Heaven Is All The Way To Heaven

THE METAPHYSICIAN TALKS WITHOUT KNOWING; the mystic knows, but keeps quiet. The Master is eloquent silence. The Master is a rare combination of the metaphysician and the mystic.

The Master is a great synthesis between the metaphysician and the mystic. The metaphysician knows how to talk, but he does not know what to talk about. The mystic knows what to talk about, but he does not know how to say it. The mystic is full of experience, but dumb. The metaphysician has no experience, but he is very articulate. The metaphysician is of no value, and the mystic is of no use.

You can worship a mystic, but you will never be able to understand him - because the communication exists not: he has broken the bridge of language. He IS in truth, but he cannot bring the message to you.

The metaphysician goes on bringing message after message, but the message is just verbal. If you go deeply into it there is no content in it, it is nonsubstantial.

The Master knows as much as can be known, and yet is articulate enough to express, to communicate.

Metaphysicians have existed in the thousands, and so have mystics existed - the Master is very rare. Kabir is a great Master: he knows, and he knows how to convey it. That's why he declares:

KABIR DECLARES THE SECRET OF THIS LOVE. His whole being is a declaration. He is not dumb; he sang for his whole life, and he sang the songs of truth. This last song in this series is of tremendous value. Follow me very slowly and try to digest, so that it becomes part of your being - because that is the only way to understand it.

THE FLUTE OF THE INFINITE IS PLAYED WITHOUT CEASING, AND ITS SOUND IS LOVE:

WHEN LOVE RENOUNCES ALL LIMITS, IT REACHES TRUTH.

HOW WIDELY THE FRAGRANCE SPREADS!

The flute of the infinite....

In the East we have always symbolized existence as the flute, the hollow bamboo on the lips of God.

The song is His; the flute cannot sing, the flute can only allow the singing, the singer, the song, to flow through it. Existence is a passage; so is man. Man is a flute, the birds are too, and so are the trees, and the sun and the moon. The whole existence is a hollow bamboo - God flowing through it, filtering through it, being expressed in millions of ways.

When I am talking to you, I am not talking to you; I am just a hollow bamboo. And when you are listening to me, you are not listening to me; He is listening through you - you are a hollow bamboo.

Be the talker or be the listener; be the dancer or be the audience - we are all hollow bamboos on the lips of the infinite. The song is His and so is silence.

Once you understand this concept of being a hollow bamboo, you are on the path of love. This is the first step.

THE FLUTE OF THE INFINITE IS PLAYED WITHOUT CEASING...

And this is the beauty and the contradiction: that the infinite needs a flute of finity, of the finite. The formless needs form to be expressed through. God needs you as much as you need Him. The need is not one-sided, otherwise it would not be so beautiful. If only we were in need of God, then it would be a lopsided state of things. No, there is balance: God is as much in need of us as we are in need of Him. The flute needs the singer, but the singer, too, needs the flute. It is true - the flute cannot create the song by itself; but the singer also cannot create the song by himself. The flute is as much a must for Him as He is a must for the flute.

This is the concept of interdependence: the whole depends on the parts, the parts depend on the whole. Neither is the part independent nor is the whole independent. In fact, the very idea of independence is neurotic. We are joined together. This gives a tremendous dignity.

On the one hand Kabir says: Be a hollow bamboo. On the other hand he says: Remember you dignity; without you God cannot sing the song.

Yes, without these tiny birds in the kajurina trees, God cannot sing the song. He depends on them; every morning he needs them. He cannot flower without roseflowers; every morning he seeks them.

God and His existence are not two separate things, but interdependent, leaning on each other, searching for each other like two lovers. The lover will not be total if the beloved is lost, and the beloved will not be whole if the lover is lost. When they are together, when their togetherness is such that they are melting into each other, only then are both whole.

This has to be understood: the part can never be the whole alone. What to say about the part? - even the whole cannot be the whole alone! He will need the part; without the part the whole will not be so rich. Just think: God without existence.... It will be just emptiness, a wasteland. Think of God without trees and without rivers and without oceans; think of God without man and birds and animals; think of God without sun and moon and stars... and it will be just a wasteland, a desert.

The East says: God is as much in need as we are; we depend on each other, we are members of each other, we are together. To know this togetherness is to know what love is. To know this unity, this immense unity, is to know what love is all about.

When you fall in love with a woman or with a man, what do you come to know? What is love? In a very tiny way you come to feel that you are not separate. In a very, very small way, on a small scale, you start feeling that you are meant for each other, that one is not whole without the other, that the other is a must, that the other is part of your soul and your being, that the other is not outside you.

