some had lived with Buddha for forty years, for thirty years. Their whole lives were permeated with his presence, with his love and compassion, with his light.

Ananda, who had lived longest with him - almost fifty years, serving him like a shadow, following him everywhere; not for a single day for fifty years had he been away from Buddha - tears started rolling down his cheeks. Buddha said, "Ananda, you, and crying? Why?"

And Ananda said, "I could not become enlightened while you were alive. Now you are going, what will happen to me?"

Buddha laughed and said, "Maybe my presence was the hindrance. Now you will become enlightened within twenty-four hours. You depended too much on me. Although I was continuously telling you that I cannot give it to you, nobody can give it to you, deep down you still carried the hope, that 'When he can, he will give it to me - at least to me, if not to anybody else. I have been serving him for fifty years; can't he see that I have devoted my whole life, sacrificed my whole life? Finally, one day, he will give me the key.' You were hoping and hoping and hoping, and I was telling you that all your hopes are futile: it is untransferable. Not that I would not like to give it to you; I would like to give it to everybody, to those who ask and to those who don't ask. If it were possible to give you the truth I would have already given it. I would not have made you wait for fifty years. It is impossible; it is untransferable. One has to know it, experience it in one's own being. It cannot be given from the outside. No scripture can supply it, no Master can supply it."

The Master can only provoke a great longing to seek and search. The Master can only seduce. The Master can only convince you that your seed carries infinite glories in it, that you are not just that which you appear to be - you are far more - that you are an infinite universe. The Master can only convince you by his presence that you are God. By declaring himself a God he can convince you that you are also Gods. SAHAB HAM MEN, SAHAB TURN MEN - the Guest is in me, the Guest is in you. The Master can only convince you. He can trigger a process in you, but he cannot give it to you.

Buddha said, "Because you were depending and hoping, you missed. Had you listened to me it would have happened long before. But now I say to you: within twenty-four hours it will happen.

Once I am gone, all your hope will disappear. That is becoming a barrier."

And exactly as Buddha had said, it happened: within twenty-four hours Ananda was enlightened.

The death of the Buddha was such a shock: his whole life gone, and Buddha too, and now there was only dark night ahead, death. The shock was so much, so shattering, that for the first time he turned in. At last he heard what Buddha had been saying again and again. At last he HAD to, because now the Buddha was gone and there was nobody else to tell him to look in. He closed his eyes... wet with tears were those eyes, but he closed his eyes for the first time. Up to then, for fifty years, those eyes had been focused on Buddha. And Buddha was so beautiful and so graceful, it was impossible to close your eyes while Buddha was present with you in the same room, in the same place, under the same shelter. Ananda used to just look at Buddha. Just to look at him was such a joy, he had not ever meditated.

But now Buddha was gone, there was nothing else to see. Ananda closed his eyes; for twenty-four hours he didn't open his eyes. Somebody asked him, "Why don't you open your eyes? Tears are flowing, but why don't you open your eyes?"

He said, "Now there is nothing left to be seen. I have seen the greatest, I have seen all that is worth seeing - I have seen the ultimate glory. Now there is nothing to be seen. I will not open my eyes UNLESS I HAVE SEEN MYSELF."

He opened his eyes only when he had seen himself.

on the futile. Somebody is leaning on his scripture, reading, reading, cramming, and thinking that by knowing more and more of the Vedas and the Bible and the Koran he will become enlightened.

You will become only burdened with knowledge!

WE ARE ALL STRUGGLING; NONE OF US HAS GONE FAR.

Why has none of us gone far? - because of the conclusions, ready-made conclusions; because of borrowed knowledge.

LET YOUR ARROGANCE GO...

Kabir says:

MAT KAR BANDA GUMAN DIL MEN, KHOJ DEKH LE TAN MEN!

Just let this arrogant mind go! Say goodbye to this arrogant mind. See all that mind contains is worthless, and turn in. Look into your own body... and He is there. Your body is the temple, He has already chosen it; He abides there. And you go to Khasi, and you go to Kaaba, and you go to Kailash. And you go on searching all over the earth, and this you have been doing for many many lives, and you have not found Him; and He is inside you.

Another ancient parable...

