Nahin Ram Bin Thaon #14

The speech of the saints is ulatbansi. First understand the word. It is a lovely word—and mysterious. When someone plays a flute, there is the player and there is the flute that is played. Ulatbansi means: the flute is playing, and the player is being played—the whole thing is inverted. The one who should be playing is being played; the flute, which should be played, is playing. The process is reversed.

Such a moment comes. If you know flute-playing, you’ll understand. A moment comes when the player becomes so absorbed that there is no sense of “I am playing.” Absorption becomes so deep, the player so lost, that it seems the flute is playing by itself. The doer disappears. And when absorption reaches its peak—so total that there is no “beyond” left—not only does it feel, “I’m not playing, the flute is playing,” it even begins to feel, “the flute is playing me.” The means and the end change places; the first becomes last, the last becomes first; the effect becomes cause, the cause becomes effect. Everything is upside down.

This doesn’t happen only with the flute; it happens in every dimension of life wherever immersion can deepen. One day the dancer knows, “I am not dancing; the dance is happening by itself.” And another day he knows, “The dance is making me dance.”

The notion “I am the doer” is an illusion. The saints’ whole life is the experience of the reversed flute.

Kabir’s utterances are unique. It is hard to find a saint like Kabir in the whole history of the earth—because Kabir is utterly unlettered. What he says cannot have come from scriptures; he is unfamiliar with them. He has no wealth of learned words. His words are of daily life, used by everyone. Yet into those everyday words he has poured what even the seers of the Upanishads found hard to pour into the purest of terms. And his point, born of experience, is that in samadhi the world is seen exactly upside down from how we’ve known it.

Imagine you are standing by the sea or a lake and looking at your reflection in the water. If you see only the reflection, you’ll “experience” your head below and your feet above. If all other channels of knowing are closed, and reflection is your only mode of seeing, you’ll be convinced your head is down, feet up. Then one day you wake, your eyes are freed from the reflection, and you look directly at yourself—you’ll be in for a shock: “Everything has turned upside down! Here my head is up and my feet are down.”

Carl Gustav Jung’s secretary wrote in her memoirs that Jung would sometimes get very angry about small things—disproportionately so. One day she made a minor mistake, and Jung flared up. She felt hurt: the offense was trivial and didn’t deserve such heat. By evening she was thinking of quitting. As she was leaving, Jung said, “Come to the garden.” There he stood on his head in a headstand and said, “You know headstand—stand on your head.” She found it absurd, but a man like Jung must have a reason. She stood on her head, and she began to laugh: the world appeared perfectly inverted. Jung laughed too and sent her away. Later she understood: what seemed small to her did not seem small to Jung. Just as things look inverted in a headstand, so in Jung’s vision the same thing might loom large.

A saint is a person in a headstand. The way you stand—he stands inverted. Your assumptions, your values—he has turned them upside down. What is valuable to you in matter has no value to him. The body is everything to you; to him it is nothing. Wealth is everything to you; to him it is dust. You look outward; he looks within. You seek life’s essence in others; he seeks it in himself. He is standing on his head.

Therefore your world will look inverted to him, and his world will look inverted to you. Ulatbansi has happened. And when someone sees the world standing thus inverted, what he sees will seem paradoxical to you.

Kabir’s ulatbansi says: Everyone has seen nectar raining from the sky; but who has seen nectar raining from the earth onto the sky? We see what comes down from above; we don’t see that the earth also gives back to the sky. Yet it must be so, because life works by exchange. We cannot only take; we must also give—otherwise the traffic of life stops.

You inhale, and you must exhale. You cannot only inhale. If you won’t exhale, you won’t be able to inhale either. The law of taking is hidden in giving; you can take because you give.

And the delight is: once you understand this, the more you give, the more you can take; the less you give, the less you can take. Whoever exhales deeply is able to inhale just as deeply. The deeper the exhalation, the deeper the inhalation. The giver alone enjoys.

Hence the Upanishads say: renunciation is enjoyment—tena tyaktena bhunjitha. Those who renounced, enjoyed; those who clutched, missed. Out of fear that if the breath goes out it might not return, you hold it in—you die. Your own hands killed you. There is fear: Will the breath return? What power do you have over it? If you hold it in out of fear that it may not return, you will die.