Somehow he is inside you, yet outside; and you are inside him, and yet outside. Lovers penetrate into each other. It is not only a sexual metaphor: the penetration is spiritual. The sexual is only a shadow of it.

Lovers penetrate into each other: their boundaries are blurred, they become nebulous, their definitions become shaky. When living with a woman or with a man for many years, and suddenly the woman dies or the man dies, the pain that is felt, the suffering, the agony that is felt by the partner who is left behind, is not only that somebody has died. It is because now he will never be whole. It is because now a part of his being is destroyed completely, utterly. Now there will exist a black hole in his being, an abyss, an emptiness. When a lover dies, something deep inside you dies too. You had become so together; your life was no more separate, it was overlapping. You were in two bodies, but you had become one soul - that is the meaning of love.

When the same happens with the whole existence - that you start feeling that you are not separate, your boundaries overlap; not only do your boundaries overlap, your centers overlap; that your center is the center of the world too, that the center of the world is your center too - in that ecstasy of oneness is the fragrance called love.

THE FLUTE OF THE INFINITE IS PLAYED WITHOUT CEASING, AND ITS SOUND IS LOVE.

Kabir's original line is: MURALI BAJAT AKHAND SADAYA. The word AKHAND is very meaningful.

It is translated as 'without ceasing': the flute of the infinite is being played without ceasing. But that's not exactly the right sense of the world AKHAND is in a way continuous, and yet not. You breathe continuously - otherwise you will die - but sometimes you breathe in, and sometimes you breathe out. When you breathe in, you don't breathe out; when you breathe out, you don't breathe in. And certainly, breathing in is one process, and breathing out is another process. Breathing out will create a gap in the process of breathing in, and breathing in will create a gap in the process of breathing out.

The Eastern concept is that God goes on playing, but that doesn't mean that there are no gaps.

"Without ceasing" gives the impression as if there are no gaps. No; if there were no gaps music could not be music. Music is not only sounds, music is a combination, and alchemical process of sound and soundlessness. Music is sound AND the interval, the gap between the two sounds.

You watch: somebody is playing on the flute, you watch the notes; somebody is singing a song, you watch; I am talking to you, you watch - one word is not followed by another word; one word is followed by silence, then another word. Between two words there is an interval - otherwise one word and the other word would not have any definition. They would rush into each other, they would collide. Then there would be no music, there would be only noise, chaos.

"Without ceasing" means: the sound continues, but sometimes it is sound, and sometimes it is soundlessness. Sometimes it is manifestation, and sometimes the whole disappears and there is no manifestation.

In the East we say: When God breathes out, there is existence; when God breathes in, the whole existence disappears. This is a beautiful idea, of tremendous meaning. The existence is only because God breathes out - then He breathes in, the whole existence disappears; again he breathes out, there is existence; again he breathes in, the existence disappears.

Modern physics has come very close to this. They say that matter seems to be continuous, yet it is not continuous. In between, it disappears, but the gaps are so small that you cannot detect them.

The movement of the electrons is so subtle that one moment you see the electron at one place, another moment you see it at another place, and you have not even seen how it moved from one place to another. It has not moved, it has not jumped. Now a very absurd idea has arisen: the idea that the electron does not go from one place to another; from one place it simply disappears into nonexistence, and at another place it appears again into existence, pops up again. This is strange...

and truth is stranger than fiction. It is.

Modern physics has become more metaphysical than any metaphysics. This is the meaning of AKHAND: even if it disappears it is there. When it appears it is there, true: when it disappears, then too it is there. When it appears it is there, when it disappears it is there. You can hear it sometimes as a manifestation, and sometimes as non-manifestation. Sometimes it takes forms and sometimes it becomes formless - but it is there. If you have the ear to listen to the gaps too, you will see: it is unceasingly there.

MURALI BAJAT AKHAND SADAYA: This flute goes on playing, goes on creating a song, eternally...

... AND ITS SOUND IS LOVE...

The existence is made of the stuff called love.

Physics says matter consists of electricity. If you ask Kabir he will say: Matter, existence, consists of warmth, not electricity - the warmth of love. Existence is possible only because of love, because God cares, because he loves. God is not indifferent. God is a lover. It would be better to say, "God is love."

We can forget the word 'god', but we should not forget the word 'love'. Love is far more valuable than the word 'god', because love is the very spirit of God. God may be just the body, love is the very soul.

And this whole existence is in love: these trees are moving tremendously in love; these stars, these rivers rushing towards the ocean, are rushing towards a love-affair where they can meet and merge.

Watch, and you will find everywhere the shadow of love, the thrill, the excitement, the ecstasy of love. Whatsoever the form, if you look deeply, you will always find something throbbing at the center which cannot be anything other than love.

