Baul Mystics, Vol. 2 The Beloved Chapter 7: They Kill Lust With Lust

THOSE WHO ARE DEAD

AND YET FULLY ALIVE

AND KNOW THE FLAVORS

AND FEELINGS

IN LOVING;

THEY WILL CROSS THE RIVER.

GAZING AT

THE STREAM OF LIFE AND DEATH,

THEY SEEK INTEGRITY.

THEY HAVE NO WISH

FOR HAPPINESS AT ALL,

WALKING AGAINST THE WIND.

THEY KILL LUST

WITH LUST

AND ENTER THE CITY OF LOVE

UNATTACHED...

MAN IS ENERGY, A DYNAMISM, A PROCESS, A VERY CREATIVE PROCESS with a thousand and one potentialities, with infinite alternatives open. Man is an opening, an evolution, and with all the possibilities that the existence has. Man is a miniature existence; a drop, of course, but a drop has all that the ocean has; a drop, of course, but a conscious drop. And the consciousness is oceanic; it knows no boundaries. But the man I am talking about is the essential man of the Bauls, ADHAR MANUSH. You can be that, but you are not that. You are the seed. You can open and blossom and release your fragrance to the winds, but you are not yet that. It has to be remembered.

Gurdjieff used to say that man is not born with a soul; he has to create it through effort. A man is born only with an opportunity. It can be used, it can be wasted, so all depends on you. One has to become a creator of oneself. The parents have given you a body and a possibility, but the real birth has yet to happen. And for that real birth you will have to become your own mother, your own father. That real birth is an inner creativity. You have to move withinwards to find your own source of energy, and not only that, but to change the mechanical channels of that energy,, to make conscious channels for it.

Ordinarily, energy flows downwards. That's what Bauls call lust. When they call it lust they are not denouncing it, condemning it. It is just a fact, just as water flows downwards. It is natural for water to flow downwards, down the hill. But water can rise upwards; just a little heat is needed. The water has to be heated; it can evaporate. At a certain degree of heat, a hundred degrees, it starts rising towards the heavens. The same water that was always going downhill starts going uphill. A conversion has happened; just heat was needed. In the East this heat is known as TAP. The word TAP means heat; the word TAP means 'heating yourself'.

The Bauls sing,

While desire burns in the limbs

still there is time.

Boil the juice

on the fire of longing

to condense the fruit.

The sweetness of syrup

will ferment and sour

unless it is stirred

on controlled heat.

Feelings evolve from desire,

and love shoots forth from lust.

Lust is the same energy as love; the difference is only of direction. Lust moves downwards, love has started the uphill task. Lust is like roots of a tree, love is like wings of a bird -- but the energy is the same. All energy is the same.

Energy as such is neutral. Unless you become conscious about it you cannot be creative. And the downhill movement is very destructive: you are simply dissipating yourself. You are not getting any integration through it -- what Gurdjieff used to call crystallization.

Every moment you are poured with energy. Existence goes on pouring energy into you, through air, through water, through food, through the sunlight, through the moonlight, and a thousand and one other subtle influences. The universe goes on pouring its energy into you. What are you doing with that energy? Are you doing anything or simply wasting it? Are you creating something out of it? Are you getting a certain integrity, crystallization out of it? Or does it just come through one end and is lost through the other end?

There are many people who are just like a pipe: you pour one thing through one end, through the other end it goes out. Don't be a pipe. When the energy is in you, do something with it so that something of it becomes a permanent part of you. Otherwise the whole life will be just a pipe: eating, defecating, drinking, urinating -- just a pipe. Subtle juices are created by your energy. That's what sex is; a very subtle juice. Now what are you doing with it? Are you doing anything with it, or just wasting it?

Lust is the lowest form of sex energy; love, the highest form. Unless your lust becomes love you will be missing your goal.

GURDJIEFF used to say that there is a certain mechanism in man; he called it 'KUNDABUFFER', just parallel to KUNDALINI: Kundalini is a center, but it functions only when the energy rises upwards. Kundabuffer is that center which functions in you when the energy goes downwards. Kundabuffer has to be destroyed, melted, destructured. It is a mechanism out of the continuous practice of many lives. A certain mechanism has arisen in everybody, a channel. The moment energy is ready it simply moves through that channel. That channel is already there to take it out of your being. If this is the truth and nothing else is possible, then Jean-Paul Sartre is right: that man is a useless passion. Then for a few days you are alive on the earth, doing nothing -- eating things, throwing things, absorbing things, throwing things. Then what is the point of it all?

But this is not all. The kundabuffer can be melted; that channel can be broken. And once that channel is broken another channel starts functioning. It is already there waiting for you. Not that it does not exist; it exists. It has come with you but you have not used it yet. You have not allowed energy to flow into it. Of course, it is an uphill task, it is arduous. Going downward is very easy; going uphill, strength, awareness, a certain will, courage, trust...many things will be needed.