When God made the world he used to live in the marketplace, on M.G. Road. Of course, it was very difficult to live there in the marketplace, because people would come at any hour, odd hours. Even in the middle of the night they would start knocking: "My child is ill. I don't have any employment. What kind of world have you made? I am getting old, I am weak. What kind of world have you made?

Why is there so much suffering?"

People were coming the whole day and the whole night, and they were bringing demands. And their demands were so contradictory that God was going almost mad. One would come and say, "Tomorrow I need rains, because I have sown the seeds in the garden and the rain is needed." And another would come: "Please, tomorrow let there be sun, no clouds, no rains; because I am doing something which will be spoiled if it rains. I need a clear, sunny day."

Now what to do? Finally God called his council of advisors and asked, "What should I do? I am going crazy! Many times I start repenting: why did I create man? The world was so beautiful."

You know, the story is that whenever God made anything... He made the trees, and He was so happy that He said, "Good, very good!" He made the birds and the animals and He said, "Good, very good!" He appreciated His own creation, He was so thrilled. But when He made man he didn't say anything; in fact He was at a loss. That's why, after man, He stopped creating anything. He has not created anything since then; that was the last. He got so fed up with man that He stopped being a creator. He simply abandoned the world.

He asked his advisors, "What should I do? I have created this nuisance, and now they are torturing me. I would like a place to hide. Where should I go?" Somebody suggested, "You go to Everest.

These people will not be able to reach there."

For a moment He thought. He said, "No, you don't know the future. Just a few years" - and in God's vision thousands of years or millions of years are just a few - "there will be a man, Hillary. He will reach and then the chain will start. Once the world comes to know that I live on Everest, airplanes and helicopters and everything will start coming. That won't do, that won't help much. For the time being, okay, but that is not a solution. I need something permanent."

Somebody suggested, "Then why don't you go to the moon?"

He said, "You don't know - sooner or later man is going to reach there. He is going to reach to every planet, to every star."

Then an old advisor said, "Then the best thing I can suggest to you is, why don't you hide in man himself?"

And He loved the idea! And He said, "This is the right place, because that is the last place man is going to. He will go everywhere, but he will never go inside himself."

Since then, God has been hiding there.

You need not go into the scriptures; all that you need is to go into your own subjectivity. All that you need to go into is your own consciousness. You have to become more conscious of your consciousness, you have to become more aware of your awareness. You have to become so aware of your awareness that everything else disappears. A point of stillness comes where you are simply aware of your awareness and not aware of anything else.

When awareness is the only content of your awareness and there is no other content, that is the moment when the host disappears into the Guest, when the Guest is found, when bliss descends on you.

LET YOUR ARROGANCE GO, AND LOOK AROUND INSIDE.

THE BLUE SKY OPENS OUT FARTHER AND FARTHER, THE DAILY SENSE OF FAILURE GOES AWAY, THE DAMAGE I HAVE DONE TO MYSELF FADES, A MILLION SUNS COME FORWARD WITH LIGHT, WHEN I SIT FIRMLY IN THAT WORLD.

If you go in, things start happening, miracles start happening. And you are entitled to miracles, miracles are your birthright. But because you are always going into the outer, you become more and more of a beggar.

The mind is a beggar, remember - howsoever arrogant, but it is a beggar. The mind is a begging bowl and the beggar is never satisfied. The beggar goes on asking for more and more and more.

One day a beggar knocked on the doors of a great king. By chance, the king himself opened the door. He saw the beggar: the beggar was not an ordinary beggar, he was almost luminous. He had such grace, such beauty, such a mysterious aura, that even the king felt jealous. He asked, "What do you want?" still pretending - "I have not taken any note of you" - "What do you want?"

The beggar showed the king his begging bowl and he said, "I would like it to be filled."

The king said, "That's all? With what do you want it to be filled?"

The beggar said "Anything will do, but the condition is that you have to fill it; otherwise don't try."

It was a challenge to the king. He said, "What do you mean by it? Can't I fill this small begging bowl? And you don't say with what."

The beggar said, "That is irrelevant. Anything will do, even pebbles, stones, but fill it! The condition is: I will not leave the door if you start filling it; unless it is filled I will remain here."