... AND ITS SOUND IS LOVE:

WHEN LOVE RENOUNCES ALL LIMITS, IT REACHES TRUTH.

When love renounces all limits....

There are many limits, and our love is confined in limits. That's why even if we love, we are never happy with it. The unhappiness that comes through love is not because of love, but because of the limitations that surround it.

Let it be absolutely clear to you, because many people, finding that love gives misery - yes, it can give, if there are limitations - become antagonistic towards love. They become enemies of love.

Then they start escaping from all possibilities of love.

There are a few monasteries yet in existence in Europe. One monastery exists; it has existed for almost twelve hundred, thirteen hundred years. Once the monk enters the monastery he never comes out of it; it is a commitment for the whole life. And, in the monastery, no woman is ever allowed; for thirteen hundred years not a single woman has entered. The monastery is only for males, for men. And there are monasteries where only women are allowed, no man has ever entered. All possibility of love is dropped.

People escape to the Himalayas: they are escaping from love, not from the world. They are afraid of love, and their fear has some reason behind it. Whenever you are in love, you are in a turmoil.

Whenever there is love there is difficulty; whenever there is love there is conflict; whenever there is love there is hell. Says Jean-Paul Sartre, "The other is hell." So whenever there is love the other enters your life, and suddenly there is conflict, collision, struggle to dominate each other, to possess each other, to master each other. And the misery arises. Lovers are rarely happy. I am not saying that non-lovers are happy; non-lovers may not be happy, but they are never so unhappy as the lovers.

And lovers are more unhappy because love had promised so much in the beginning - great expectation had arisen, great hope was there - and then everything is shattered on the rocks. A non-lover had not any expectation; he was settled, he was not hoping for heaven. You cannot throw a man into hell if he is not hoping for heaven. You can throw a man into hell only when he hopes for heaven. Otherwise there is no possibility.

In the East marriage is not so unhappy as in the West, because in the East it is not based on love.

When a marriage is not based on love, you don't hope for much out of it; you know the rut, the routine. When the marriage is arranged by the parents and the astrologer, and you have nothing to say about it - in fact you are nobody, you are just a watcher; whatsoever happens, you are watching... and then suddenly a woman that you have not even seen before is thrown with you - there is no expectation, there is no romance, there is no great hope. You were not hankering for the moon. It is an ordinary affair in the day-to-day world: marriage, a social institution with no romance.

You start living together; as people live with their brothers and sisters and with their mothers and fathers, in the East people live with their wives. You never choose your mother and father. Suddenly one day you find that this is your mother, so what to do? Beautiful, ugly, good, bad - a mother is a mother, so you love the mother. In the same way, in the East, people love their wives and their husbands. What can you do? One day you find that she is your wife. But because there is no love- affair to precede it, there is not much misery. Heaven was never expected, so you are not thrown into hell. You move on plain ground. The higher you go, the more is the possibility of falling.

When you move on the peaks of the mountains, you can fall into the abyss. When you move on a superhighway there is no fear of falling into an abyss. Marriage moves on plain ground. Marriage is without love, and whatsoever love starts happening after marriage is more brotherly-sisterly than love. It has no romance in it.

When two people find themselves bound together, by-and-by, they become acquainted with each other, and by-and-by, they start liking, just liking each other. By-and-by, they adjust. It is very mundane, it has no poetry in it.

In the West, marriage is not a bed of roses. The boat is always rocking; it is always on the rocks, it is always in a state of collapse at any moment. Why? If you love, you expect. When you expect, love becomes contaminated, polluted. Then love is not really love; it now has a limitation - because of expectation. When you love a person, you start possessing the person; you are afraid your woman may move to somebody else. You become so much afraid that you cannot even tolerate her looking at somebody. You cannot tolerate the idea that she was laughing with somebody else. That she can laugh without you?! It is impossible, it hurts. You start creating a prison for her - a beautiful cage, of course, that you call home - but you create a cage. Certainly, when you start creating a cage, she has to create a cage for you too - because nobody can become the jailer unless he becomes a prisoner too.

When you possess somebody you are possessed. When you force somebody to be a slave, you have become a slave in the process itself.

A Master is one who has never tried for anybody, who has never forced anybody to be a slave. If you try to enslave people, you will be enslaved by them. That's a simple process. Possess something and the thing will possess you. Become attached to something and you will feel that now you are in a great bondage.

Because of the limitations of love, love becomes condemned, and people feel it is because of love that they are suffering. Try to understand what limitations are possible.

Kabir says: When love renounces all limits, it reaches truth. The limits have to be understood.