The Bauls sing,

The act of loving

is not an ideal dream.

Loving grows

from the grilling of lust --

like feeling death,

being wholly alive.

The clay-beetle buried

in the earth lives on clay,

nestling in it.

Lovers who know

how love can overcome lust

though an uphill walk,

even for a man of strength...

THE very courageous, the really strong people, the really adventurous, become attracted towards paths of self-realization or paths of self-transformation. Religion is the greatest adventure there is. Going to Everest is nothing, going to the moon also is nothing; going to the highest peak of your being is the real task. Because in the first place, we are not even aware that the peak exists. In the first place, we are so unconscious that we don't know what we are doing. We don't know what we are doing with our lives.

I have heard....

The manager of a small power plant was electrocuted while on the fob. The assistant manager informed the police chief, the coroner, and the workmen in the plant. They gathered, horror-stricken, about the body of the dead manager stretched out on the floor, and began to speculate how an experienced man could commit so fatal an error.

"The only thing I can think of," said the assistant manager, "is that poor Joe must have picked up this terminal in one hand.... "

The assistant manager picked up the terminal and then without thinking reached out with his other hand and came into contact with... Bang!

The assistant manager was stretched out next to the manager, but the mystery was resolved to everyone's satisfaction.

Man is unconscious. You go on doing things, not knowing why. You go on doing things you could not do if you were even a little conscious.

What we are doing with our life is just sleeping through it. Consciousness has to be evolved. The more consciousness you have, the more energy starts flowing upwards on its own accord. Consciousness is the clue, the key, the master key. Lust becomes love through consciousness, so love cannot be an unconscious thing.

When Bauls say that love is the door, they don't mean the love that you call love. Your love is as unconscious as anything else. It is unconscious, that's why we use the expression 'falling in love'. Yes, it is a 'falling in'. The love Bauls are talking about is a rising in love, not falling in love. It is not a fall, it is a rise. So don't misunderstand that your love is what Bauls are talking about. Your love is just a name for lust -- a good name, a beautiful, nice name. And beware of nice words because they can be very deceptive. If you label lust as love, you will be deceived by your own labelling.

LUST is when you are unconscious. You see a woman or a man and you fall in love, and you don't know why; sometimes even against yourself, in spite of yourself.

People come and say to me, "What can we do? We are helpless; love has happened." This love is not the love of the Baul; this is lust. What a Baul calls lust is this: unconscious love is lust. Then it flows downwards. Then it moves through the sex center into the world again. Upwards lust is love, but then it is conscious. Consciousness is the staircase: step by step you become more and more conscious. Whatsoever you do, you do it with full consciousness -- even walking, eating, going to bed, talking, listening -- small things of life, but you do them with consciousness. And when you are in love, you are in love with full consciousness. It is not against yourself. It is not that you are possessed, it is not that you are a victim, it is not that you are being pulled by somebody like a magnet. No, you are moving on your own.

The Bauls' love is very cool. It has the coolness of awareness. Your love is very hot; it has the fever of unconsciousness.

We are functioning through kundabuffer. This mechanism exists just at the center of sex. People who are living through kundabuffer can live two sorts of lives: one, of indulgence, and the other, of repression -- but both are the same. Ordinarily the people who live a life of repression are thought to be saints. That's simply foolish. They are the same people in a different garb. People who live a life of indulgence are as unconscious as the people who live a life of repression. In fact, the more strong the kundabuffer is, the more people become repressive, because they want to control it. They are afraid. They are afraid because they are losing the ego control over their sex desire. They try to control it, but their control is like forcing the sex desire deep into the unconscious. They sit on top of it; they have to continuously fight with it.

And remember: if you have to fight with something you can never leave it and you can never go beyond it. To fight with it you have to remain on the same level. To fight with it you have to remain sitting on top of it for twenty-four hours. There is no holiday. You leave it even for a single moment and it is again there, forcing you towards indulgence.

Indulgence and-repression are the two faces of the same type of person. In your monasteries you will find the repressive type, in the world you will find the indulgent type. The playboy and the so-called saint may look opposite to each other, but they are complementary. Their obsession is the same, their fixation is the same, their neurosis is the same. Kundabuffer has to be melted down. What to do?

ONE small technique will be of tremendous help. Whenever you feel sex desire arising, there are three possibilities: one, indulge in it -- ordinary, everybody is doing that; second: repress it, force it down so it goes beyond your consciousness into the darkness of the unconscious, throw it into the basement of your life. That's what your so-called extraordinary people are doing -- MAHATMAS, saints, monks. But both are against nature. Both are against the inner science of transformation.

