Osho speaks on the exuberant poems of Kabir, as translated by India’s Nobel Prize-winning poet, Rabindranath Tagore. He also responds to questions as diverse as the difference between relationship and aloneness, mind and society, self and enlightenment, and explains the difference between a crystallized self and a strong ego.
Chapter Titles
Chapter 1: Now or Never
Chapter 2: Sannyas: The Radical Revolution
Chapter 3: Natural, Spontaneous, Aware
Chapter 4: The Forgotten Language of Ecstasy
Chapter 5: There Are No Words to Tell
Chapter 6: Trust Your Nature
Chapter 7: Go In
Chapter 8: Indifference to the Mind Is Meditation
Chapter 9: Dance Today with Joy
Chapter 10: The Choice Is Yours
Excerpt from Ecstasy, the Forgotten Language
Chapter 1
"I invite you to come with me into the innermost realm of this madman Kabir. Yes, he was a madman - all religious people are. Mad, because they don’t trust reason. Mad, because they love life. Mad, because they can dance and they can sing. Mad, because to them life is not a question, not a problem to be solved but a mystery into which one has to dissolve oneself.
One thing more about Kabir’s approach. He is life-affirmative. That too is an indication of a real man of understanding. There are two types of people in the world: the people who indulge and the people who renounce. They Look opposite to each other but they are not. They are two aspects of the same coin. The people who indulge are continuously frustrated because no indulgence brings you to joy. You can indulge - you can waste your life, you can waste your opportunity, your energy - but no enjoyment ever comes out of indulgence. If indulgence could have given joy, then nobody would ever have renounced. People renounce because indulgence fails - but then they are moving to the other extreme. Thinking that indulgence has not helped, they move to the opposite. They become against life, they become anti-life, they become life-negative. They start destroying their being; they become suicidal. These are the two types of people you will find. In the market you will find the people who indulge, and in the monasteries you will find the people who renounce.
Kabir belongs to neither. A real man of understanding is a great synthesis. He knows that it is not a question of indulgence or renunciation; it is a question of awareness. Be in the world, but be with awareness. Don’t go anywhere, don’t have antagonistic attitudes towards life. Kabir is tremendously life-affirmative. He loved, he had a wife, he had two children, and he lived the life of a householder…and yet was one of the greatest seers of the world. He lived in the world and remained untouched. That’s his beauty. He is a lotus flower."