talks given from 21/12/76 am to 31/12/76 am
english discourse series
10 chapters
year published: 1978
the path of love
chapter #1
chapter title: love is the master key
forsake my home and wander in the forest?
if brahma helps me to realize truth,
verily i will find both bondage and deliverance
in the home
he is dear to me indeed
who has power to dive deep into god;
whose mind loses itself with ease in his contemplation.
he is dear to me who knows god,
and can dwell in his supreme truth in meditation;
and who can play the melody of the infinite
by uniting love and renunciation in life.
kabir says:
the home is the abiding place;
in the home is reality;
the home helps to attain him who is real.
so stay where you are,
and all things shall come to you in time.
i. 76. santo, sahaj samadhi bhali
o sadhu! the simple union is the best.
since the day when i met my lord,
there has been no end to the sport of our love.
i shut not my eyes, i close not my ears,
i do not mortify my body;
i see with eyes open and smile,
and behold his beauty everywhere:
i utter his name,
and whatever i see, it reminds me of him;
whatever i do, it becomes his worship.
the rising and setting are one to me;
all contradictions are solved.
wherever i go i move round him.
all i achieve is his service:
when i lie down, i lie prostrate at his feet.
he is the only adorable one to me:
i have none other.
my tongue has left off impure words,
it sings his glory day and night:
whether i rise or sit down, i can never forget him;
for the rhythm of his music beats in my ears.
kabir says:
my heart is frenzied,
and i disclose in my soul what is hidden.
i am immersed in that one great bliss
which transcends all pleasure and pain.
religion has very rarely existed in a healthy way -- only when a buddha walks on the earth, or a christ, or a krishna, or a kabir. otherwise, religion has existed as a pathology, as illness, as neurosis. one who has realized religion through his own being has a totally different understanding of it. one who has been imitating others, his understanding is not understanding at all. truth cannot be imitated. you cannot become true by becoming a carbon-copy.
truth is original, and to attain to it you have to be original too. truth is not attained by following somebody, truth is attained by understanding your life. truth is not in any creed, in any argument; truth is in the deepest core of your being, hidden as love. truth is not logic; it is not a syllogism, it is an explosion of love.
and whenever truth explodes in you, you attain to a totally different vision of life, of god, of religion. your eyes have a different quality, a different transparency, clarity. when your mind is clouded with thoughts borrowed from others, whatsoever you call religion is not religion, it is just dreaming.
and the basic difference makes an imitative person pathological. a christian is pathological, a hindu too. krishna is healthy, superbly healthy; so is christ. when christ says something, he has known it. he is not repeating somebody else, he is not a parrot. it is his own realization -- and that makes the whole difference.
when you become a christian you repeat christ. by and by you become more like a shadow. you lose your being... you lose yourself. you are no more true, real, authentic. a christian is already dead, and religion is concerned with a rebirth. yes, it is a crucifixion too: the old has to die for the new to be born.
but following a dead creed, dogma, a church, you never allow the old to die -- and you never allow the new to be born. you never take the risk. you never move in danger. when christ goes to face his own being, he is moving dangerously: he is taking a great risk, he is going into the unknown.
just the other night i initiated a young man into sannyas, and i told him to seek the unknown. he said, `but why? and how? how can i seek the unknown? that which i don't know, how can i seek it?' we only seek the known. but if you only seek the known, you will never know god -- because you don't know god. if you seek the known you will move in a circle, in a rut. you will become mechanical. seek the unknown, because through seeking the unknown you move out of the rut. you will become mechanical. seek the unknown, because through seeking the unknown you move out of the rut, out of the repetitive, mechanical way of life. he is also right. he says, `how to seek the unknown?'
drop the known, don't cling to the known, and wait for the unknown. if you don't cling to the known, if you put the known aside, the unknown comes on its own accord. the unknown is just waiting at the door, but you are so full of the known that there is no space left for the unknown to come in. the unknown would like to become a guest, but the host is interested only in the known. the host is too much occupied with the known, the host is not free to even look at the unknown.