The third -- a very rare minority ever tries it -- is when the sex desire arises, close your eyes. It is a very valuable moment: desire arising is energy arising. It is like the sun rising in the morning. Close your eyes; this is the moment to be meditative. Move downwards to the sex center where you are feeling the thrill the vibration, the kick. Move there and just be a silent onlooker. Witness it, don't condemn it. The moment you condemn you have gone far away from it. And don't enjoy it, because the moment you enjoy you are unconscious. Just be alert, watchful, like a lamp burning in a dark night. You just take your consciousness there, unflickering, unwavering. You see what is happening at the sex center. What is this energy?

Don't call it names because all words have become contaminated. Even if you say it is sex, immediately you have started condemning it. The very word has become condemnatory. Or, if you belong to the new generation, then the very word has become something sacred. But the word is always loaded with emotion. Any word which is loaded with emotion becomes a barrier on the path of awareness. You just don't call it anything. Just watch the fact that an energy is arising near the sex center. There is a thrill -- watch it. And watching it, you will feel a totally new quality of energy. Watching it, you will see it is rising upwards. It is finding a path inside you. And the moment it starts rising upwards you will feel a coolness falling on you, a silence surrounding you, a grace, a beatitude, a benediction, a blessing all around you. It is no longer like a thorn, painful. It no longer hurts; it is very soothing, like a balm. And the more you remain aware, the higher it will go. If it can come up to the heart, which is not very difficult -- difficult, but not very difficult.... If you remain alert you will see it has come to the heart. When it comes to the heart you will know for the first time what love is.

UP to now you have been carrying a counterfeit in the name of love. When the energy comes to the heart chakra, then it is transformed into love. Once it is transformed into love, once you have felt it, once it has penetrated you, your whole being will feel purified. You will feel virgin, you will feel so pure, so holy, that you cannot think that heaven is anywhere else. You will know it is within you, within your heart. And heaven will become a truth; it will not be theology then, it will become almost a geography. You will know exactly where it is, and God will no longer be a hypothesis. In that purity, in that silence, in that fulfillment of love you will see, God is -- not as a theory, but as a self-evident truth; not as an argument, not as a proof, not as a conclusion, not as a syllogism, but simply it is there. There is no way to deny it. It is there so much that you can deny yourself, but you cannot deny God. You yourself look so faint before the reality of God that you can say, "I may not be, but He is."

That will be the first glimpse. Energy can rise still higher. When it comes to the center of the throat, it becomes prayer. People have been doing prayer, but they don't know what prayer is -- because prayer is the most subtle and refined form of love. If you have not moved through the heart center you cannot go to prayer; there is no way. One has to go via the heart. Because of the throat center, because it exists at the throat center and happens at the throat center, people have started doing rituals. People have made prayers: they assert, they say something. But just by using the throat center and saying something to God you are not praying. Prayer is concerned with the throat center, but not as verbalization. It is an experience at that center, and the experience is exactly like when a child sucks at his mother's breast for the first time. It is not that you say something, but you receive something.

Prayer is not saying something to God, but receiving something from God. God becomes the mother, the mother's breast. Prayer is a nourishment. Yes, it exists and happens at the throat center because the throat center is the center to receive. The throat center is the first center which starts functioning because the child has to suck air; that happens through the throat center. And then he has to suck milk; that happens through the throat center. Prayer is just like sucking air, vitality, or sucking milk at the breast of your mother.

Hence, Jesus says, "Unless you become like small babes, you will not enter into my kingdom of God." He is talking about the throat center. But Christians have completely lost track of it. He is saying in a symbolic way to again become a babe, again start sucking from the throat center the energy that life is. Now, of course, the breast is invisible and the milk is invisible.

Have you watched a man in prayer? -- how diffused with grace he looks, how peaceful, how at home, how relaxed. Watch a small babe sucking milk, fallen asleep with the nipple of the breast still in his mouth, resting on his mother's breast, fallen asleep. Watch the face of the child; that is the face of the saint also when he arrives at the throat center and prayer arises.

PRAYER is not something that you do with God; prayer is something that you allow God to do with you. Prayer is receptive. It is not an action on your part, it is a passive welcome.. Prayer is not saying something to God. On the contrary, it is listening to God. It is being ready to receive His gift. It is very difficult to receive His gift because you have your own ideas, you have your own plans. You go on telling Him, showing Him the right path: "Do this, then I will be happy."

We have the adage that man proposes and God disposes. This is simply stupid, sheer stupidity. Just the other way round is the case: God proposes and man goes on disposing -- because you have your own plans. You never listen to Him, you think you are wiser than Him. You go on advising Him: "Do this, don't do that" -- that's what you do in your prayer.

A real prayer has nothing to suggest to God except a deep gratitude, thankfulness. It simply accepts whatsoever God is pouring. Prayer is receiving the gift.

But it happens at the throat center. It is the highest form of love. And when you go still higher, then at the seventh center, SAHASRAR, happens SAMADHI, the ultimate ecstasy, where the seeker is lost in the sought, where you are no more yourself, where God and you lose boundaries and become one.