In life we do exactly this—clutching, not releasing—and become dead. Fortunately, with breathing we haven’t imposed our miserliness, or we’d die there too. But spiritually we have died, because we made grasping our way of enjoyment.

Life is a balance. If you take, you must give. Only by giving can you take. Kabir says: empty both your hands—ulicho, pour out—how much you can pour out is how much you can be filled. The supreme formula in these inversions is: the day you become zero, the day you are empty, the Full will descend into you.

Giving is the royal road to receiving. Renunciation is the formula for enjoyment. Disappearing is the process of becoming complete.

And it is all balance. Everything is balanced. We see rain coming from the sky; but the earth can’t only receive—it must also give. If it didn’t, the sky would soon be empty; rain would become impossible.

In fact, the clouds rising into the sky are the earth’s offering. Every leaf returns vapor to the sky. You don’t see it. But sit by a tree at dusk—when the sun has set—and watch: every leaf is returning moisture; vapor is rising from every leaf. What the earth takes, it returns. The earth is not only a receiver. And if the earth rejoices when rain falls from the sky, the reverse is also true: when the earth returns, the sky rejoices.

Between earth and sky a love-play is going on, a deep embrace. Thus ancient scriptures called earth the feminine and sky the masculine; between them is a vast lovemaking. There is exchange, because love cannot be only giving or only taking. You need both feet to walk, both hands to swim, both wings to fly.

We see rain. When it rains, nature becomes elated. Dry leaves depart; greenness spreads everywhere. It’s happening all around now—the rains are near. The sky has begun to give; trees are already green in welcome; flowers bloom; birds sing drunk with joy; peacocks will dance; the whole earth celebrates. The waiting is over. Everything had become parched; life’s sap was dry; the earth’s throat was cracked. Everywhere thirst. Now the sky will rain, and everywhere there will be contentment.

But that is only one side: the sky rains and the earth is glad. There is another side—though it may not be visible to you. To eyes that have opened, that other side is also seen—and a saint means a person with open eyes. He sees the sky too becoming desolate when the earth does not give. When the earth shrivels into itself and doesn’t return, the sky feels the same pain and anguish the earth feels.

The earth returns too. The Ganges runs toward the ocean; all rivers run to the sea. What can the ocean do? It lifts them up to the sky, pours them back. Clouds form again, thicken in the sky; the earth calls; rain falls; rivers run to the sea. It is a circle, a cycle of give-and-take. There is never a moment’s break. The name of this circle is joy. Wherever it is broken, there is sorrow.

Why is Kabir saying this? He is not declaring a meteorological truth. He is speaking about you.

Within you too are earth and sky. Your body is your earth; your soul is your sky—the inner sky. Between them too a vast exchange should flow.

But often your inner sky gives much to your bodily earth, and you fail to return. What should return to the sky gets lost in the world’s deserts; the river does not reach the ocean; it disappears in sand. The exchange within you has broken—the ecological circle has snapped—so you suffer.

If your body and soul come into balanced exchange, the note called samadhi will begin to sound within. The day the give-and-take is equal—like the two pans of a scale balancing and the needle comes to rest in the exact middle—neither more on this side nor that—that very moment the taste of the Brahman begins to be available.

But you are tilted—far toward the body, almost not at all toward the sky. You take a lot from the inner sky but don’t return. This is your worldliness: you go on taking from the sky and do not give back. Your possessions increase, but you lose your soul. You gather objects by selling your soul and think perhaps joy will come. Your palace grows, your kingdom expands, your wealth piles up—but you have paid a great price without knowing. You have collected trash by selling yourself. The inner sky goes empty; its clouds rain and nature does not return; nectar flows one way and does not return. When it doesn’t return, the circle breaks.

The breaking of the circle is sorrow. If it breaks completely, with no connections left, that state we call hell. If it runs steady, that is heaven. And if it becomes so perfect that the needle of the scale settles exactly in the center—with no further perfection possible—that is liberation. Hell is the circle shattered into many fragments; heaven is the circle restored; liberation is the circle perfected.

So when Kabir says, “Everyone has seen the sky rain nectar; who has seen the earth rain nectar upon the sky?”—he is pointing to this.

Every moment the earth also rains. Green plants, blossoming flowers, birdsongs—these are responses, resonances, thank-you’s. Not accidental. Breath that came in goes back out. Let the same note be formed in you; let your body also return.

