Baul Mystics, Vol. 1 The Beloved Chapter 2: I am just a midwife, Question 2

The second question:

Question 2

WHEN YOU WERE A ZEN MASTER TELLING US TO CHOOSE OUR PATH AND STICK TO IT, I FELT SURE THAT MY PATH WAS OF THE HEAD, THAT I WOULD NEVER BE ABLE TO SURRENDER TO ANYONE. NOW, AFTER ONE LECTURE ON THE BAUL MYSTICS, I FEEL LIKE A LOVESICK SCHOOLGIRL. HOW TO CHOOSE A PATH WHEN YOU HAVE NONE? HOW TO BE A LIGHT UNTO MYSELF WHEN YOUR LIGHT DAZZLES ME EVERY MORNING?

I can understand your difficulty, but it is being created knowingly. I will throw you from one path to another many times, because that is the only way for you to find out which is your path. Sometimes I will push you, pull you towards meditation; sometimes I will force you towardslove, prayer. You will need the taste of both; only then can you be decisive about it, otherwise not. Just by listening to me you cannot decide, because while you are listening to me you are too much impressed by me.

So this is part of the device: that one day I am speaking on meditation, another day I am speaking on love. I would like you to taste both because that taste will be decisive. Only that will decide which your path is where you feel really flowing, where you feel really spontaneous Where things happen on their own accord and you need not force them, that is your path -- but how to know it?

When you listen to me when I am talking about love you will be impressed by it, but that is not going to decide it. Just being impressed is not going to help. It is a sort of hypnosis. When I am chanting and singing about love you will be hypnotized by it. You will start thinking, "Yes, this my path." But this is just a wave created by me. It may be your wave, it may not be your wave; and you cannot know it. And your whole life has been conditioned so much by others that you have become very impressionable. You immediately take the imprint from the outside. If you listen to me on meditation, you will be impressed by that. That' why ordinarily Masters have not done that which I am doing here. They only insist on one path continuously, for their whole lives. But then many people follow that path only -- because their Master has impressed them so much about it continuously and consistently that they follow. That may not be their path. Hence, my ABSOLUTELY new effort.

I will be talking on all sorts of paths and all sorts of methods In the beginning it will be very confusing, but that is meant to be so. I would like to confuse you so much that you forget all about being impressed by anybody. My whole effort is to throw you to yourself. How long can you go on doing this? -- one day you are thinking of meditation, an then I talk about love; you start thinking about love. Again I will talk about meditation, and again the problem will arise. How long are you going to be impressed by me? One day or other you will say, "Now I have to decide. This man will drive me crazy!"

J. Krishnamurti says, "Don't be impressed by anybody," but he is a very consistent man, VERY consistent. And his consistency becomes a deep imprint on his followers. He goes on saying,'Don't be impressed by anybody," but he has been saying that for forty years so consistently that people have even become impressed about it. They say, "Because Krishnamurti says,'Don't be impressed by anybody,' we are not going to be impressed by anybody" -- but this is the impression.

What I am doing is exactly what Krishnamurti is saying. I am doing it; he is simply saying it.

I will not allow you to be impressed. Even if you want, there is no way. I will change continuously: I will plant a few seeds today, tomorrow I will take them back. I will plant something today, tomorrow it will be gone. How long are you going to wait for me? One day you will say, "Wait! Now let me decide. Enough is enough!" But by that time you will have been shifted and shunted from this to that so much that you will have had glimpses of both. You must have tasted a little of love, prayer, a little of meditation, a little of yoga; a little of Meera and Chaitanya, and a little of Buddha and Mahavir. You will have tasted both, and then decision will arise in you. And that will not be because of me, that will be because of you. And when something is because of you it is real, it is authentic; it transforms, it transfigures, it transports you into another world. If it is just an impression, because I have been consistently telling you about something again and again and again, then it becomes just a suggestion deeply implanted within your mind. You may think that you have decided, but it is not your decision.

