The Roots and the Flowers Are One-part 3.

[Guest guest]

Life has more to give and you live only on the waves, you never reach the

depths.

 

I would like you to become capable of living on the waves, with the sun shining

and the storm raging and great winds blowing, and to go into the depth also,

where all storms cease, where deep darkness exists without any penetration from

the sun, where everything is silent and peaceful and tranquil, and there is no

disturbance. But, I would like you to become capable of both. If one makes you

incapable of the other, then you are not a very rich human being. Then you are

half-human. Then half of your being is dead. Then you are paralyzed; then you

are not fully alive.

 

You must have heard what the existentialists say. They have a very basic dictum:

that existence precedes essence. They say that man is born first, and then, by

and by, he creates his own essence, his own soul. Man is born empty, with no

content in him, just a blank paper. Then, by and by, he has to write his own

autobiography on it. He has to make his own signature; he brings none. He comes

as an emptiness.

 

The Bauls say just the opposite thing. They say: Man is born with essence, the

adhar manush. The essential man is always there, maybe manifest or not manifest.

The tree is already in the seed. Essence precedes existence, not otherwise. The

Bauls say that life is not a creation of something new, it is just unfoldment.

You already have it; it just has to be unfolded, barriers just have to be

removed. Obstacles just have to be put aside and your life starts unfolding. You

are like a bud: when obstacles are no more there, you start flowering, your

lotus opens.

 

 

But that which you are going to become you already are, in essence -- "Because

if you are not already," the Bauls say, "then you cannot become." You can become

only that which you are. You can become only your being. There is no other way

of becoming, there is nothing else you can become. A rosebush will grow roses, a

lotus plant will grow lotuses. You are already carrying your destiny; just

obstacles have to be removed.

 

This is what Bauls call preparation. To prepare oneself means to remove the

obstacles on the path. If you remove hate, love starts flowing. You are not to

create love; nobody can create love. If you were to create love then it would be

impossible. Just remove the hate and you will see love streaming. Remove

unconsciousness, and you will see knowing arising in you. Remove the negative,

and the positive starts unfolding itself. Then the whole preparation is just

negative. It is almost as if a rock is blocking a small stream: you remove the

rock and the stream starts moving. With the rock blocking her path, it may not

ever have been possible for her to come and be manifested.

 

We are carrying many rocks within our beings -- call them blocks in your energy

-- but those blocks have to be dissolved and removed.

 

The methods of the Bauls are very simple.

 

They say that if you can dance, many blocks will disappear from your being --

because when a person dances and really moves into dance, and becomes movement,

then he becomes liquid. Have you not seen it? If you have seen somebody lost in

dancing, can't you see it? that he is no longer solid? He is flowing. The

solidity is gone; he has become liquid. This liquidity melts the blocks. So

dancing is the Yoga of the Baul; he dances for hours together. When the moon is

in the sky in the night, the Bauls will dance the whole night -- because for

them the moon is a symbol of their Beloved, Krishna. They call Krishna "the

moon". When the moon is there they will dance, and they will dance madly. And

this dance is not a performance. It is not for somebody else to see. If somebody

sees it and watches, that's another thing. The Baul dances for himself, for his

own pleasure.

 

Somebody asked Tulsidas, a great poet, "Why have you written Ramayan? Why?" --

because he devoted his whole life to it. Said Tulsidas, "swantahsukhai tulsi

ragunath gatha": for my own pleasure I have been singing the story of Ram --

swantasukhai; for my own pleasure, for my sheer pleasure, but for my own

pleasure. It is not a performance, it is not for somebody else.

 

The Bauls dance swantahsukhai, for their own pleasure.

 

Singing is another of their methods, They have chosen very aesthetic methods,

not hard, but very soft methods, feminine methods, Taoist methods. They sing and

they are lost completely in their singing. Singing is chanting for them; singing

is prayer for them. And they sing about their Beloved, and they sing about their

Lord, about their God. If you are lost in your singing you are lost in

nadabrahma, you are lost in "the soundless sound." And their singing and dancing

is not a ritualized thing. There is no ritual. Each Baul is individual. You will

not find two Bauls singing the same song or singing in the same way. And you

will not find two Bauls dancing the same dance or dancing the same way. They

don't follow any ritual.

 

This has to be understood, because this is very, very fundamental for them. And

this I would like you to remember: if anything becomes a ritual, then drop it;

it is useless now -- because a ritual means a repetition. Mohammedans do their

namaj in a certain way every day; it becomes a ritual. Christians do their

prayer. the same prayer again and again. They become so habitual with it that no

consciousness is required. They can do it and they can think many thoughts in

the background. It has become robot-like. They can repeat the words. They know

the words, they have repeated them so many times. It is a dead ritual.

 

Bauls say, "Let your prayer arise in each moment. What is the need to carry the

past? Can't you talk to your God directly? What is the point of repeating the

same thing again?" Today is different from yesterday -- the prayer has to be

new, as new as the morning sun or the morning dewdrop.

 

contd . . . . .

Osho: The Beloved, Vol 2, Chapter 1