This is the difference between the worldly and the renunciate, between the enjoyer and the one who relinquishes. The worldly man does not return; the renunciate returns. The worldly only accumulates; giving disappears from his life. He makes deals and more deals, collects and collects.

The renunciate means: he gives as much as he takes, the ledger is always balanced. The worldly man’s way is that of exploitation, sucking; he takes from all sides and doesn’t want to give. Perhaps he thinks in this way he will have a lot. The result is the opposite: in the end nothing remains in his hand; at death his hands are empty. The renunciate’s way is balance; he returns what he takes. He carries no debt. When he dies, he dies debt-free; therefore he need not return.

If you are in debt, you will have to return again and again. The bigger your world, the longer your chain of lives and sufferings—because you must come back to pay. Until you give back what you took, you cannot be released from the court. You will carry a burden that must be lightened.

The renunciate is freed because he returns what he took; the account is settled. Kabir points to this inner state.

Ulatbansi has another meaning too: the illogical, the incongruous, the mysterious. There is a world of logic, where two and two are always four. There two and two are never five, never three. But that world of logic exists only in the human mind. Life is not like that. Life is illogical; there two and two sometimes become five, sometimes three. That is the mystery.

Mystery means the future cannot be predicted. Mystery means: however much we know, something remains unknown; knowing is never complete. It also means: however much we know, we touch only the part, not the whole; the total remains beyond our grasp.

Here science and religion diverge. Science assumed two and two are always four and that life runs by a chain of logic. But in the last fifty years even science’s certitude has cracked. Its eyes have deepened, and facts have emerged where two and two are not always four.

The modern physicist is uneasy. After Einstein, physics has become almost spiritual. The old certainty has ended. After the atom was split, mysteries appeared: electrons, protons, neutrons behave in ways beyond logic. Sometimes they behave like waves, sometimes like particles.

Impossible—an inversion. In geometry, a point is not a line; and a line is many points in one direction. Imagine a point you drew turning into a line as you look, and the line turning back into a point. The one becomes many, the many becomes one. This seems like the Upanishads, Kabir, Eckhart—those “madmen,” not the clean math of Einstein and Planck.

The ultimate constituents behave suspiciously—like saints! Sometimes they manifest as particles, sometimes as lines, sometimes as waves. A new physics has accepted uncertainty. Mathematics works on the surface; as we go deeper, math gets into trouble.

Kabir’s ulatbansis say: The mathematical world and your tidy logic work on the surface—in the shop and marketplace. Don’t take them into life’s depth; they don’t apply to the Divine.

So Kabir says: I was filled with wonder—I saw fire in the ocean. But how can fire burn in water? Water puts out fire.

Kabir also says: I saw a fish climb a tree. Fish do not climb trees. First, getting out of the sea is impossible for a fish; then climbing a tree—no feet, no grip; it cannot fly; water is its medium.

These announcements break your book-keeping. They say: your accounts are fine on the surface; within, there are astonishments.

Had Kabir been in Einstein’s lab he would have spoken like modern physics. But he was a rustic villager; he had no quantum physics. He knew the plain facts of life: that fish don’t climb trees. And the day you see fish on trees, fire in water, rain ascending from earth to sky—either we have gone mad or existence has—or we must see that our rules and assumptions were built on ignorance, not understanding.

Saints often seem mad because they have seen what you haven’t; for them the old order has dissolved into a kind of chaos. They have seen aspects of life that, if you saw them, your order would also dissolve.

Ulatbansi means: life cannot be solved by mathematics. It means: whatever system you are making, leave room for the opposite—because the opposite is also present. If you banish the opposite, you will get into trouble. The mind always does this; it loves order. Whatever is opposite, we remove—it “doesn’t exist.” We make a neat system.

You fall in love. The mind says: for this person you feel only love, nothing else. The mind is fabricating an order—which is false. Where there is love, there is hidden hate.

But the mind believes in math. If there is love, how can there be hate? If there is faith, how can there be doubt? If there is day, how can there be night? If there is birth, how can there be death? Mind runs on logic; it denies the opposite. Math is the art of removing the opposite.

But your denial doesn’t remove it. Where birth is, death stands hidden. A child is born, and we forget that he will die. If someone says at the birth, “He will die—don’t beat the drums so loudly,” we get angry: “Such inauspicious talk!”