Krishnamurti has never asserted a single contradiction. He simply goes on repeating the same thing. His note is simple, clear; there is nothing confused about him. Either you agree with him or you don't agree with him -- that is another thing -- but there is nothing to be confused about. Nobody can say that he is confusing. You can say he is right or you can say he is wrong, but not that he is confusing.

You cannot say about me whether I am right or whether I am wrong. At the most, you can say that I am confusing. But that is my whole device: to confuse you so much. How long can you allow me to shift from this to that, from that to this? One day you are going to shout, "Keep your hands away! Now I want to decide"; and that decision will come out of you. And that will come not only because of intellectual conviction, it will come because of real experiences on both the paths. When you have tasted all, you can decide easily. And then you can remain with that decision for your whole life.

If you are impressed by me and then you decide, you can be impressed by somebody else tomorrow, and then you will decide that. And if you are impressionable for me, you are impressionable for anybody else. That's how people go from one Master to another.

Here there is no need to go anywhere because I am all the Masters together. You can just remain here and the Master changes; there is no need to go anywhere. I consistently contradict myself, so there is no problem. You need not go anywhere; you can just remain where you are.

People go on changing Masters because one day something impresses you and you are over-enthusiastic about it, and then there is a honeymoon -- but honeymoons end. Anything that begins has to end. After a few days the enthusiasm is gone. Now the thing seems to be familiar. The enthusiasm was because of the unfamiliar, because it was new. Try to understand this mechanism.

You fall in love with a woman because she is so new: the physiology, the proportions of her body, the face, the eyes, the eyebrows, the color of her hair, the way she walks, the way she turns, the way she says hello, the way she looks. Everything is new, the whole territory unknown. You would like to investigate this territory; it is inviting, it is very inviting. You are caught, hypnotized. And when you start approaching, she starts to run away; that is part of the game. The more she runs, the more enchanting she becomes. If she simply says, "Yes, I am ready," half of the enthusiasm will be dead that very moment. In fact, you will start thinking how to run away. So, she gives you a chance to chase her. People are never as happy as while the courting continues -- very happy -- because it is a chase. Man is basically a hunter, so when the woman is chased, running away, trying to hide here and there, avoiding, saying no, the man gets more and more hot. The challenge becomes intense; the woman has to be conquered. Now he is ready to die for her, or do whatsoever is needed, but the woman has to be conquered. He has to prove that he is no ordinary man.

But once they are married, then everything...because the whole interest was in the chase, the whole interest was in the unfamiliar, the whole interest was that the woman was apparently unconquerable. But now she is conquered; now how can that old interest remain? At the most one can pretend, but the old interest cannot remain. Things start becoming cold. They start getting bored with each other because now there are other women who are again new territories: they attract, they invoke, they call forth.

The same happens with thoughts: you are enchanted with one sort of thinking, but by the time you become acquainted with it the honeymoon is over, the love is over. Now you would like to be interested in something else, something new that again gives you a thrill, a kick. This way one goes from one woman to another, from one man to another, from one thinking to another thinking, from one path to another path, from one Master to another Master. This sort of searching will never allow you time enough to create trust.

In one aboriginal community of India in the very primitive parts of Madhya Pradesh, in Bastar, there lives a tribe -- aboriginals, very old people, primitive, almost three or four thousand years old. They are not contemporaries at all but something can be learned from them. One thing has happened in that community that has never happened before anywhere else, and that is: once a man marries a woman there is never any divorce. Divorce is allowed, but never has divorce happened. And once a man marries a woman, he remains truly with her, and the woman remains truly with him. He never becomes again interested in any other woman in any other way, and the woman never becomes interested in any other man. How have they managed this miracle? They have managed very psychologically.

The structure of their society is such that every boy and every girl is allowed to meet and mix with every other boy and girl. So every boy comes to know each girl of the community, and each girl comes to know each boy of the community. In fact, by the time boys and girls are getting interested in the other sex, they don't stay in their homes in the night. They have a small temple-like thing just in the middle of the village; they call it GHOTUL -- a youth house.