The king ordered his prime minister to fill the begging bowl with diamonds; he had millions of diamonds: "This beggar has to be shown that he is encountering a king!" But soon the king became aware that he had been deceived. The begging bowl was as extraordinary as the beggar, more so in fact: anything dropped into it would simply be gone, would disappear. It remained empty. The treasures were thrown into it, but they all disappeared.

By the evening the whole capital had gathered. The king was now becoming almost desperate: the diamonds finished, then the gold, and then the gold was finished, then the silver, and then the silver was finished.... The sun was setting, and the king's sun had also set. His whole treasure was empty, and the begging bowl was still the same, empty, not even a trace! It swallowed all his kingdom. It was too much!

Now the king knew that he had been trapped. He fell at the feet of the beggar and said, "Forgive me. I was wrong to accept the challenge. This begging bowl is not an ordinary begging bowl. You deceived me - there is some magic in it."

And the beggar laughed and he said, "There is no magic in it: I have made it out of the skull of a man."

The king said, "I don't understand. What do you mean? If it is just made out of the skull of a man, how can it go on swallowing my whole kingdom?"

And the beggar said, "That's what is happening everywhere: NOBODY is ever satisfied. The begging bowl in the head always remains empty. It is an ordinary skull, just like everybody else's."

But once you have looked in, once you have come down from the head, once you have left the arrogance of the head and become humble in the heart, a new world opens its doors to you.

THE BLUE SKY OPENS OUT FARTHER AND FARTHER.

You have a blue sky inside you far deeper and far vaster than the outer sky, and far more beautiful.

The outer sky is nothing compared to the inner.

THE DAILY SENSE OF FAILURE GOES AWAY.

Once you look in, the daily sense of failure simply goes away, evaporates.

Just look at your life: there is a daily sense of failure; every day you know that again you are going to fail. The morning comes and you know - another day of dragging - and the evening comes, and tired, you go to sleep. One day is finished and your hands are still empty and your heart is still empty.

Nothing has been achieved and one day is lost. And you know tomorrow it is going to be repeated again because this has been so in the past, not only in this life but in many, many lives. Days come and go, years come and go, lives come and go, and you remain as empty as ever, no fulfillment, no contentment.

But Kabir says: As you look in, as you turn in... a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn is needed. Right now you are keeping yourself at the back, and the world is in front of you. A hundred-and-eighty- degree turn is needed... when the world is at the back of you and you are facing yourself.

That's what meditation is all about: looking into your own being, into the well of your own being.

THE DAILY SENSE OF FAILURE GOES AWAY, THE DAMAGE I HAVE DONE TO MYSELF FADES.

And the damage is great, because for lives we have been doing it to ourselves. We have been killing ourselves, wounding ourselves in a thousand and one ways. We are all wounds and nothing else!

Each pore of our being has become a wound, and each cell of our being hurts. What are you? - just think for a moment, watch for a moment - a great agony, a great sigh, a great pain of failure, of boredom, of meaninglessness. But still one goes on dragging in the hope that maybe that which has not happened yet may happen tomorrow... but tomorrow never comes.

If you look in, THE DAMAGE I HAVE DONE TO MYSELF FADES, A MILLION SUNS COME FORWARD WITH LIGHT...

All darkness disappears. At the innermost core is the source of light, as if millions of suns have suddenly come in.

... WHEN I SIT FIRMLY IN THAT WORLD.

If you can sit firmly, unwavering, inside yourself, in that world all is light, nothing is dark, and all is life, nothing is death, and all is eternal and nothing is time.

That moment is the moment, the momentous moment, when the Guest appears. Those millions- of suns simply declare His coming, that He is very close by. The disappearing sense of failure...

and suddenly a feeling of being healed; those are symptoms that the Guest is close by. His very presence is a healing force. He makes you whole; just by His presence you are whole. When you start feeling a well-being, a wholeness, when your agony starts disappearing and instead of agony ecstasy arises in you, know well that God is close by. Listen attentively... you will hear His footsteps coming closer and closer and closer.

I HEAR BELLS RINGING THAT NO ONE HAS SHAKEN.

And Kabir says: I am hearing some strange music, as if bells are ringing, but nobody is shaking them.

The sound of one hand clapping, ANAHAD NAD, unstruck music... All other music is struck music; you have to strike the strings of the instrument. It is only by striking the strings that the music arises.