He is not being inauspicious; he is breaking our math. Our math says: there is birth; how can there be death? We hide the opposite. We build cremation grounds outside the village. When a corpse passes, a mother calls her son inside—“Don’t look.” Death unsettles our math. The child will ask: “What does it mean—dead? Will I die too?” Children are not yet “wise” like you; they have not denied the opposite.

So the child surely asks: “How did he die? Does everyone die? Will I die?” And the mother’s math cannot admit that her son will die. A child, die? If he is born, how can he die? Life has no end. Everyone else will die—not my son!

In the Buddha’s life there is the story of Kisa Gotami. Her only son died; her husband had already died; the boy was her all. She went nearly mad, carrying the body through the town, begging someone to revive him. People said, “We can’t—but the Buddha has come; go to him—miracles are possible.” She laid the child at the Buddha’s feet: “Bring him back. If you are God, do at least this much.” Disciples were anxious; a crowd gathered, expecting a miracle. Buddha said, “Gotami, do one thing. Leave the boy here—I will revive him. First go into the town and bring me a few mustard seeds—from a house where no one has ever died.”

A drowning person clutches at a straw; she didn’t think, “Where will I find such a house?” In delusion, eyes go blind. She ran door to door: “A pinch of mustard—but only if no one has ever died in your house.” People said, “Gotami, have you gone mad? Where will you find such a house? Wherever someone is born, someone dies. Birth and death are two parts of one process.” She didn’t listen. By evening she had knocked at every door.

When she left the last house, her tears had dried; a revolution had happened in her being. She went to the cremation ground with her son’s body, completed the rites, returned, and said to the Buddha, “Initiate me; I renounce.” Buddha said, “What of the mustard? What of the boy?” She said, “Don’t raise that. My delusion has fallen: birth is tied to death. Now the question is not the boy; it is Gotami. Before I die, I want to know what this whole web is, what this mystery is.”

Death is certain; there is no escape. But we keep death outside the village. In the West this madness is greater—no doctrine of rebirth to console. We at least have: the soul doesn’t die—nainam chhindanti shastrani—“weapons cannot cut it” (Gita). Though we have no direct knowledge of the soul, the thought consoles: the body dies, not us; there are many births to come, no hurry. In the West there is panic: only one life.

So they hide death. It has become big business. They paint the dead face, dress the body beautifully; the corpse in the casket looks better than in life. Lipstick on the lips, kohl in the eyes, flowers and costly coffins—the procession to the grave looks like a festival. This is a deception—not of the one who died; you can’t deceive him—but of the living, to cover death behind cosmetics.

The cremation ground should be in the center of the town. And when someone dies, even the newborn should be shown the corpse.

But the mind’s math is one-sided. When you love, you believe you cannot hate. There starts the trouble. You deny hatred; it remains repressed. Most murders in the world are committed by lovers of one another.

When two brothers fight, it is like no other fight. And the one you revere—when you turn against him, no greater enemy. The only way out is: don’t deny the opposite. Deny it, and you are in difficulty, because life doesn’t care for your logic. If, when you love, you also recognize the hate in you, your love may last; there is no fear. You accept life. Your beloved too knows there will be hate; there will be not only kisses and embraces, but disturbances, quarrels, fights. Both things come together. If lovers accept both, they accept life; such love can be eternal.

But lovers run on math. They drop one side: “There is no hatred.” Your wife cannot even think she may hate you. She may display it 24 hours a day, yet she cannot admit it. If you say it, she denies: “How is it possible? My husband is God.” The husband you made into God—there you will also see the devil. However much you hide, the devil won’t go. If you accept him, you can go beyond the duality.

We do this in all of life—denying the opposite. Life is a duality, made of opposites; denying doesn’t erase it—only puts you in trouble.

These ulatbansis report life’s duality. One side you know; they reveal the other. That other side says: life is illogical; the opposite is always hidden there. The day you can see both, you can go beyond both. If you see one and not the other, the other will appear tomorrow, and then you’ll forget the first. Today’s friend becomes tomorrow’s enemy; today you see only love, tomorrow only hate. You shuttle from pole to pole. But one who sees both together goes beyond both. Ulatbansi announces the mystery of life.

