The Beloved volume one

The post will be from the spontaneous talks given by Osho in chuang tzu auditorium, Pune, India. The title is The Beloved (volume One)

The Bauls are called Bauls Because they are mad people. The word Baul comes from the Sanskrit root vatul. It means mad, affected by the wind. The Bauls belong to no religion. He is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian nor Buddhist. He is a simple being. His rebellion is total. He does not belong to anybody; he belongs to himself.

The bee know knows it

Beloved Osho,

Only the connoisseur of the flavors of love

can comprehend the language of the lover’s heart,

others have no clue.

The taste of lime rests in the core of the fruit,

and even experts know of no easy way to reach it.

Honey is hidden in the lotus bloom

but the bee knows it.

Dung beetles nestle in dung,

Discounting honey.

       …Bauls have nothing – no scriptures, not even to burn; no church, no temple, no mosque – nothing whatsoever. A Baul is always a man on the road. He has no house, no abode. God is his only abode, and the whole sky is his shelter. He possesses nothing except a poor man’s quilt, a small, handmade one-stringed instrument called ektara, and a small drum, a kettle drum. That’s all that he possesses.  He prepossesses only a musical instrument and a drum. He plays with one hand on the instrument and he goes on beating the drum with the other the drum hangs by the side of his body and he dances. That is all of his religion.

            Dance is his religion, singing is his worship. He does not even use the word ‘god’. The Baul word for God is adhar manush, the essential man. He worships man. He says, inside you and me, inside everybody, there is an adhar manush. The essential being is all. To find the adhar manush, the essential man, is the whole search.

            So there is no God somewhere outside you, and there is no need to create any temple because you are his temple already.. the whole search is whithinwards. And o the waves of the song and on the waves of dancing, he moves withinwards. He goes on moving like a beggar, singing songs. He has nothing to preach. His whole preaching is his poetry. And his poetry is not ordinary poetry, not mere poetry. He is not consciously a poet, he sings because his heart is singing. Poetry follows him like a shadow, hence it is tremendously beautiful. He’s not calculating, he’s not making it. He lives his poetry. That is his passion and his very life. His dance is almost insane. He has never been trained to dance, he does not know anything about the art of dancing. He dances like a mad man, like a whirlwind, and he lives very spontaneously, because the Baul says, “if you want to reach to the adhar manush, the essential man, then the ways, the ways goes trhough the sahaj manush, spontaneous man.”

             To reach the essential man, you have to go through the essential man. Spontaneity is the only way to reach to the essence…so he cries when he feels like crying. You can find  him standing in a village street crying, for nothing. If you ask, “Why are you crying?” he will laugh. He will say, “There is no why. I felt like…I felt like crying, so I cried.” If he feels like laughing, he laughs; if he feels like singing, he sings – but everything has to come out of deep feeling. He’s not mind oriented, not in any way controlled and disciplined. He knows no rituals. He’s absolutely against rituals because he says, “A ritualized person is a dead person. He cannot be spontaneous.” And a person who follows rituals and formalities too much creates so many habits around him that there is no need to be alert. Alertness is lost, habits are formed. Then the man of rituals lives through habits. If he goes to the temple he bows down, not in anyway conscious and alert of what he is doing, but just because he has been taught to do so, he has learned to do so. It has become a conditioning.

            So they don’t follow any ritual, they don’t have any technique, they don’t have any habit. So you cannot find two Bauls that are similar, they are individuals. Their rebellion leads them to become authentic individuals.

            This has to be understood: the more you become part of the society, the less and less you become an individual, the less and less you are spontaneous – because the very membership of the society will not allow you to be spontaneous. You have to follow the rules of the game. If you enter a society, you accept to follow those rules that society is playing or has decided to play. That’s what membership means: you enter into a certain organization. You have to play the game. Bauls have no organization, so each baul is individual.

            And that’s and religion really is: it is an individual approach towards truth. One has to go alone, one has to go in his own way; one has to find one’s own way. You cannot follow another, you cannot move on a ready-made track. The more you search your own way, the closer you will be to God, or to truth, or to reality. In fact, the way is created by walking, you create it as you walk. It is not ready there for you, waiting to be walked on. You walk and you create it.