Once a boy becomes interested in girls he has to go to stay in the GHOTUL; once a girl starts becoming interested in the boys, she has to go to live in the GHOTUL. In the GHOTUL they live, all the boys of the village and all the girls of the village, and they make love to each other. Only one thing is insisted upon: the superintendent of the ghotul insists that no boy and girl should remain with each other more than three days. They should change, so that before their marriage time comes they have known everybody; then they can decide.

When you know all the women of your community and decide, that decision is totally different than the decision that is taken in civilized societies. You don't know other women; a better woman, a better man is always possible. Then what will you do? A more interesting personality can always be there; then there will be disruption, there will be distraction, there will be problems. These are small village communities: not many people -- two hundred, three hundred people, at the most, in one community. Every boy is allowed to know each girl. When he has known all the girls and all the girls have known all the boys, and then one girl and one boy decide to get married, before marriage happens they are given one more year to be together, to finally decide -- because to decide before knowing each other well is dangerous. The decision may be only because they want to know each other well. But once they have known each other well, then what will happen to their decision? So they have to know each other well for one year, two years; whatsoever time they need, they can be together. There is no interference on them by the society.

But once they decide to get married, of course that decision is very, very solid, absolute, unconditional -- because all conquering is gone, hunting is gone, chasing is gone. The honeymoon is before marriage in that community, and that seems to be more logical, psychological, more true to the human mind. The honeymoon is before the marriage. Marriage has to happen only when the honeymoon is over. When two persons, knowing each other well, decide to be together, now it is not a question of conquering. It is not a question of novelty. It is not that they decide for marriage because they want to know each other; they decide for marriage because they know each other. This is totally different.

But that GHOTUL and the system of those communities is disappearing. They are being civilized by us, forced, because this seems to be immoral. At least for Christians, Hindus, Jains, it seems immoral. Their community is being destroyed; their GHOTUL is thought to be like a house of prostitution. So they are being taught against their experience: they are being taught to destroy GHOTULS and to stop this 'immoral' situation.

But man seems to be absolutely foolish. They are not immoral people; they are very moral people, very natural people. But Christians are there working and trying to convert them into Christians. They have converted many of those poor people into Christians. Now GHOTULS are disappearing, and there, one of the most solid systems is being destroyed. In fact, we should learn something from them.

My whole device is to give you all the chances possible for spiritual growth so that you can have a feel for the right path. And that feel has to come through you. It has not to come through me, it has not to come through my, influence.

There are two ways not to influence you: one way is not to speak, to disappear somewhere so nobody can come close. Many people have done that too, but that doesn't seem to work. It has no compassion in it. The other way is to communicate to you, to say to you what I have attained, what I have known, what I have tasted. That has been done, but then people become impressed. They become so impressed that they are almost dragged out of their natures That too is dangerous. Maybe a hundred persons are influenced -- then ten, fifteen, at the most twenty, will reach to the goal. Eighty will be going against their nature.

My effort is to make you available to all possibilities and to make all possibilities available to you so you can move, you can change, you can have your own time, at your own pace. And then one day a feeling will arise, and tha. feeling will be totally yours. It will have nothing to do with me. Then you have come to a point where marriage happens: then you are married to a particular path.

I will continue talking about other paths, but from that moment you will listen to me, you will love me, you will be grateful to me, but if I am saying something which goes against your path you will not choose it, you will not be impressed by it. If something fits on your path you wil choose, but the decision will be your chosen path. Now anything that fits with it you will take in; anything tha doesn't fit you will not take in. And you will not say, "That is wrong"; you know that on some other path it fits, so I may be right for somebody else.

But once you have chosen your path, whatsoever I say, you will be able to choose. You will become a chooser you will have an inner criterion -- what fits, what does no fit.

I am here for many sorts of people. I am not one dimensional; I am here for all sorts of people, and I am speaking to all of them. By and by, listening to me, being attentive to me, you will go on deciding by your feeling. Then I will continue to speak; you will love to listen, you will love to understand, but you will not be distracted. Once you are married you will not be distracted. Then there is no divorce.