Mystery means: however much we open it, we cannot open it all. A fish climbing a tree is a matter of mystery. It doesn’t happen; you don’t see it. In dreams it can, in imagination, or in a poet’s truth—but not for a scientist. Yet ask the scientist to go deeper and you’ll be surprised: he says life first appeared as fish. Those who climb trees were once fish. You too were once fish.

Hindus knew this long ago; thus their first avatar is Matsya, the Fish. The Hindu sequence of avatars harmonizes with Darwin’s evolution. Darwin says life began in the sea; the Hindu’s first avatar is in the sea. Life began with fish; the avatar is Matsya. Then Darwin says animals evolved into humans. Science still searches for the missing link—half-animal, half-man. The Hindu has the Narasimha avatar—half man, half beast. After Narasimha, avatars are fully human—from fish to the supreme man, the Buddha.

If we could see this long process—and we can’t; our eyes are too small—fish have climbed trees. Not only climbed trees—fish became Buddhas. Which means: the vast is hidden in the tiny. Don’t call the small “small”; the great is hidden in it. Bow even to the insignificant, for the Divine is hidden there. The stone lying on the path may become an idol. If you have to step on it, do so with an apology—because any day the stone may become a deity, and you will have to worship.

Here the sinner becomes a saint. The despised becomes the honored. Fish climb trees; water catches fire; the opposite also happens here. One who accepts both goes beyond both.

Whoever has known—his words are ulatbansis. Thus saint and philosopher differ. A philosopher has no ulatbansi; he creates a system, a chain of logic. He is a systematizer—Kant, Hegel—they build a palace of order. They clear a spot in the jungle and make a garden—symmetry, proportion, geometrical paths, trees in equal rows—leaving the jungle outside the wall.

But in the jungle there is no account-keeping, no symmetry; trees grow wherever, however, crooked and wild. Philosophers make gardens; saints enter the jungle. In Japanese Zen monasteries they do not use symmetry. Paths look wild, non-geometric; trees are planted to seem wild—so the garden won’t look like a garden.

A famous Zen master was a great gardener. The emperor appointed him to teach his son gardening. For three years the prince learned. He had thousands of gardeners implement whatever the master taught. The master said, “I’ll come after three years; that day is your exam.” The prince created the most beautiful garden Japan had ever seen. The emperor was astonished: “No way you can fail now.” The prince said, “That master is a contrary man; I’m not so sure.”

The master came. The garden shone like heaven—but his face remained grave; no smile. The emperor grew anxious; the prince trembled. After seeing it all, the master said, “Bring me a basket.” He ran outside the garden, filled the basket with dry leaves, and scattered them along the paths. The wind strewn them about. The master said, “Your garden shows so much of man that it cannot be true. There is not a single dry leaf. It is artificial, false. You’ll need three more years—make it a forest again. The marks of man must not be visible—man means logic, math, account-keeping. There should be the stamp of God—where there is no logic, no math, no accounting—where things are unreasonable.”

Ulatbansi means a certain “unreasonableness.” Philosophers remove the dry leaves. Saints enter the trackless forest, where there is every possibility of getting lost, where there is no map. The mapless, unreasonable, mysterious realm—that is what ulatbansis hint at. They are like Zen koans.

In India we didn’t use them as practice. If only we had! In Japan, Zen masters used koans as meditation. A koan is an unanswerable riddle. If it can be solved, it isn’t a koan. For example, the master says: Meditate on this—“Clapping needs two hands; what is the sound of one hand clapping?”

With one hand you cannot clap; and if you cannot clap, where is the sound? Your logical mind says, “Nonsense—why waste time? This is extracting oil from sand.” If you are too logical, you go back—and Zen says: good; the overly logical cannot enter the temple of God. But if you are not that bound by logic—if through the cracks of life the opposite has peeked at you; if you have wandered not only in gardens but in forests; if you have heard not only human words but birdsong; if you have seen life’s disorder, its lawless freedom—you will agree to the koan.

Agreeing is the first step. When you sit, your mind will say again and again, “What a futile task! One hand cannot clap.” If you don’t listen and persist, the mind will suggest tricks: “Strike your hand against a wall to make a sound.” You go report. The master says, “The wall became the second hand. No, don’t bring in the second; no duality—let there be sound without an other; the single hand alone.”

