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Enchanted by the song of a bird singing happily on the branch of a tree, a king had it caught and kept in a cage. Even singing is wrong in the presence of wrong people. The poor bird could not have imagined that his song would get him behind bars! The bird that flew in abandon in the free skies and flitted from one branch to another as he wished, now found himself in a golden cage, inlaid with precious stones to one who has tasted the freedom of the skies? A cage is a cage, whether of gold or iron.
The bird cried and cried, but the king and his courtiers thought he was singing aloud with joy! Some people can cry only like the bird did but to those who cannot perceive the cry would be an expression of joy. The bird was filled with agony and anxiety and he began to think: "Will my wings remember how to fly if I remain in this cage too long?" If he forgets the sky then of what use even if he were to be freed from the cage!
Only those that have the knowledge and the joy of freedom within their souls know what it is. By merely becoming independent, freedom cannot be known. The bird longed to be free before he lost memory of the sky.
One, morning the bird heard a fakir sing: "For him who seeks liberation, there is only one way -- the path of Truth. For him who seeks freedom there is only one way -- the way of Truth. And what is Truth?" The mendicant asks in his song. "Truth is to see things as they are; to know things as they really exist and try to live with them as they are and reveal them as such -- this is Truth; and he who attains Truth is liberated."
This was the Fakir's song Thus he sang in the streets each day. No one heeded him except the little bird for, a bird still knows the joy of vast spaces through its flights. Man does not know it any more. Man is completely oblivious of the wings he has which can take him to some unknown space.
And so the saints and seers of yore tirelessly called out to mankind but who hears? But this little bird caught the Fakir's message and that very day it decided to try....
The king was in the palace when someone came to see him. He sent word through his servants to say that he was not within.
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