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They become against life, they become antilife, 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.
If you go to your so-called mahatmas, they create antagonism towards life; they make you life-negative. They teach you that life is the enemy, it is evil. They make you feel as if God and life are contraries, you can't have both. Kabir says you can have both, because life and God are not enemies. Life is God manifest; God is life unmanifest. God and life are one force, one energy, one movement. When God is not visible he is God;when he becomes visible he is Life. And this goes on continuously -- he becomes visible, he becomes invisible. It is like breathing: you breathe out, you breathe in.
The old Indian scriptures say that existence is when God breathes out, and when God breathes in there is nonexistence. The whole of existence disappears when he breathes in; when he breathes out, the whole of existence appears. It is one breath going in and out. When God breathes out, you are born; when he breathes in, you disappear in death.
But you never leave God. The outgoing breath is as much his as the ingoing breath. And one has to understand this dynamism, this dialectics. Kabir is neither for the world nor for renunciation.
And his assertions are very simple, down to earth. He is not dramatic. He is not a preacher. And he is not worried whether you are impressed by him or not. He simply relates whatsoever he
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