Hindus call that sound anahata—the unstruck. When two hands strike, the sound is ahata—struck. If a single hand rings in the void, that is anahata nad.

Seek that sound. No wall; no other. The seeker toils on. Many mind-suggestions arise; the master rejects them all, because anything from mind will be “struck.” Mind is duality; it is conflict; its states are sounds made by the collision of two hands. It is the essence of dualism. So if you follow mind, it throws you into duality. When the master rejects all solutions, the seeker stops listening to mind. Mind still suggests: “Do this.”

Once a seeker had been at it for years, still following mind. Finally the master said, “How long will you keep at this fuss? If no answer comes, better to die.” Next day the seeker arrived. The mind said, “Right—if there’s no answer, better to die.” As he reached the master, he fell, closed his eyes. The master asked, “Have you brought the answer?” He said, opening one eye, “No.” The master said, “Get up—corpses don’t speak, nor open one eye. You even died as the mind told you. Mind deceives everywhere—if you die listening to it, even death will be false.”

Mind is the factory of deception, the source of illusion. Its living is false; its death is false; its answers are vain.

But if the seeker persists—doesn’t flee, doesn’t give up—one day the mind tires and drops. That day the anahata is heard. It has always been sounding within; we call it Omkara.

Om is not a mantra you recite to make something happen. A chanted “om” is a struck sound—lips and throat produce it. That we do not call Omkara. The om you have to repeat is useless—mind’s practice. When mind falls, suddenly Om is heard; you don’t say “om”—you hear it. You are not the doer; you are only the hearer. You hear that within you om is resounding.

That resonance is not yours; you are not producing it. It is producing you. The flute is reversed. You are no longer playing the mantra; the mantra is playing you. Om is not your effort; you are a condensation of Om. The very sound that resounds within is shaping you. You are not producing Om; Om is producing you.

So Om is not a mantra—it is your life. Not something to “do”; it is your source, your being. Om is the sound of existence, the unstruck resonance. The day mind falls, the anahata is heard.

And that day you don’t need to go tell the master. When you arrive, he knows. Your face says it, your eyes, your gait. Such a great event—can you hide it? Even an ordinary pregnancy is hard to conceal; a woman’s walk changes, her face, her eyes. The day God enters your womb—when the anahata sounds—how will you hide it? As if someone had swallowed the sun—light pours out everywhere, flames leap, every hair glows. When you hear the unstruck sound, you needn’t say a thing. Thus, as long as the disciple “brings an answer,” all answers are wrong.

Read Zen lives and you’ll be puzzled. Zen masters say: if you give the answer, wrong; if you don’t give, wrong. If you answer, you’ll be hit; if you don’t, you’ll be hit—because answering means you fabricated it; not answering means you decided in advance not to. There is a third state: you don’t “have” an answer, you don’t know whether to speak or not; you just come—without deciding either way—you are the answer. It is contained in your very being. That day the master’s stick…

Nan-in was leaving his master for solitary practice. The master called him, “Let me hit you once more.” Nan-in said, “What for? You’ve hit me enough; my bones still ache—and now I haven’t even erred, I haven’t said anything.” The master said, “You don’t understand. When you return, I won’t be able to hit you. The moment is near—this is the last blow. If I spare you now, there will be no chance later.”

A moment comes when the anahata resounds and the flute reverses. Until then you think you are the doer; now you know you are the instrument. Until now you thought, “I sang the song”; now you know, “the song sang me.” Until now you thought, “I am”; now you know, “I am not—only Thou are—only the Divine.” Everything turns upside down.

Kabir’s ulatbansis could have been used like koans; Hindus missed the chance. Had Kabir been born in Japan, he would have been a supreme Siddha in the Zen lineage. Being born here had this result: university ignoramuses write PhDs on him—and little else! No one gets more doctorates than Kabir; each utterance merits one. And the man himself was utterly uneducated. See how far the “learned intellect” goes: they earn degrees on the unlearned man—and become great pundits. Kabir would not get in the university at all; they would keep him out—“Keep your inversions outside.” But hundreds in India are “doctors” thanks to Kabir. They are great knowers!

It is a strange joke: that from which life could be transformed becomes a source of credentials. That by which you could become a Kabir—you become a professor, a doctor; a book gets published; a little shine attaches to your name. Those who take PhDs on ulatbansis get not even a taste of ulatbansi.

