The Path of Love On the Songs of the Indian Mystic Kabir ‘Kabir is a great lover of the body - and all the great mystics have been lovers of the body - because the body is the real temple of God.’ And Kabir is saying: ‘If you are delighted, joy will be given to you. If you have a little delight, more joy will descend on you. If you are silent, more silence will come to you. If you have, more will be given to you; if you don't have, even that which you have will be taken away.

Osho, The Path of Love, 296 pages, HB / euro 19.00 - order here

Chapter Titles
Chapter 1: Love Is the Master Key
Chapter 2: So Far, So Good
Chapter 3: Home Is Not Far Away
Chapter 4: Religion Is Individual Flowering
Chapter 5: I Sing the Glory of Forms
Chapter 6: The Inner Trinity
Chapter 7: A Harmony of Love and Renunciation
Chapter 8: Freedom to Choose
Chapter 9: The Song of Love
Chapter 10: Please Wake Up

LIVING IN BONDAGE, I HAVE SET MYSELF FREE:
I HAVE BROKEN AWAY FROM THE CLUTCH OF ALL NARROWNESS.

This is freedom: to be free from all narrowness. If you are a Hindu, you cannot be free, you are very narrow. You are in a tunnel called Hinduism. If you are a Mohammedan, you are not free. If you think you are man, you are woman, you are not free -- tunnels, all tunnels, all of them. If you think you are a negro or a white man, then you are not free -- tunnels, all tunnels, all of them. If you think you are a communist or anti-communist, if you have some ideology to define you, you are not free.
Freedom means no definition. Undefined you are... as vast as existence itself. And that is the truth, you ARE that. TATWAMASI: you ARE that. You are the whole, not a iota less. The part is the whole: let me declare it. It is very unmathematical to say that the part is the whole, but mysticism is unmathematical. If you go to the mathematician he will say, "How can the part be the whole? The part has to be the part. The part can never be the whole, and the part can never be equal to the whole, and the part has to be smaller than the whole." Certainly, it is mathematically right, but mystically it is nonsense.
The part is the whole, EQUAL to the whole, not a little smaller, not a single iota less. Because the part is not separate from the whole, how can the part be smaller than the whole? Just think of a wave: the mathematician will say, "The wave is less than the ocean"; the mystic will say, "The wave IS the ocean!" How can it be smaller than the ocean? Can you take the wave away from the ocean? Can you take it away? Can you hold it in a box? Then you will know that the moment you take the wave away, it is no more the wave. The wave exists only in the ocean, as the ocean; it cannot be taken away. The wave is nothing but the ocean waving.
The wave is an activity of the ocean. It is not separate, there is no division. The wave is the ocean, the part is the whole; and when you remember this, then you declare, like Christ, "My God and me are one"; or, like el-Hillaj Mansoor: "ANA'L HAQ" -- I am the Truth; or, like the Upanishads, "AHAM BRAHMASMI" -- I am God, I am absolute, I am the whole.

I HAVE BROKEN AWAY FROM THE CLUTCH OF NARROWNESS.
KABIR SAYS: I HAVE ATTAINED THE UNATTAINABLE...

Listen to the beauty of it:

I HAVE ATTAINED THE UNATTAINABLE,
AND MY HEART IS COLORED WITH THE COLOR OF LOVE.

Why call it unattainable if you say, "I have attained?" That's where logic and mysticism go on separate ways, part company. The logician... if you go to Arthur Koestler and you ask him about this sentence from Kabir where Kabir says, "I have attained the unattainable," he will say, "Absurd! If it is unattainable, then certainly, how can you say you have attained it? If you say you have attained it, then how can you call it, in the same breath, unattainable?" He will say this is mystification, this is madness.
But listen... it is not mystification. Kabir is trying to say something of tremendous value. He has to use this absurd expression because that is the only way to express it. Truth can be expressed only through paradox.

I HAVE ATTAINED THE UNATTAINABLE...

What does he mean then? He calls it "unattainable" because you cannot attain it. You cannot achieve it, you cannot make it a goal, you cannot make any effort to attain it, there is no methodology to attain it. There is no way to attain it -- hence he calls it "unattainable". But still it is attained. One day, suddenly, it comes as a gift -- not as an attainment. Not that you have attained; you are simply amazed, you cannot believe your own eyes -- it is there, it is showering all around you. And the paradox is: the more you try to attain it, the less will be the possibility for the gift to come to you.
When you drop trying to attain it, when you forget all about attaining, when you have understood that it cannot be attained, when this understanding has penetrated to the very core of your being, and you are relaxed, and there is no desire to attain, to go anywhere, to be somebody, to have something -- some experience of God, MOKSHA, NIRVANA -- when all these desires have disappeared.... Because you know it is unattainable; it cannot be desired, it cannot be made an object of ambition, because all objects of ambition will create ego -- and through ego it is not possible. How, through the ego, can you become vast? The ego is the tunnel; how can you remain in the tunnel and yet attain to the vast sky? Impossible.
Understanding this: "I am the root-cause of my misery, I am my confinement," one relaxes. When the relaxation is perfect, when the relaxation is UTTER, then it comes as a gift.
So Kabir says, "I have attained the unattainable -- not that I have attained it; I have been given it, it is a grace. God has descended on me."