Martin Buber, one of the greatest thinkers of this age, has divided love in two ways. The first he calls I-it: you love your car, you love your house; this is I-it love. You love your child, you love your woman; this is I-thou love. "These are two types of love," Buber says: "I-it and I-thou."

Now, watch carefully. The I-it love-affair is very limited - because the other is just a thing, and a thing can never give you freedom. And in fact, when you become attached too much to a thing you also start becoming a thing yourself... because your love determines your being.

A person who loves his car cannot be more of a person: loving a car, you show what type of person you are. A person who loves money becomes more and more like the money: just dirty currency notes. He also becomes like them. You can see it in the eyes: if a man is too much of a miser, you can see it in the eyes - currency notes, dirty notes, floating. He loses his soul; he is reduced to something that he loves.

Beware: never love a thing below yourself, otherwise you will be falling. Because your love object becomes your goal, you start falling towards it.

Whomsoever you love, you start falling towards him. Never love a thing, otherwise your soul will be reduced to a thing. This is the greatest limitation, I-it. And the problem is more complicated, because if you love your car, you understand this is a car. But there are people who love their wives also in the same way - I-it. The wife is not thought to be a person.

In the East they call the wife "your wealth". Wife? - your wealth? That's how it has been thought of down the ages. In the East the relationship between the husband and the wife is an I-it relationship.

In many countries, if you kill your wife there will be no problem. It is not a problem for the law to worry about: she was YOUR wife, you are entitled to kill her. If you beat your wife, nobody is going to say anything to you; it's your affair, you can beat your wife. This is how things have existed.

Of course, the wife has retaliated in her own ways. She may not beat the husband, but she can beat him in a thousand and one ways, indirectly. And she does it. And women have become very, very proficient, very clever in beating the husband - in such tricky ways that you cannot even say, "You are beating me." They have found indirect ways: the ways of the weak. The weak has also to protect himself and retaliate. The weak finds his own way, his methodology is different.

For example, a woman may start crying, and she will beat you with her crying. Or a woman may fall ill, and you know why she is having a headache. And she will not cook food for you, and she will not take care of the children - she will lie down on the bed and will say she has a fever. Now she is beating you, and the kids, and the whole family; it is her way. Or the woman will become cold:

whenever you approach her, whenever you take any initiative towards love, she will freeze. She will become simply cold, she will look at you with condemnatory eyes. She will reduce you to an animal.

She will think about you that you are a sex-maniac or something. And whenever you will make love to her, she will lie down there like a corpse. She will not cooperate. And of course she will be very jealous and very possessive. She will not give you any freedom - because you have not given her any freedom. It is the law of nature. If you are having an I-it relationship, then the other will try to have an I-it relationship with you. That's a natural response.

And as I see it, out of a hundred people, almost ninety-nine percent of people live in an I-it relationship, even with persons. The husband is not a person, the wife is not a person: the husband is a thing to be possessed, so is the wife; the husband is a thing to be used, so is the wife. We have reduced each other to things. That is the ugliness that comes out of love IF it has such a limitation - this boundary of the I-it relationship.

Drop this boundary. Move a little higher, move to a little bigger concept. And that concept Buber calls I-thou.

Let your woman be a thou, not an it; let your man be a thou, not an it; let your child be a thou - respect the other. The other is a soul of immense value. The other is God. Call him "thou", and not only call him, but behave in such a way that you never think of the other as a thing.

Never try to use anybody; share, but never use. Respect the dignity of the other, never interfere, and then love has a bigger space, less limited. But still, it will be limited.

Buber talks only about two: I-it and I-thou. I would like to talk about two more possibilities. The third possibility, higher than I-thou, is "not I-thou" - when you say, "I am not, only you are." That's where prayer arises: when you say, "I am not, you are. I am totally one with you. I have no separate entity."

When you can say that to your lover, the relationship has gone beyond the human. I-it is below human, I-thou is human, No I-thou is superhuman, the state of prayer.

I-it is sexual, I-thou is what is ordinarily called love, no I-thou is prayer. That's why the devotee says to God, "I am not. Not my, but thy will be done." The devotee surrenders his I; a man in prayer surrenders his I, bows down his head and says, "Only you are. I am just a part in you, just a part, a mere part, nothing to brag about. There is no need to make any fuss about me. I am not."

This is the third: you have a still vaster sky available to you.

And the fourth I call: no I, no thou; that is the state of meditation. When you say, "I am not, you are,"

a subtle feeling of "I" will persist - because even to call the other thou, I is needed. Without the I, thou cannot exist - maybe not consciously now, maybe not so gross, maybe refined - but there will remain a shadow. Otherwise, who will say "thou"? To call God "thou" or your lover "thou", you have to be there.