Overlapping starts at the throat center; boundaries become dim, not very clear-cut. But still, you exist separately. You have a separate center and God has a separate center. In prayer you two are meeting, overlapping. In some way peripheries are merging into each other, but still centers are different. The higher you go, the more centers come closer and closer. At the SAHASRAR, the seventh chakra, your centers become one. Then there is only one center. That's what is meant when Jesus says, "Not I, but my Father lives in me." Now the seeker and the sought are not two. The ultimate meeting has happened, the ultimate love has flowered, has come to fruition and fulfillment.

If you become aware and a witness when the sex center is throbbing with energy, vibrating, streaming -- without choosing indulgence or repression -- if you can remain just in the middle, a watcher, an observer, this tremendous transformation happens on its own.

So next time you feel full of passion, don't move into these two easily available alternatives: indulgence or repression. Just remain in the middle, and you are at a point where the door can open. It always opens in the middle.

Buddha used to call his path 'the middle path', MAJJHIM NIKAYA, because he said, "Everywhere, excess is prohibited. Always choose the middle." The exact middle is the point beyond. If you can find the exact middle ground between two opposites, two rivals, you have gone beyond them, you have reached a transcendence. The transcendence opens just in the middle; the middle is the beyond.

When you are watching, standing like a witness at the sex center, energy moves upwards. Kundabuffer starts melting, and kundalini starts functioning. Kundalini is the right path, kundabuffer the wrong path. And kundabuffer is functioning because we have lived so unconsciously for many lives that kundalini cannot function. Kundalini needs the fuel of consciousness. If that gas is missing, kundalini cannot function. Kundabuffer functions with unconsciousness.

So it depends on you: if you go on supplying unconsciousness, kundabuffer will go on functioning; if you supply consciousness, suddenly your life turns. You start moving towards the interior of your being; a deep interiority.

A man who was extremely successful with muleteams was asked how he managed the stubborn creatures.

"Well," explained the man, "when they won't move, I pick up a handful of soil and put it in their mouths. Of course, they spit it out, but as a rule they start on."

"Why do you think it has that effect?" asked the person.

"I'm not sure, but I think it changes the current of their thoughts."

If you start witnessing, nobody knows exactly HOW your energy starts moving, but somehow it happens. Maybe it changes your current of thought. It is a great shock.

You try -- you are angry, you are getting into anger; suddenly become alert. Shake and jerk your body and become alert, and see what happens. Suddenly you will see that something has slipped out of your hands; you are no longer angry. Somehow anger looks foolish now. Or, slap your face when you are getting angry rather than slapping somebody else's face -- that is not going to help. Slap your own face when you are getting angry and see what happens. Suddenly, the mechanism that was going to function in a routine way cannot function; you have shocked it.

A consciousness arises if you slap your own face, a consciousness which breaks the unconscious pattern. So wherever you want to change, remember consciousness is the key. Otherwise, we are almost living in a sort of insanity. A few mad people are in the madhouses, the remainder are outside. But it is very difficult to find a sane man. The differences are only of degrees. Have you watched the fact, have you ever become afraid of it? -- that the person who has become mad was also just like you a few days before? Nobody had ever thought that he would become mad; he is mad. Can't the same happen to you?

IT is told about William James, the greatest American psychologist, that when he went to visit a madhouse for the first time, he went back home very sad. He had fever. The wife was worried. She said, "What has happened? You went, and you were perfectly okay." He said, "Don't talk to me. I'm in no mood to talk." He slipped under the blankets and remained ill for two or three days. Everybody was worried. The doctor said, "Nothing is wrong." Then he said what had happened.

Seeing many mad people in the madhouse, suddenly a thought occurred to him: "The same can happen to me." That gave him a trembling; he was never the same man again. But that made him very alert.

Inside your mind, continuous madness exists -- and you know it. How can you manage not to know it? But it goes on like an undercurrent. On the surface you manage well.

I have heard....

A clergyman had occasion to preach to the inmates of an insane hospital. During his sermon he noticed that one of the patients paid the closest attention, his eyes riveted upon the preacher's face, his body bent eagerly forward. This interest was most flattering. After the service, the speaker noticed that the man spoke to the superintendent. So as soon as possible, the preacher inquired, "Didn't that man speak to you about my sermon?"

"Yes."

"Would you mind telling me what he said?"

The superintendent tried to sidestep, but the preacher insisted. "Well," he said at last, "what the man said was,'Just think...he is out and I am in.'"

You may be out and somebody may be in, but the difference is only of degree. Unless you become conscious, you are always on the verge of madness, always boiling, always ready. Any small thing can prove the last straw on the camel. Any small thing, any small incident, and you may cross the boundary.

