…When you are seeking in the scriptures you are seeking theories and not truth – and truth is original, has to be original. The truth has to be born in you, it cannot be borrowed.
…Sometimes look into somebody’s eyes and don’t call them any names – man, woman, yours, friend, enemy, young, old, beautiful, ugly – don’t bring names in. just look into the eyes, try to avoid verbalization, and suddenly you will come to a leap, a quantum leap, where you will be surprised to see that the observer has become the observed, that the observed becomes observer. Then you don’t know who is “I” and who is “thou.” These are moments from where God enters you; his first foot step are heard.
At least for one hour, drop out of language. And to drop out of language is to drop out of society; to drop out of language is to drop out of religion; to drop out of language is to drop out of all that is man-created. Have you seen? – language is very, very significant. Animals are silent, trees are silent; they don’t argue, they don’t have any scriptures. A tree is neither Christian nor a Hindu nor a Mohammedan; it is simply there in its beauty, with no name. It does not know even its own name; those names are given by human beings. Your society is created through language, your knowledge is created through language. Just think, if suddenly a miracle happened and language disappeared from the world, what would be the difference between man and animal? What would be the difference between a Hindu and a Mohammedan? There would be no difference. All distinctions are language created.
… If you fight with a word you will need another word to fight it with, remember. You cannot fight a word without words.
…You can fight only with words. To fight with words you will need more words, and you will get into the whole rut again. No, need; let the words pass, let them float, it’s ok. You be indifferent, you be neutral. They will buzz around for a few days, and then by and by they will feel they are neglected; by and by they will feel you are no longer interested; by and by they will feel they are not welcome. And when words start feeling they are not welcome, they start disappearing. You are no longer host to them.
…you have to drop language before God can speak his language. You have to be utterly silent before he can convey his message.
But we have a very wrong notion: we think if we have to pray, we have to talk to God. No, prayerfulness is ore listening than talking; better listen than talk. You cannot improve upon God. Whatsoever you say is meaningless, whatsoever you say is ridiculous. He knows it already. So what is the point? Keep quiet, remain in silence. Rather, try to hear. Be sensitive; don’t use the tongue. The prayer that comes out of the tongue is foolish, meaningless. You are advising God: you are saying, “Do it this way. Whatsoever you are doing is going wrong.” You say, “My wife is ill; make her well again. And I am getting old; give me more strength and a longer life” – and so on and so forth. All your prayers are your advice to God about how things should be.
…Jus the other day somebody asked, “what is the meaning of surrender”? This is the meaning of surrender: drop your otherness. Don’t think of yourself as the other, put aside your separateness. Don’t say, “I am”; let him be, and let him be so totally that you are drowned in that totality, absorbed, lost. Be a wave in the ocean, but don’t claim you are separate from the ocean – that I the meaning of surrender.
…there can be no cause to God, God is the ultimate cause. That is what we mean by “God’: the ultimate cause, the uncaused, which has always been, which will always be. There is none before it and none after it. God has no past and no future, God has only the present. God is eternal.
Excerpts from “The Path of Love”
On the Songs on the Indian Mystic Kabir.
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