The fourth state is: no I, no thou. Now there is even no prayer. Even that much duality has been dropped. There is silence, meditative silence, ZAZEN. One is simply sitting, doing nothing. There is nothing to say, there is nobody to say it, there is nobody for it to be said to. The addressor has disappeared, and so has the addressed disappeared. That's why I say Buddhism reaches to the highest: no I, no thou.

Buddhism says: There is no God and no soul. That is the meaning of it. It is not a metaphysical theory, it is a statement of the highest form of love: there is no God and there is no soul. I am not and you are not - finished. then there is no point in uttering a single word. Now silence can prevail, there is no need even for a dialogue.

I-it - bodies meet. It is sexual, physical, very gross. I-thou - minds meet. It is psychological; not so gross, but not yet so subtle either. No I-thou - spirits start meeting, souls start meeting. But still they are separate. Come closer, come closer; they go on coming closer, but still, a subtle demarcation exists. The devotee is still there: not very assertive, not very egoistic, very humble, but in his humbleness also, the I exists. The fourth is where even soul disappear: no bodies, no minds, no souls. You have come home. Only one exists, without any demarcation.

This is what Kabir calls:

WHEN LOVE RENOUNCES ALL LIMITS, IT REACHES TRUTH.

HOW WIDELY THE FRAGRANCE SPREADS!

And then the fragrance that you have been carrying for lives together, that you have been carrying like a seed, spreads from your being. Now it has become a lotus flower: now it is open to the sky, to the wind, to the sun, the rains, and the fragrance spreads and goes on spreading to the very corners of existence. Your love-affair has spread all over existence. Now you are in an orgasmic state with existence itself. This is ecstasy. This is the ultimate bliss, benediction.

In this ultimate state of love, this ultimate flowering of your being, love is no more a relationship: it becomes a state. I-it is a relationship, very much confined by the "it". I-thou is still a relationship - a little freed, more freed: your rope is bigger to roam around - but "thou" is still a limiting concept.

Still it is a relationship. Not I-thou... things are melting. You are in the melting-pot, but you have not yet disappeared totally, utterly. Certainly the relationship has become very big, but still it is a relationship. In the fourth it is no more a relationship, because for the relationship to exist two are needed. It is a state of being.

Up to the third you can say love exists as a dialogue. Beyond the third the dialogue has disappeared.

Now it is not that you love; now you ARE love. Now love is all that is there: the lover has disappeared, the beloved has disappeared, only love has remained.

In all our life situations, this trinity has to be remembered: the knower, the known, and the knowledge; the lover, the loved, and love; the observer, the observed, and the observation. This is the trinity.

by-and-by, we have to dissolve. When the knower is no more and the known is no more, then knowledge is freed of all limitations. Then knowledge is immense, as immense as existence itself.

And so is love when the lover and the loved have disappeared.

WHEN LOVE RENOUNCES ALL LIMITS, IT REACHES TRUTH.

It becomes truth itself.

IT HAS NO END, NOTHING STANDS IN ITS WAY:

THE FORM OF THIS MELODY IS BRIGHT LIKE A MILLION SUNS:

INCOMPARABLY SOUNDS THE VINA, THE VINA OF THE NOTES OF TRUTH.

One thing more to be pondered over: Kabir again and again says that when love has flowered totally there is a bright light, as if, suddenly, millions of suns have arisen all around you. And this is not only Kabir saying so; Mohammed says so too, and so does Christ, and all the mystics of the world. They have said that when you arrive at the innermost core, suddenly there is an explosion of light. This cannot be just a metaphor: different countries, different languages, different centuries, but all over the world, mystics have been agreeing on one thing - that at the last moment there is an explosion of light, thousands of suns have suddenly arisen. The light is so dazzling, one cannot open one's eyes. The light is so bright; it takes time to get adjusted to it and to look into it. In fact, when for the first time it happens, the mystic feels as if he has fallen into a dark night. It is so dazzling....

Christian mystics have said that before the light happens, one has to pass through a dark night of the soul. It is almost as if you look at the sun directly: then, within seconds, you will feel as if you are going blind. Suddenly, the sun will disappear, the light will disappear; you will become almost blind, you will feel that all around is darkness.

If the sun is too much and your eyes cannot absorb it, they will refuse, they will close - hence the darkness. And if thousands of suns are suddenly there, how can you conceive that you will be able to see it?

In the beginning it becomes very dark, frighteningly dark; the mystic feels he has gone blind. But even if it is dark, it is very soothing; even if it is dark it is very relaxing; even if it is dark the mystic wouldn't like to open his eyes and see the outside world. The inner darkness is far better than the outer light; relatively, comparatively, it is far better. The mystic relaxes into the inner darkness, and by-and-by, he becomes adjusted, his eyes become capable of seeing this light, what this light is.