It is violence - playing on a guitar or on a sitar, you are being a little violent. It is a kind of coercion; you are forcing the instrument to release the music. It is a kind of fight. And there is duality: the musician and the musical instrument in conflict, fighting. It can't be great music, it can't be eternal music. Once the musician stops fighting the music will disappear. It is caused, so it cannot be eternal.

But when you turn in, there is light and there is music - music which is eternal. It is simply there, it is not a created phenomenon.

ANAHAD GHANTA BAJE MRIDANGA, TAN SUKH LEHI PYAR MEN.

ANAHAD GHANTA BAJE MRIDANGA...

... Something strange is happening, Kabir says. Some bells are ringing, and nobody is ringing them.

Some music, some melody, is there, but I can't see anybody creating it.

This music is known by the Christian mystics as 'the Word', LOGOS. Nanak calls it NAM, Lao Tzu calls it Tao, Buddha calls it DHAMMA. But to call it music is the best, to call it NAD is the best, because it is a tremendous orchestra. All the planes of existence are involved in it. It is not only that the soul is full of music: once you have heard the inner music, your mind is full of it, your heart is full of it, your body is full of it, all your layers of being are full of it. Once known, not only inside do you hear it, it is outside too. In the song of birds you will hear it, and in the wind passing through the trees you will hear it, and in the waves striking on the rocks you will hear it. In sound you will hear, in silence you will hear.

In fact, the greatest music in the world is nothing but an echo of the inner music. Whenever a musician comes closer to that music, great music is born. Only very few have reached close to it: a Tansen, a Baiju Bawara, a Beethoven, a Mozart, a Wagner. Only very few have come close to it, but whenever some music comes close to it, resembles it, it has something great in it.

The modern trends in music are far away from it: they are more noisy, less musical. Jazz and other music is more sexual, less spiritual. They are loud. They keep your mind occupied, certainly; they are so loud that you have to remain occupied.

People go on listening to the radio, to the television, at full volume, as loud as possible, blaring, so that they need not think, so that they need not be worried, so that they remain occupied. The noise is so much, you cannot think - and they are tired of thinking, tired of worrying. People are glued to their chairs for hours listening to just stupid noise; it is not music at all.

Music, to be worthy of being called music, has to be meditative. If it brings meditation to you, if it brings silence; if it fills you with silence, if it reminds you of the soundless sound inside you, then only is it real music. Otherwise it is a false coin.

I HEAR BELLS RINGING THAT NO ONE HAS SHAKEN, INSIDE LOVE THERE IS MORE JOY THAN WE KNOW OF.

And Kabir says: This small word 'love' contains so much. We are not aware of it. We are only aware of the lowest expression of it, sex. We are not even aware of the higher expression which can be called love. And what to say about the highest, which is called prayer? Love contains three dimensions: sex, love, prayer. And unless your love has reached to the dimension of prayer you have not known love. Sex is the lowest form, the animal form; love is the human form, and prayer is the divine form.

Kabir says, INSIDE LOVE THERE IS MORE JOY THAN WE KNOW OF.

Because inside love you can find God Himself. If prayer arises, God is found.

RAIN POURS DOWN, ALTHOUGH THE SKY IS CLEAR OF CLOUDS.

And Kabir says: I cannot describe what is happening inside me. Things which are illogical, things which should not happen, are happening. There are no clouds in the sky, and rains are pouring - rains of nectar!

BIN PANI LAGI JAHAN BARSHA, MOTI DEKHI NADIN MEN.

I don't see any clouds anywhere! I don't see water falling down, but I am becoming full of nectar. I am being bathed in nectar; it is showering on me!

THERE ARE WHOLE RIVERS OF LIGHT...

It is difficult to describe, hence these metaphors.

... RIVERS OF LIGHT.

THE UNIVERSE IS SHOT THROUGH IN ALL PARTS BY A SINGLE SORT OF LOVE.

And now I see that the whole existence is joined together only by one single thread: you can call that thread love and nothing else. The world is a garland of millions of flowers, but running through all those flowers is a thread that keeps it together: that thread is love.

It may have many manifestations. For example, the physicist will say the earth has a certain power called gravitation. If you ask the mystics, mystics like Kabir, they will say it is nothing but a very lower form of love - because gravitation attracts, and all attraction is love.