TO live unconsciously is not to really live. To become conscious, to move consciously, to be conscious of all that happens in your mind, to be separate from your mind -- because consciousness becomes separate; whenever you watch something you become separate from that thing -- this is the secret. If you watch your thoughts you become separate from your thoughts; you are no more identified. And when you are not identified, you are not cooperating, and you don't go on giving energy to your thoughts -- by and by, they disappear. When the host is not interested, the guests disappear. They don't come so often; or even if they come they don't stay so long. Gaps arise -- one thought comes, then minutes pass and another thought does not come. In that gap you face reality. Then there is no screen between you and reality. Unscreened reality is what God is.

The song for today:

THOSE WHO ARE DEAD

AND YET FULLY ALIVE

AND KNOW THE FLAVORS

AND FEELINGS

IN LOVING;

THEY WILL CROSS THE RIVER.

GAZING AT

THE STREAM OF LIFE AND DEATH,

THEY SEEK INTEGRITY.

THEY HAVE NO WISH

FOR HAPPINESS AT ALL,

WALKING AGAINST THE WIND.

THEY KILL LUST

WITH LUST

AND ENTER THE CITY OF LOVE

UNATTACHED....

Tremendous sutras, tremendously significant sutras.... "Those who are dead and yet fully alive".... How can you be dead and yet fully alive? If you become a witness to your body, then you know you are not the body. The body is born and the body is going to die; the moment you know you are not the body, you know that you were never born and you will never die. So in a sense you become wholly alive, eternally alive -- what Jesus calls 'abundance of life', overflowingly alive. You cannot be exhausted then. Then you are not caused: you don't have any beginning and you cannot have any end; you are perpetual energy, eternal energy. Then you are wholly alive on the one hand, and because you know you are not the body, then the life that you used to think consisted in body is no longer there.

The body is already dead. You use it, you live in it, but you are no longer identified with it.

THOSE WHO ARE DEAD

AND YET FULLY ALIVE

AND KNOW THE FLAVORS

AND FEELINGS IN LOVING;

THEY WILL CROSS THE RIVER.

And when you are fully alert and no longer attached to the body, no longer identified with the body, no longer does the idea exist in you that you are the body, then love arises. The moment you are no longer the body, the kundabuffer is broken -- because the kundabuffer can exist only when you are identified with the body. The kundabuffer is a part of the body.

NOW be careful about what I am saying; be attentive.

The kundabuffer is part of the body and kundalini is not part of the body. Kundalini is part of YOU, it is part of your consciousness. So people, there are many...even a few doctors have tried to find out where the kundalini exists in the body. A few have even been foolish enough to prove that it exists here or there, at this center or that.

Kundalini is not part of the physical body at all. And Gurdjieff was right: if people are trying to prove that kundalini is part of the body, then whatsoever they prove is kundabuffer, not kundalini. Nobody was there to say to Gurdjieff that kundalini is part of the soul, not of the body. And all the so-called Hindu yogis, particularly the modern ones, try in every way to imitate science when they write. They try to show and prove that Yoga is scientific. Of course, then they start falling victim to the same attitude, the same standpoint as the scientists have become victims of: the standpoint that starts with the body and thinks the body is all. So they try to prove that kundalini exists somewhere in the physical body, that it is physiological.

Gurdjieff used to say that these people were talking about kundabuffer: "Their kundalini is not kundalini, but kundabuffer; a false entity." When you are too attached to the body, this false entity arises. It arises in the body, not in you. When you are no longer identified with the body kundabuffer disappears. It is, in fact, the kundabuffer from where you are identified with the body. That's why sex becomes almost synonymous with love. When a woman has come to her menopause she starts thinking-that her life is finished. When a man comes to know that he is no longer sexually potent, he starts feeling that now he is useless. These wrong attitudes exist because we are too identified with the sex center.

If witnessing arises and you are separate, and you KNOW that you are separate -- not that you repeat it, not that the Vedas say that you are separate from your body so you repeat it, you chant it, and constant repetition gives you an illusory idea that, yes, you are separate from the body. That is not going to help. Your own knowing, experiential, existential, can be of help, nothing else. If you know you are not the body, suddenly love arises; energy starts moving towards the heart center.

The heart does not exist in the lungs. The heart is not part of the body, lungs are a part of the body. And whatsoever you have been thinking of as your heartbeat is not a heartbeat, it is just lungs beating.

Hidden behind this beat is another beat. You can think of it in this way: the lungs and heart are parallel. Lungs belong to the body, and heart belongs to the soul. Kundabuffer and kundalini are parallel: kundabuffer belongs to the body, kundalini belongs to the soul. Sex and love are parallel: sex belongs to the body, love belongs to the soul. The world and God are parallel: the world belongs to the body, God belongs to the soul. Body and soul exist parallel, like two parallel lines always together and yet meeting nowhere; always together, running together for thousands of lives and meeting nowhere. They affect each other, but meeting never happens. They color each other. When you become too obsessed with the body, your body almost possesses the soul. When you become too detached from the body, your soul starts possessing your body.