Again I would like to remind you: physicists say that matter consists of electricity, and if you go on dividing then finally the atom is divided into tremendous light - only electrons remain. That's the whole theory of the atomic explosion, of atomic energy. A single atom, when it explodes, becomes such a great light.

When on Hiroshima and Nagasaki the atom bomb was thrown, never before had such light ever been seen, tremendous light and explosion; just for a few seconds, a GREAT light all over. If it is possible by dividing a small atom which cannot be seen with the bare eyes, then one has to think, meditate: maybe when the inner cell of life, the atom of life, the atom of your being, explodes, the same may be happening - because life is the same energy, out and in. Matter and consciousness - it is the same energy.

Physicists say the atom explodes in light, and mystics say the soul explodes in light. They seem to be in deep agreement. In fact, nobody is trying to make a bridge between religion and science.

If it is done, it will be of great value - the insights that go parallel. They MUST go, they have to go, because it is one existence. Somewhere, all that science has discovered and all that religion has discovered, however their languages are different, somewhere there must be an agreement, because we are seeking and searching for different methods, different approaches, different gestalts, but we are searching for the same truth. Somewhere or other, the mystic and the scientist must be in agreement.

THE FORM OF THIS MELODY IS BRIGHT LIKE A MILLION SUNS...

One more thing: from very ancient times in the East, it has been thought that every sound has its particular color. That's why in Indian music the melody is called RAGA: 'raga' means the color.

Each sound has its own color: it is one of the very ancient doctrines of Eastern music. And now scientists are also coming closer to it: there must be some correspondence between sound and color - because sound is nothing but vibrations of electricity, and electricity is color, light. When a ray of light is broken through a prism, it becomes seven colors. When those seven colors meet again it becomes white. There are seven sounds, just as there are seven colors. There is definitely a possibility that seven colors and seven sounds have something in common.

That's the theory of Indian music, and Kabir is not only a mystic, not only a metaphysician; he is a musician too. He says: The form of this melody is bright like a million suns. And when the inner melody, the inner sound, the soundless sound, the ANAHAT NAD, the OMKAR, explodes, its color is absolutely white - because now all notes and all sounds disappear into one thing. Just as seven colors disappear into one color, white, seven sounds disappear into one sound, the sound of silence.

In a deep silent night, sometimes you hear it. Or if you close your ears tightly, suddenly inside there is a sound. If you become deeply meditative and all thinking disappears, then you will hear the deepest. When the mind functions not, the prism is dropped. It is through the prism of the mind that sound is divided, split. When the prism is removed, the mind is removed - suddenly all sounds become one. And the color of that one sound - what Zen people call "the sound of one hand clapping" - is white.

This seems to be a very factual statement, and I am telling it to you because one day or other you will come across it. If you continue meditating, one day or other you will move to this inner light. And this is a point of great crescendo. The music is tremendous, the melody is tremendous... it is the ultimate..and the light is tremendous. And both are together, as if two aspects of the same energy.

SUBTLE IS THE PATH OF LOVE!

THEREIN THERE IS NO ASKING AND NO NOT ASKING, THERE ONE LOSES ONESELF AT HIS FEET, THERE ONE IS IMMERSED IN THE JOY OF THE SEEKING:

PLUNGED IN THE DEEPS OF LOVE AS THE FISH IN THE WATER.

THE LOVER IS NEVER SLOW IN OFFERING HIS HEAD FOR HIS LORD'S SERVICE.

KABIR DECLARES THE SECRET OF THIS LOVE.

Kabir is a declaration of the secret of this love. He says: This is my path. And the path of love is for many. It is easier to move from the path of love than through any other path - because love is so close to your heart.

The only problem that has arisen for the contemporary person, for contemporary man, is that he no longer beats in his heart. He is hung-up in the head. More and more, we are trained for the head, and the heart has been neglected, ignored. There is no training for the heart, there is no discipline for the heart; no school, no university bothers about the heart. About feeling, we are savages, worse than savages. Our whole culture is of the head, so the head becomes to-heavy and the heart goes on shrinking. It should not be so. This is the greatest calamity that has happened to humanity in the whole history of the mind, of consciousness. We are too much in the head, there is too much investment in the head; heart is left far behind. In fact, we have bypassed it, we have not even gone through it.

We don't allow feelings. A man of feeling seems to be weak, the man of no-feeling seems to be very strong. We teach people not to be emotional. We teach people not to cry, not to laugh too loudly.

We teach people to remain always in control; and if YOU are in control, then love is not going to happen to you - because love happens only when you are in a state of un-control.

