“Kahlil Gibran… The very name brings so much ecstasy and joy that it is impossible to think of another name comparable to him. Just hearing the name, bells start ringing in the heart which do not belong to this world. Kahlil Gibran is pure music, a mystery, such that only poetry can sometimes grasp, but only sometimes.”
Osho

Chapter Titles
Chapter 1 A Dawn unto His Own Day
Chapter 2 A Boundless Drop to a Boundless Ocean
Chapter 3 A Seeker of Silences
Chapter 4 Until the Hour of Separation
Chapter 5 Disclose Us to Ourselves
Chapter 6 Speak to Us of Love
Chapter 7 Love Possesses Not
Chapter 8 Let There Be Spaces
Chapter 9 Your Children Are Not Your Children
Chapter 10 When You Give of Yourself
Chapter 11 Life Gives unto Life
Chapter 12 The Wine and the Winepress
Chapter 13 Speak to Us of Work
Chapter 14 Work Is Love Made Visible
Chapter 15 Beyond Joy and Sorrow
Chapter 16 From House to Home, From Home to Temple
Chapter 17 The Boundless within You
Chapter 18 Shame Was His Loom
Chapter 19 The Gifts of the Earth
Chapter 20 Crime: A Crowd Psychology
Chapter 21 Leaves of a Single Tree
Chapter 22 Sinners and Saints: The Drama of Sleeping People
Chapter 23 Except Love, there Should Be No Law
Chapter 24 In This Silence
Chapter 25 The Real Freedom
Chapter 26 Each Moment a Resurrection
Chapter 27 Breaking the Shell of the Past
Chapter 28 Beyond Mind and Heart
Chapter 29 Within Your Own Self
Chapter 30 Friendliness Rises Higher than Love
Chapter 31 Into the Very Center of Silence
Chapter 32 Time Remains Where It Is
Chapter 33 Evil Is Nothing but an Absence of Good
Chapter 34 Only a Question of Awareness
Chapter 35 The Silent Gratitude
Chapter 36 The Seed of Blissfulness
Chapter 37 A Dewdrop Cannot Offend the Ocean
Chapter 38 A Heart Aflame, a Soul Enchanted
Chapter 39 From Dawn to Dawn, a Wonder and Surprise
Chapter 40 In You Are Hidden All Men
Chapter 41 I Call It Meditation
Chapter 42 Let My Words Be Seeds in You
Chapter 43 Don’t Judge the Ocean by Its Foam
Chapter 44 Become Again an Innocent Child
Chapter 45 A Peak unto Yourself
Chapter 46 Doors to the Mysterious
Chapter 47 We Shall Be Again Together

Excerpt from Reflections on Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet
Chapter 1

Kahlil Gibran… The very name brings so much ecstasy and joy that it is impossible to think of another name comparable to him. Just hearing the name, bells start ringing in the heart which do not belong to this world. Kahlil Gibran is pure music, a mystery, such that only poetry can sometimes grasp, but only sometimes.

You have chosen a man who is the most beloved of this beautiful earth. Centuries have passed; there have been great men, but Kahlil Gibran is a category in himself. I cannot conceive that even in the future there is a possibility of another man of such deep insight into the human heart, into the unknown that surrounds us.
He has done something impossible. He has been able to bring at least a few fragments of the unknown into human language. He has raised human language and human consciousness as no other man has ever done. Through Kahlil Gibran, it seems all the mystics, all the poets, all creative souls have joined hands and poured themselves.

Although he has been immensely successful in reaching people, still he feels it is not the whole truth, but just a glimpse. But to see the glimpse of truth is a beginning of a pilgrimage that leads you to the ultimate, to the absolute, to the universal.

Another beautiful man, Claude Bragdon, has said a few beautiful words about Kahlil Gibran. He says, “His power came from some great reservoir of spiritual life, else it could not have been so universal and so potent. But the majesty and beauty of the language with which he clothed it were all his own.”
I have always loved this statement of Bragdon, even though not agreeing with it.

One need not agree with a beautiful flower; one need not agree with the sky full of stars – but one can still appreciate. I make a clear-cut distinction between agreement and appreciation – and a man is civilized if he can make the distinction. If he cannot make the distinction, he’s still living in a primitive, uncivilized state of consciousness.

I agree in a sense, because whatever Bragdon is saying is beautiful; hence, my appreciation. But I cannot agree because whatever he is saying is simply guesswork. It is not his own experience.
Have you noted? – he says, “His power came from some great reservoir of spirituality, of spiritual life, else it could not have been so universal and so potent.” It is rational, logical, but it has no roots in experience. He feels that something beyond the grasp of mind has come through Kahlil Gibran, but he is not certain. And he cannot be certain, because it is not his experience. He is immensely impressed by the beautiful language; each word is poetry unto itself. But he himself is unaware of that great reservoir of spirituality. He himself has not tasted it. He has loved Kahlil Gibran, but he has not lived him.

With me, the situation is totally different. Hence, there are a few things I would like to say to you before I make my commentaries on the statements of Kahlil Gibran.

First, he is certainly a great poet, perhaps the greatest that has ever been born on the earth, but he is not a mystic; and there is a tremendous difference between a poet and a mystic. The poet, once in a while, suddenly finds himself in the same space as the mystic. In those rare moments, roses shower over him. On those rare occasions, he is almost a Gautam Buddha – but remember, I’m saying almost.

These rare moments come and go. He’s not the master of those rare moments. They come like the breeze and the fragrance and by the time you have become aware they are gone.

A poet’s genius is that he catches those moments in words. Those moments come into your life too. They are free gifts of existence – or in other words, glimpses to provoke in you a search, to come to a moment when this space will become your very life, your blood, your bones, your marrow. You will breathe it; your heart will beat it. You will never be able to lose it, even if you want to.
The poet is for moments a mystic, and the mystic is a poet forever.
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