What keeps the universe together? Why does it not fall apart? There must be something that is keeping it together, some force. That force mystics call love. You can call it God, because love is God.

HOW HARD IT IS TO FEEL THAT JOY IN ALL OUR FOUR BODIES!

It is difficult in the beginning, because we are not accustomed to dancing on such high planes. We are not accustomed to such pure air. When you go to the mountains, if you move to the highest peaks, you feel difficulty in breathing. You are not accustomed to inhaling such pure air; you have become accustomed to inhaling the impure air that surrounds the earth - and we have made it more and more impure.

In fact, scientists are at a loss. They cannot figure out how people are managing to live, because in cities like New York, Los Angeles, London, Calcutta, Bombay, the air is so polluted that man should not be able to live in it. It is three times more polluted than scientists used to think man is capable of tolerating - three times more! But man's adaptability is great; he can adapt to any kind of situation.

When people living in Bombay and Calcutta go to the Himalayas it is hard; breathing is difficult - the air is so light and so pure.

Once it happened: a woman gardener went to sell her flowers in the town. After selling her flowers, when she was going back, she met one of her old friends, childhood friends. She asked the friend, "What are you doing here?"

The friend said, "I have become a fisherman's wife and I have come to sell my fish."

The gardener-woman requested her to stay at her garden at least for one night, then in the morning she could go. The woman stayed. The gardener and his wife both prepared a beautiful bed for her, of flowers. But she could not sleep; she would turn and toss and turn. Finally they asked, "What is the matter? Why can't you sleep?"

She said, "It is because of these flowers. I know only one perfume - that of fish. Bring my bag.

Although now it is empty, but it has carried fish for years. Sprinkle it with water and give it to me. If I keep it close to my nose I may be able to fall asleep."

And that's how it happened - immediately she fell asleep!

One who knows only the smell of fish will find it difficult, at least in the beginning, to live with flowers.

Kabir is right; he says, HOW HARD IT FEELS - how difficult - TO FEEL THAT JOY IN ALL OUR FOUR BODIES!

The Eastern mystics have divided human bodies in many ways. They talk about four bodies - and the fifth is you. The first body is the gross body, the physical body. The second body is the vital body, more subtle than the physical; you can call it the body made of electricity. There is an electric current inside your body; that is your second layer. The third body is even more subtle; you can call it the psychic body, the body of your mind. The fourth is the subtlest; you can call it the body of your consciousness.

And the fifth is not the body but the Guest. That fifth is called bliss - ANANDAMAYA KOSHA, the body of bliss; it is the Guest. Once you have seen the fifth, slowly slowly - although it is hard - the bliss will descend to the fourth, to the third, to the second, to the first.

And when it has descended to the first, the man is totally enlightened. When he can feel the bliss even to the physical body, even in his material form, when he can feel God even in matter, then the perfection is achieved. Then enlightenment is total. Then there is no longer anywhere to go: one has arrived home.

THOSE WHO HOPE TO BE REASONABLE ABOUT IT FAIL.

Remember, this is the world of the mysterium: if you try to be reasonable about it you will fail. Hence whenever a sannyasin comes to me with something mysterious, I immediately tell him not to talk about it, not to analyze it, not to find explanations for it, because if you become too reasonable about it you will miss. You will fail, the door will close. One has to go into the mysterious without any reasoning. One has to simply go in tremendous trust and love, with a deep prayer in the heart, but in no way trying to be scientific, rationalistic, analytical.

ANDH BHEDI KAHA SAMJHENGE, GYAN KE GHAR TE DURA...

Those who are too much obsessed with analysis, they are blind. They will not be able to understand - they will not be able to understand that which resides in you.

THOSE WHO HOPE TO BE REASONABLE ABOUT IT FAIL.

THE ARROGANCE OF REASON HAS SEPARATED US FROM THAT LOVE.

God is found not through reason but through love. God cannot be proved by reason and cannot be disproved by reason either. But if you love, if you love enough, love itself becomes the evidence - such certain, such absolute evidence that even if the whole world says there is no God it cannot shake your trust.

God is found in love, remember. Let me repeat it again and again: not in reason but in love. Make your temple in love. Get out of the obsession of reason.