Love is something bigger than you; you cannot control it. If you want to control, you can remain in hate. Hate can be controlled; hate is smaller than you. Love cannot be controlled; love is bigger than you. If you try to control love you will miss all possibilities. You will become a love-less being - and that's what a dead person is: a loveless being who exists in the head and who has forgotten his own heart.

Kabir says: BHAKTI KA MARAG JHINA RA - subtle is the path of love.

Yes, it is not gross. The head is very gross. The head is nothing but logic, arithmetic, calculation, cunningness, cleverness; good to exploit people, good to torture people, good to collect money, have a big bank balance; good to become a politician, good to overpower people, good to destroy.

The head is very gross.

Heart is very subtle, and absolutely useless as far as the world is concerned. Through the heart is poetry, not calculation. Through the heart is emotion. Through the heart is sensitivity, not cleverness.

Through the heart is compassion, not exploitation. the heart is not needed at all in the market; the heart cannot purchase any commodity. And the heart will not make you a great politician or a great general; it will not make you a great warrior, it will not make you a bloody Adolf Hitler or somebody else.

With heart, by-and-by, you will move away from the paths of competition, that cut-throat competition, that violent struggle where everybody is against everybody. This hostile world, this ugly world... you will, by-and-by, move to the side. You will no more be on the superhighway of ugliness; you will no more be a part of this ugly society; you will not play these games of nationalism, fascism, socialism, communism; you will not be in any way concerned with ideologies. You will love, and you will enjoy, and you will delight.

Let the difference be very clear to you.

Just a few days ago one young man said to me, "I am meditating and great love is arising in me for humanity."

I said, "For humanity? How are you going to love humanity? Where will you find humanity? Humanity you say? Human beings will be enough. Love a human being, not humanity. 'Humanity' is a trick of the head. Humanity? How will you love humanity? Where will you hug humanity? Where will you hold hands with humanity? You will always find a human being wherever you go; nowhere any humanity. Humanity is an ideology, a concept, an abstraction in the head. Life is always particular, the head is always conceptual. You will always find a certain human being, a man, a woman...."

And when I said to the young man, "Love a human being," he was shocked. In fact, he was trying to escape into the "love humanity" to avoid human beings. No, he was not very happy when I said that.

I could see in his eyes that he was not very happy - as if I had brought him down; he was flying very high. He was not flying at all; he was simply playing a verbal game.

If you love humanity, you can kill human beings to save humanity. If you love peace, you can go to war. Never love peace and never love democracy and never love communism - all ideologies.

Love concrete human beings, love concrete trees, love concrete rocks, particulars... and only then will you know what love is. Forget great abstractions; they are dangerous. Men have been fighting because of them, destroying each other. A Mohammedan is ready to fight for Islam, and he will kill human beings for the love of Islam. Now this is foolish. The Christian is ready even to kill Christians if it is to save Christianity. what is this Christianity?

Love the concrete, love the immediate. Enjoy this moment, don't prepare for tomorrow. Today is beautiful: delight in it, let it be a celebration.

SUBTLE IS THE PATH OF LOVE!

Why subtle? Because one has to be sensitive, one has to be more and more in the heart, one has to become capable of feeling and response.

Feel, cry, laugh, dance, weep, shout, but do it from the heart. And by-and-by you will feel a new change, a transformation - energy falling from the head towards the heart. And you will start moving in a totally different way. New values will arise, because the head has different values.

You fall in love with a beautiful woman, but the head says, "What are you doing? This woman is beautiful but she has no money." the head says, "Better find a girl who has money." The head is calculating, the heart is mad. Hence I say to you: If you want to love, be mad. Only mad people - mad in the sense that they are not calculating, mad in the sense that they risk the outer for the inner, mad in the sense that they can risk tomorrow for today - only mad people can move on the path of love.

THEREIN THERE IS NO ASKING AND NO NOT ASKING...

You have to understand that, again, love can be of four types. One: you simply ask; that is immature love. A child simply asks. He cannot give, in the first place; he does not know how to give. He is a child, he can be forgiven. He asks the mother, he asks the father, he asks everybody. Everybody should love him; he is very demanding. But one has to grow out of it. This is very immature. The first kind of love is immature love, when you demand: you say, "Give me this, give me that. If you give me, I will know you love me; if you don't give me, then certainly you don't love me." That is the only way the child knows whether you love him or not. If you bring him more toys, more ice cream, more things, then he knows you love him. He can understand only one language - that is of giving him things; give to him.