Ordinarily the soul remains a slave and the body becomes the master. But when the conversion happens, understanding arises. The soul regains its mastery and body comes to its right place -- becomes a slave, an obedient slave.

THOSE WHO ARE DEAD

AND YET FULLY ALIVE

AND KNOW THE FLAVORS

AND FEELINGS IN LOVING;

THEY WILL CROSS THE RIVER.

GAZING AT

THE STREAM OF LIFE AND DEATH

THEY SEEK INTEGRITY.

Integrity, Yoga -- integration, crystallization, centering, or whatsoever you like to call it -- is the goal.

GAZING AT...that is the key; what I was calling witnessing.

GAZING AT

THE STREAM OF LIFE AND DEATH,

THEY SEEK INTEGRITY.

INSIDE you there is one stream of life and one stream of death. Body is the stream of death, soul is the stream of life. Soul never dies, body is never alive. With the soul-body together, the body reflects the life of the soul. It is simply luminous with the life of the soul. The life is borrowed; it is like the moon. The moon has no rays of its own, it reflects the sun. The rays come from the sun, are reflected from the moon, but you see them as if they are coming from the moon.

It is as if you burn a small lamp in a room and somebody passing outside looks inside through the glass window. The glass window spreads the light of the lamp outside also, but the light is not coming from the glass window, it is coming from an interior place.

Your body reflects life -- your body is luminous with the life of the soul. That's why when the soul disappears the body is dead. The body was always dead. Go and put off the light inside the room and the window will be dark. It was always dark because it has no light of its own.

Body is the stream of death, and if you continue to be attached to the body, you will again and again be falling into the stream of death. You will be born and you will be dying, and you will be born and you will be dying -- this is what the Hindus call 'the wheel of life and death'. Go in, withinwards, and find the source of life. It is totally different from the body. It has made its abode in the body, but it is not the body. That is the stream of life. Watching, gazing, witnessing these two...THE STREAM OF LIFE AND DEATH, THEY SEEK INTEGRITY. And once your understanding has become perfect about what death is and what life is, you become integrated, you become centered. Because then no more is your center in the body. Then there is no longer any illusion that you are in the body. Then you are suddenly aware of the real center of your being, of your innermost shrine.

THEY HAVE NO WISH

FOR HAPPINESS AT ALL,

WALKING AGAINST THE WIND.

The Bauls say the real seekers have no wish for happiness at all, walking against the wind. They simply float with life. They don't ask anything from life, they simply receive. Whatsoever life gives, they enjoy, they delight in it, but their demand has ceased. They don't swim, and they never swim against the stream; they simply float with the stream. That's what surrender is.

There is a beautiful song....

Oh cruelly eager,

are you going to fry on fire

your heart's flower-bud?

Are you going to force it to blossom

and let the scent escape

without biding your time?

Look at my Master, God,

eternally opening the buds

to bloom

but never in a hurry.

You are dependent

on the hours of the day

because of your terrifying greed.

What else can you do?

Listen to

the Beloved's appeal

and do not hurt

the Master at heart.

The stream spontaneously flows,

lost in itself,

listening to His words,

O my eager one.

The Bauls say, "Don't try to force anything." Let life be a deep let-go. See God opening millions of flowers every day without forcing the buds, waiting, never in a hurry, giving their time to them. The Bauls say, "Everything happens at its right time, everything happens in its own season. Wait, don't be impatient, don't be in a hurry. All hurry is greed, and all hurry is a subtle fight." That which is going to happen will happen. Whenever it is going to happen it will happen; you need not fight existence. You can surrender, you can trust.

THIS has to be understood.

If this becomes part of your inner climate, it will give you tremendous joy. Then you are no longer proposing anything, and then nobody can frustrate you. You don't have any plan and you don't have any goal. You are not going somewhere, you have simply left yourself in His hands, and He takes you wherever he wants. "Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done...." Let His will be done: that is the Bauls' method. It is of surrender and love and trust. The Baul is not a yogi, certainly not a Hatha yogi; the Baul is a lover, a devotee. He trusts that God is taking him into some unknown world, but it must be beautiful because He is taking him. The river is going to the ocean; it must be going, because it is His river. This childlike trust is his only method.

THEY HAVE NO WISH

FOR HAPPINESS AT ALL,

WALKING AGAINST THE WIND.

THEY KILL LUST

WITH LUST

AND ENTER THE CITY OF LOVE

UNATTACHED....