WITH THE WORD 'REASON' YOU ALREADY FEEL MILES AWAY.

Reason can, at the most, think about and about; it goes round and round in circles. It never penetrates the real core of your being. To know about God is possible through reason, but to KNOW GOD IS possible only through love. And remember, to know about God is not to know God.

To know about is acquaintance, not knowing. It is borrowed, it is somebody else's. And what can you know through reason?

Just think of a blind man thinking about light... Howsoever hard he works, howsoever great a thinker he is, he will never be able to understand what light is only by thinking. Impossible! Whatsoever conclusion he will arrive at will be wrong, because light can only be seen, not thought. And God can only be lived, not inferred.

HOW LUCKY KABIR IS...

But Kabir says: I am fortunate that I got out of the prison of reason, that I escaped from the clutches of reason and I gathered courage to follow love.

HOW LUCKY KABIR IS, THAT SURROUNDED BY ALL THIS JOY HE SINGS INSIDE HIS OWN LITTLE BOAT.

HIS POEMS AMOUNT TO ONE SOUL MEETING ANOTHER.

THESE SONGS ARE ABOUT FORGETTING DYING AND LOSS.

THEY RISE ABOVE BOTH COMING IN AND GOING OUT.

Kabir says: I am fortunate.

The original is very beautiful:

BARHE BHAG ALMAST RANG MEN, KABIRA BOLE GHAT MEN...

I am infinitely fortunate because I am colored, dyed, in the madness of love.

BARHE BHAG ALMAST RANG MEN...

God has drowned me in His color of joy, bliss, celebration. He has drowned me utterly into Himself Now I move like a mad poet, singing His songs.

BARHE BHAG ALMAST RANG MEN, KABIRA BOLE GHAT MEN...

Now what I am saying is not coming from my head; I am pouring my heart. In fact, now whatsoever is coming from me is not coming from me, it is coming from Himself. He is speaking through me. I have become just a flute in His hands; He is singing His song.

HANS-UBARAN DUKH-NIVARAN, AVAGAMAN MITE CHHAN MEN.

The moment I saw Him inside myself all misery disappeared, all bondage disappeared. In fact, the moment I saw Him I saw that all my misery was only a nightmare, that my bondage was only a dream, that I had somehow fabricated it myself, that I had projected it, that I was the creator of all of my hells.

HANS-UBARAN DUKH-NIVARAN...

The moment I saw Him, the bird was freed from the cage and all misery disappeared.

... AVAGAMAN MITE CHHAN MEN.

And in a split second I was freed from the wheel of life and death.

HOW LUCKY KABIR IS, THAT SURROUNDED BY ALL THIS JOY HE SINGS INSIDE HIS OWN LITTLE BOAT.

HIS POEMS AMOUNT TO ONE SOUL MEETING ANOTHER.

My songs, Kabir says, are my orgasmic joy, the meeting, the ultimate meeting of the soul with God, of the lover with the beloved; the merger of the river into the ocean. My songs are orgasmic explosions.

THESE SONGS ARE ABOUT FORGETTING DYING AND LOSS.

And these songs are singing only one thing: that there is no loss and there is no death. Forget all about it! Life is eternal, and life is bliss. There is no birth and there is no death, no beginning, no end. It is eternal pilgrimage, from one joy to another, from one peak of orgasmic blissfulness to another peak. From peak to peak, from joy to joy, it is an eternal journey.

THEY RISE ABOVE BOTH COMING IN AND GOING OUT.

And my songs are the songs of transcendence.

Once you have looked in, the outer and the inner are no more separate; you become a witness of both. You see the outer, you see the inner; you are neither and you are both.

These statements are known as ULATBASI - as if someone is playing on the flute from the wrong end, so illogical, so irrational.... But Kabir says, "What can I do? It is so. I can only state the fact. If the fact is absurd, it is absurd.

Kabir will perfectly agree with the Christian mystic, Tertullian.

Somebody asked him, "Why do you believe in God?" And Tertullian said, "I believe in God because God is absurd - CREDO QUA ABSURDUM."

Kabir would have danced listening to this. Yes, God is not a logical hypothesis, it is supra-logical.

No reasoning can prove it or.disprove it. You will have to learn the art of love.

and you will find the Guest. Turn in, tune in - He is waiting there for you.