This is not wrong, every child has to pass this phase. But many people remain stuck there. Then they have become grown-up - they may have their own children. The man may now be forty, maybe having three children of his own, and still he goes on demanding. A man of forty comes home and he waits for the child to give him a kiss, and he says, "Look, Daddy is here. Now give the kiss." What type of daddy are you? You are still immature, you are still asking. And this type of man will ask for love from the wife, and this type of woman will ask for love from the husband; everybody asking, and nobody ready to give; all children, nobody mature enough to give. Hence so much conflict.

The second, higher type of love, is when you start giving - when you give, and you don't bother about whether others are giving to you or not. But remember, you can get stuck in the second too.

One can get stuck so much that one will not allow somebody to give one anything. The missionary, the do-gooder, these people, they will not allow. If you allow them to do something good for you, they are ready, but they will not take anything back - because that is against their ego. How can they take? They are mature people; they only give, they don't take. They have moved to another extreme. They are more mature than the first, but there is still another maturity. This is again ego: "I can only give."

One man I know is a rich man, a very rich man, and he has been giving all sorts of help to his relatives, friends. He has distributed much of his money. He used to come to me. He said once, "One thing I could never figure out: I have been helping everybody, but nobody ever feels grateful towards me."

And I know he has tried - he has been helping, he is REALLY generous, a rare generous man. You just give him a hint and he will give; whatsoever he can give he will give. He will never say no. And he has given: all his relatives and friends have become rich because of him. And this too I know:

that nobody is grateful towards him. And I told him, "You may not like it, but the problem is: you always give, you never allow them to give anything to you. You are too egoistic... generous, but you cannot conceive of receiving anything from anybody. That is against your ego."

He pondered over it. He started crying. He said, "Maybe this is true. I have never taken anybody's help in my life. I am a self-made man. I can give, but I cannot receive. Maybe you are right."

I said, "There is no need to receive big things, but small things. Just tell somebody,'I am feeling ill; you come and sit by my side and I will feel happy' - that will do. Small things - but give the other a chance to also show his love towards you. Otherwise he is always burdened, and burdened. And when one is burdened, one can never forgive you."

So the third type of love is when a person can take and give - can easily take, can easily give - and there is no problem. The flow is equal, just like breathing in and breathing out. This is the third type of love; very mature.

And the fourth, the last, is when you don't know what is giving and what is taking. Because the other is no more there, you are part of the whole.

THERE IS THEN NO ASKING AND NO NOT ASKING.

THERE ONE LOSES ONESELF AT HIS FEET, THERE ONE IS IMMERSED IN THE JOY OF THE SEEKING; PLUNGED IN THE DEEPS OF LOVE AS THE FISH IN THE WATER.

THE LOVER IS NEVER SLOW IN OFFERING HIS HEAD FOR HIS LORD'S SERVICE.

Remember, only one offering will do - offer your head. Offer your thinking, thought, your reason; that will do. Just cut your head and be of the heart. And Kabir says: This is the secret that I declare to you.

Don't go on offering flowers; they won't help. Offer your head, offer your thinking, your will. And Kabir says: When you are immersed in the joy of the seeking.... A REAL lover, a REAL follower on the path of love, is not worried about the goal. The journey is the goal.

"Heaven is all the way to heaven. Has He not said,'I am the Way'?"

He is not bothered about what is going to happen tomorrow, in the end. He is not result-oriented; the journey is his goal. It is tremendously beautiful. The BHAKTAS, the devotees, have been singing in the East: "God, we don't seek salvation. We don't want MOKSHA, NIRVANA. This world is beautiful, your game is beautiful; allow us to play! The journey is so tremendously beautiful - who bothers about the goal? The journey is the goal."

The devotee, the lover, loves seeking itself. He is not in a hurry to find God. He says, "Go on hiding.

Let us play the game of hide-and-seek; the seeking is so beautiful." And he is not in a hurry, he is not impatient. He says, "I will wait. Whenever you decide to come, come. You will find me ready, my door will be open. I will be waiting at the door, and food will be ready. You come and we will feat.

And there is no hurry: you have a thousand and one things to do; you do them, you take your time.

I can wait."

A lover is absolutely patient, and enjoys the very seeking, the very existence. His goal is not in the future, he is immersed in the moment, in the immediate - that is his meditation.

This is possible if you drop your head. If you drop your mind, with just the dropping of the mind, the whole energy moves to the heart... and love arises.

Love is the secret key; it opens the door of the divine. Laugh, love, be alive, dance, sing, become a hollow bamboo, and let His song flow through you.

MURALI BAJAT AKHAND SADAYA: His flute is continuously singing. His song is continuously on.

Any moment you decide to become His flute, He will take you in His hands, He will put you to His lips, He will start singing a song... and that song is the song of love, the song of freedom, the song of nirvana.