That's why Bauls say, "Even if lust has to be transcended, it is through lust." If anger has to be transcended, it is through anger. They know the alchemy of how to change poison into nectar. They don't say to throw it, it is poison. They say to transform it, nectar is hiding behind it. The poison is only just the shell. Find the inner content of it; love is hiding behind lust. Soul is hiding behind the body, God is hiding behind the world. Don't throw it. It will be throwing something tremendously valuable. Maybe you are not yet aware of what value is there. You think it is just a stone. Become a jeweller. It is what Bauls call to become a RUSIK, a connoisseur. Know the taste of it, find out the ways, what it is. Become alert to the hidden reality, open the doors and go into it. It may be a Kohinoor; don't throw it. If God has given you the stone, it must be a Kohinoor -- otherwise why should He give it to you? Don't think yourself wiser than Him. Let His wisdom be the supreme. You trust. If He has given you a stone it must be a Kohinoor, it must be a great diamond. It is His gift; it cannot be otherwise.

So even in lust they are not like ordinary ascetics. They don't fight, they search deep in it, they try to find the chemistry of it. Something is bound to be there, otherwise why should God give so much sex energy to everyone? And to man he has given more than to any animal. In animals, sex is seasonal. Once a year or twice a year they become sexual, otherwise sex disappears. Man is sexual for twenty-four hours, twelve months a year, year in and year out. Something is bound to be there. Why has so much sex energy been given to man? It cannot be only for generative reasons -- because animals are doing perfectly well. If man were only seasonally sexual, things. in a way, would have been better: once a year for a month, and for eleven months you are free. You can do a thousand and one things and not be worried about it. One month in a year would be enough.

But why has man been given so much sex energy? It cannot be only to generate children. This great treasure has been given for some other reason: it carries a hidden possibility for becoming tremendously alert and aware. This energy has to become love, and this love has to become prayer, and this prayer has to become ecstasy.

The generative part is very minor as far as man is concerned. Something of greater value is hiding in it. God cannot give you something without a particular reason in it.

THEY KILL LUST

WITH LUST

AND ENTER THE CITY OF LOVE

UNATTACHED....

When lust is transformed and you enter into the city of love, you enter unattached. Remember, that is their definition of love. If love has attachment in it, it is lust, If love has no attachment in it, only then is it not lust. When you are in lust you are not really thinking of the other, thinking of your beloved or lover. You are simply using the other for your own ends. And of course, attachment is bound to be there, because you would like to possess him, and you would like to possess him or her forever. Because tomorrow also you may need, the day after tomorrow also you may need. You need a lover and you want to possess him.

LOVE is a gift. You give; you need not be worried about whether tomorrow he will be there to receive or not. Because a lover can give to the trees, to the rocks. A lover can give to the emptiness of the sky. A lover can simply flower and send his fragrance to the winds, even if nobody is there. Just think: Buddha sitting under his Bodhi tree, alone, full of love, overflowing.... Not that somebody is there to receive, but God is always there to receive, in so many forms, in so many ways.

Lust is greed, lust is attachment, lust is possessiveness. Love needs no possession, love knows no attachment, because love is not greed. Love is a gift. It is a sharing. You have found something; your heart is full, your fruits are ripe. You hanker that somebody should come and share. It is unconditional; who shares does not matter. But you are so full of it that you would like to be unburdened -- as when clouds are full of rainwater, they rain. Sometimes they rain in a forest, sometimes they rain on a hill, sometimes they rain in a desert, but they rain. The fact of where they rain is irrelevant. They are so full they have to rain.

A lover is so full he becomes a cloud, full of lovewater; he has to rain. That raining is spontaneous.

The so called lovers

rarely know

the flavors of loving.

A lover lives

for love alone

as the fish in the water.

Great is the lover

who can love day and night

and is wholly devoted

to love's intercourse.

Worship with prayers.

The man or the woman

is still alone,

but a lover is formed

when the souls conjoin.

Ordinarily a man is alone, a woman is alone. Loneliness is there. Even if you are attached to a man or woman or a friend, and it is only the attachment of lust, you will remain lonely. Have you not watched it? Attached to a woman, attached to a man, but still you remain lonely. Somewhere deep down there is no communication with the other; you are cut off, like islands. Even dialogue seems to be impossible. Lovers ordinarily never talk to each other, because each talk creates argument, and each talk brings conflict. By and by, they learn to be silent; by and by, they learn somehow to avoid the other, or at the most, tolerate. But they remain lonely. Even if the other is there, there is space; the inner space remains unfulfilled.

The Bauls say,

The man or the woman is still alone, but a lover is formed when the souls conjoin.

It is not a question of two bodies; it is not a question of two bodies meeting and embracing and penetrating each other. The question is of two souls penetrating each other. When two souls penetrate each other, then loneliness disappears forever. Then a totally new world arises where you are never, never lonely. You have become a whole.

Man is half, woman is half. When love happens, wholeness happens.

Poison and nectar

are mingled in one

like music played and heard

in one single act.

The human heart

free from flaw,

forever enlightened,

sees good and evil --

same time, same space.

A child sucking his mother

draws milk;

a leech at the breast of a woman

draws blood.