Kabir is among India’s supreme blessings—unique in many ways. Buddha and Mahavira were princes, well-cultured; what they knew, they had every facility to know—best teachers, best food, best environment, all favorable. Kabir is a rustic; not only no kingdom—not even known parents. Not clear if he is Hindu or Muslim. An orphan, a foundling by the roadside—later to be Kabir. No one knows his parents or house. A beggar. No facility, no favorable conditions, not even a “reason” to get disillusioned with the world—for with Buddha there was reason: too much brings satiety. The most beautiful women bring weariness—so Buddha’s renunciation is not so special; anyone would tire if given what he had. His father gathered all the beauties—beauty became boring. Wealth in hand—no charm. Kingdom—nothing left to gain. If Buddha turned away, it is logical.

Kabir had nothing—yet he turned away. This is illogical. It requires tremendous vision. To tire of what you don’t even have—seeing through wealth without ever possessing it—needs deep insight. For a beggar to renounce means he had eyes so deep that he saw through a kingdom he never had. Kabir comes from the last rung—where revolution is not expected. Hence Kabir is unparalleled.

Kabir is not to be compared to Buddha or Mahavira—rather to Christ. Both are artisans—Kabir a weaver, Christ a carpenter; both unlettered; both speak in ulatbansis. Jesus says: Blessed are the defeated, for theirs is the victory; blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom; blessed are the last, for they shall be first. These beatitudes are ulatbansis. Different language, same flavor: whenever a saint has experienced, his words come out upside down.

Wherever you encounter paradox, stop—don’t hurry past; there you may glimpse a ray of truth. Wherever all is neat like a manicured garden, where there isn’t even a dry leaf—flee as fast as you can. There the pundit lives—not the knower.

It is a paradox! As familiarity grows, boredom arises — this is the rule of the world. The more familiarity, the more boredom. Because familiarity means curiosity is lost; what there was to know has been known. Familiarity means nothing remains to search for; recognition has happened. Then the mind’s run — its search, its inquisitiveness, its eagerness — is finished. Boredom simply means the mind has no activity left. This is the worldly rule. And wherever the opposite happens, understand that the event is outside the world.

If with someone, as familiarity grows, your curiosity grows; the more familiar you become, the more your attraction increases; and the more you know, the more opens up to be known — such a person we have called one who has attained Buddhahood, nirvana, liberation. You can never exhaust such a one; if you could exhaust him, he belonged to the world. With him you will never come so near that there is no further way to go. The nearer you come, the more doors open. Those doors have no end. And the closer you draw, the more you will find that something further calls you, something else to be known stands before you — this never gets finished.

Therefore even if you were with a Buddha for an eternity, you could not be bored. With a Buddha there is no way to be bored. Because a Buddha has no boundary for you to touch. If you remain far, perhaps a boundary seems visible. As you come closer, the boundary dissolves and the boundless is revealed. A moment will come when you can be lost, when you can become a part of the Buddha’s boundlessness — but you cannot be bored.

Call it love, call it meditation, call it prayer — wherever you do not get bored, and however much familiarity you have it never becomes over-familiarity; where excess is not possible.

There is a sutra in the Buddhist scriptures: meditation admits of no excess. You cannot meditate “too much”; there is no such state as too much meditation. Meditation is always too little — however much you do, it remains little. Excess cannot be.

If you are with me and I am raising a “world” around me, then sooner or later you will be bored. If what I am giving you belongs to this world, then sooner or later you will be bored. If what I give comes from the beyond, you will not be able to be bored. Even if I speak to you every day, if what I am saying arises from emptiness, it will create emptiness within you. If what I am saying comes from the infinite, it will give birth to the infinite within you. By being around me, slowly you will become like me.

There is no way to be bored here; satsang admits of no excess — however much you do, it is little. Drink as much amrit, the nectar of immortality, as you like; the thirst will not end. You will not be bored; you will not be sated. And with amrit there is no such situation as having drunk “more than needed”; it will always remain too little.

Hence we call the divine the infinite, the boundless. Even on meeting, you will find you have not fully met; even being near, you will find you are not wholly near; a distance to be crossed will always remain.

Therefore I say again and again: spirituality has a beginning but no end. This journey has a first step, but no last step. The destination never arrives. The journey is infinite; the journey itself is the destination.

That’s all for today.