"When you were a Zen Master telling us to choose our path and stick to it, I felt that my path was of the head, that I would never be able to surrender to anyone. Now, after one lecture on the Baul mystics, I feel like a lovesick schoolgirl. How to choose a path when you have none? How to be a light unto myself when your light dazzles me every moming?"

One day you will be saturated with it. One day, one morning you will arise in your own being, alert to your needs, alert to your direction. Once that direction is understood, recognized, then there will be no problem. But one has to wait for it; it takes time. And before it happens I will have to shift you, turn you, shunt you from here and there.

Sorry, but I have to do it.

The Bauls say,

Blind one,

how can you stumble

on a straight spontaneous path?

Be spontaneous in your own self

and find the way

that is born in you.

That's what I am trying to do here -- I am a midwife. I'm not going to create something for you; it is already being created in your womb. It is already being created in your innermost shrine. At the most, I can help it to be born smoothly. At the most, if something goes wrong I can help you to remove the obstacle. But the child has been getting ready in you; I am just a midwife....

Once you have found your child, your direction, then the path is very spontaneous.

Blind one,

how can you stumble

on a straight spontaneous path?

Be spontaneous

in your own self,

and find the way

that is born in you

Words of wisdom describing God

can reveal us riches

in a darkened room.

Seeking in darkness

is confusing.

Break the barriers

and look at the sky;

the formless

is held as a beautiful form

in the arms of the moon.

I go on describing about the wealth, treasures, but your eyes are full of darkness. My description impresses you; greed arises in you. You would also like to become a possessor of great treasures -- but your eyes are full of darkness. Even if the treasure is right in front of you and I am describing it to you, you are impressed by my description but you are not aware of the treasure Iying just in front of you. My description is not going to help.

Words of wisdom describing God

can reveal us riches

in a darkened room.

Seeking in darkness

is confusing.

Break the barriers

and look at the sky;

the formless is held as a beautiful form

in the arms of the moon.

So don't be too impressed by my words, and don't start feeling very sure while listening to me. But I know it is natural, it is human. Many times you will feel sure: "This is my path"; but next day it will change. So become a little unsure about your sureness. Hesitate a little. When I was talking on Zen you felt sure: "This is my path." Now I am talking about Bauls -- remember, tomorrow I may be talking about something else, so this time at least don't feel so sure. Listen to me, but don't give surety to what is heard. Wait, there is no hurry. Be patient, go on listening and trying, but don't feel sure because your surety is dangerous. Feel sure only when your child is born, when you have a sense of direction. And you will be able to see the difference, because it is so tremendously different. It will not be because of me. You will be able to see now that it is not that you are impressed by me; there is nothing like impression. Suddenly a great upsurge, a great energy has happened in you, and it is absolutely certain. But you will be able to see that it is not because of any influence from my side. Sometimes it may even happen contrary to what I am saying. Sometimes -- it is possible if you have been shifted too many times from one path to another -- I am talking about love, and listening to me about love a great certainty will arise in you that, "This is not my path; my path is meditation," or vice versa. It is difficult to say how you will be able to make sure that this is not the surety coming by influence, but your own. But I know that you will be able to do it.

It is exactly like when you have a headache: you know. You don't ask anybody, "Please tell me when I have a headache. How am I going to know that it is a headache, that I am really having it?" No, you will know. When the real certainty arises, it is so clear, so crystal-clear -- like a pillar of light; and just by its arising you are washed clean.

Just by its arising you feel a new being, altogether new, a new birth. It is not intellectual, it is not in the head. You will feel it all over your body, all over your body, all over your mind, all over your heart. Your totality will feel it. When that certainty arises, then it is faith, then it is trust. By being influenced, whatsoever you get is nothing but a belief. A belief is a very impotent thing;.it never changes anybody.

Baul Mystics

VOL. 1, THE BELOVED

Chapter-2

I am just a midwife