Kabir, Ecstasy: The Forgotten Language Chapter 6: Trust your nature, Question 4

Question 4

IT IS FOUND THAT REMEMBRANCE OF "BELOVED' OR "DARLING" IS MORE SPONTANEOUS AND EASY THAN THE REMEMBRANCE OF "GOD" OR "SUPREME SELF." WHY IS IT SO?

It is so simple. Why should it not be so? Your beloved is real; your God is just a bogus concept, empty, immaterial, just a word. If you go deep in it, there is nothing in it. Your God is just a word; your beloved is a reality. My God is a reality; your God is not a reality. Your God is just a word heard unconsciously; it goes on reverberating, vibrating in you, but it is just a word. What does it mean? It has no meaning. Your beloved, of course, is significant.

That's why I say forget about God the concept, the word, the theological idea; rather, love -- love your beloved -- and love her so deeply, or him so deeply, that a moment comes when you can feel the beloved not as the body but as the soul. That will be the door of the temple of God. Love totally, and through total love, prayer becomes, by and by, a natural phenomenon. Love is transformed into prayer. Each beloved, each lover, becomes a window to God.

So I don't teach you: go against love. I teach you: go through love. That is the whole difference between my teaching and the teaching of the traditional, so-called saints. I teach you go through love; that is natural. But go so totally, so utterly lost in it that by and by it is not just a superficial thing; you can start feeling the soul of the other. In that moment, you will be able to see the whole of existence filled with soul.

If you have looked into the eyes of your beloved and seen something of the ineffable, the indefinable, then look at the tree and you will see the same thing there too. Then look at the rose and you will find the same eyes there too. Then run around and you will see he is everywhere. But the first glimpse will be in your beloved; and that is natural.

Love is the natural way to God.

Two very small boys were playing marbles together when a very, very pretty little girl walked by. One of the boys exclaimed fervently to his pal, "Brother, when I stop hating girls, she is the one I am going to stop hating first!"

From the very childhood, from the very beginning, love takes hold of you. Maybe you are not yet able to define it, maybe you can still think only in terms of "hate," that you will "not hate" this person. It is a negative definition of love, still love is negative -- but by and by it will become positive. By and by even the positivity will disappear; it will become existential. Then it is prayer.

If you can go on diving deep into love, one day you will find that you have arrived at God.

Mistress Mulla Nasrudin complained to the school principal that her thirteen-year-old son seemed to be spending most of his time staring at the girls in their summer miniskirts. "Don't worry," were the principal's reassuring words. "He is just going through a stage that won't last more than the rest of his life."

Love is something that lasts your whole life. You begin in love; you should end in love. Then the circle is complete. You are born out of love; you should die in love. Then the circle is complete.

But your God is bogus, your God is out of fear; or your God is just a concept given by others to you.

A little girl -- 1974 model -- had been on dozens of jet planes in her time, but this was her first overnight journey in an upper berth of a Pullman car. Somewhat frightened, she called out at regular intervals to her mother below, "Mommy, are you there?"

After many hours of this a gentleman across the aisle piped up, "Yes, mommy is here. And I am here too. We are all trying to get a little sleep. So for heaven's sake, stop that confounded noise."

There was a moment of silence, and then a quavering little voice called out, "Mommy, was that God?"

That's your concept of God: fear. Your God means your father, magnified; your headmaster, magnified; or the head constable. What do you mean by your God? You don't have any experience.

Rather than thinking of God as your father, it is better to think of God as your beloved; because a father is an authoritative figure, unnatural, social, formal. Once it never existed; sometime it may disappear again. It is better to think of God as your beloved; and it is better to move through the beloved towards the ultimate beloved. You will be moving naturally, spontaneously, and there will be no repression, and there will be no unnecessary harshness in your lifestyle -- you will not become a masochist.

And if you can go to God laughing, why go weeping? If you can go to God dancing, then why not go dancing? I don't teach you a God who is against life and love. I teach you a God who is the very depth, the very ground of life and love.

You can drop the word "God" if it creates trouble for you. Replace it with "love," and let "love" to be with a lowercase l, not with a capital L. Don't make much fuss about it. A lowercase l, ordinary love -- the love that happens between two friends, that happens between a husband and wife, that happens between a child and a mother, that happens, always happens, in relationship.

Become more and more loving and you will be closer to God, closer and closer. The day your whole being is a state of love, you have arrived: God is revealed to you. Yes, Jesus is right when he says, "God is love." But my insistence is even more than Jesus'; I say, "Love is God." Jesus says God is love; I say love is God. And the word "God" has become very dirty because it has been used and misused by politicians and priests for so long. It is a dirty word now; you can drop it. "Love" is fresher, more virgin, more existential, truer.

Love, and whomsoever you love, you will find he has become a God. Love, and you will always find God in the end.

Kabir

ECSTASY: THE FORGOTTEN LANGUAGE

Chapter-6

Trust your nature