"Poison and nectar are mingled in one...." Love and lust are mingled in one, life and death are mingled in one. It depends on you what you are going to choose of it. A child sucking his mother draws milk; a leech at the same breast draws blood. It depends on you. Lust is not bad, but love and lust are mingled together.

CHOOSE love; bring love out of lust. Let your life be a life of alertness, so whatsoever you do is done in such awareness that only that which is valuable is chosen, and the valueless is left.

The whole life is nothing but a great effort to choose life against death, to choose love instead of lust, to choose God instead of the world, to choose beauty, good, truth, instead of falsities.

My heart!

You are in a muddle.

As the days go,

your inherited riches,

plundered, fly.

You only doze around the clock

drinking dreams

and living in five homes

with no control.

The robber rests with you,

my heart,

in your own room.

But how can you know?

Your eyes are shut in sleep.

This is unawareness: "Your robber rests with you, my heart, in your own room. But how can you know? Your eyes are shut in sleep." Open your eyes. Watch what is happening inside, outside. Be alert to the death and life stream, and by and by, fall into the life stream and be integrated.

Love springs

as feelings merge.

Divided forms

assume a single way.

A pair of hearts

running in parallel streams

long to reach

the God of loving.

Bauls say, "Love a man, love a woman, but let this love be nothing but an offering to the ultimate love, the love of God."

Love springs

as feelings merge.

Divided forms

assume a single way.

A pair of hearts

running in parallel streams

long to reach

the God of loving.

If your love is love and not lust, then, by and by, you will find that you and your beloved are both moving together, singing, dancing towards the Ultimate Lover, the Ultimate Beloved where, and only where, one can find rest. Then you are moving towards the ultimate home. If lust is there, then you are moving nowhere.

Lust is like dead, stagnant water -- a pond; love is like a river. And if you love somebody, your rivers move parallel towards the ocean. It is good to go dancing with your beloved, good to go hand in hand, good to go singing, with laughter in the heart. But remember, if your life becomes a pool, stagnant, then it is lust. Love is always flowing. Love is dynamic, lust is stale and stagnant.

The essence of beauty

in the mirror of love

stares at his face;

the formless

within the visual form.

The fire cools

in his hands

and quicksilver roasts on flames.

Love is a miracle. Once love has happened, miracles happen continuously: fire cools in his hands and quicksilver roasts on flames.

Love has a different world. Lust lives under a different law. The mystics have called the law of lust the law of gravitation: one is pulled downwards. And the law of love is the law of grace: one is pulled upwards.

I have heard....

A Sufi mystic was staying in somebody's house and he was thought to be a madman, so the family was a little afraid. The man was not reliable; he might do anything. But he was also known as a great mystic so they could not throw him out; they were also afraid of that. In the night -- "Where to put him? Where is he going to sleep?" So they put him in the basement.

In the middle of the night they suddenly heard laughter coming from the terrace. They could recognize the laughter; it was that madman's. But how did he reach the terrace? He had been put in the basement. They ran upstairs; he was laughing madly, he was rolling on the terrace.

They said, "What has happened? How have you come here?"

He said, "That's why I am laughing. I was sleeping in the basement, and a miracle of miracles happened: suddenly I fell upwards. Hence, I am laughing!"

The story is beautiful. Mystics fall upwards, love falls upwards. It is a part of another world, of another law: the law of grace.

Light has burst

on the walls of the sky.

The kind one

has blossomed at last.

Waking in the morning,

I saw him present,

appearing close to my face.

Flowers wither

and birds flutter

and the dew forms on the leaves.

The glow of the night

is melting away

with the rising heat

of the sun.

Love is rising sun, lust is the dark night of the soul.

Explore the nature

of your own body,

my unfeeling heart.

Unless you know

your very substance,

worshipping God is of no avail.

The body is the home

of seven heavens

for you to voyage.

You will blunder

as you never learned to know

the friends and the foes

alive in your body.

So the basic work is to know the foe and the friend in the body. To know that which you are and that which you are not is the basic work, to discriminate between death and life, lust and love, kundabuffer and kundalini.

There is no need to go anywhere. All that is going to happen is going to happen within you. All is given there, all is already given. Just a little discrimination, a little awareness is needed. Bring light unto your own being. Close your eyes from the outside and open your eyes withinwards. The whole world is there in miniature.

The mystics say: As above, so below.

The Hindus say: Whatsoever is in Brahman, whatsoever is in the universe, is also in man.

MAN is a small map of the whole cosmos. The limited and unlimited both exist in you; matter and consciousness both exist in you; the lowest and the highest both exist in you.

Nietzsche used to say that man is a rope stretched between two abysses, two eternities.

Yes, man is a rope, a bridge. You are a ladder: one part is resting on the earth, the other part -- you cannot even see it -- is resting at the feet of God. Watch it, recognize it, feel the direction. And move. Start moving.

Baul Mystics

VOL. 2, THE BELOVED

Chapter-7

They Kill Lust With Lust