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The Vedas look pitiful and second-rate before him. Kabir is singular, unique. Although he is illiterate he has succeeded in extracting the essence from the experience of his life. He is not a scholar; he has expressed this essence very briefly, not at all in great detail. His words are like seed -- mantras:
LOVE'S NOT GROWN IN GARDENS;
LOVE'S NOT SOLD AT MARKET.
HE WHO WANTS IT, KING OR COMMONER,
GIVES HIS HEAD AND TAKES IT.
In the world of love there is no distinction between king and commoner. Where love is concerned there is no question of poverty or of nobility. In love, the beggar and the king are on the same level.
There is only one way to obtain love. The man who wants love GIVES HIS HEAD AND TAKES IT. The man who wants love will have to lose himself, will have to sacrifice himself for it. He will have to sacrifice his ego, his pretence, his false show, his feeling of "I". This is what Kabir means by "head." He will have to sacrifice his head. Love will not be born in you so long as you are not prepared to lose your head.
Go into this a bit more deeply. There are two dimensions to this giving of the head. One aspect is that your ego must fall, must disappear, must go away. Your ego is contained in your head. This is why you often admonish others to hold their heads high. And when you have insulted someone, you will say how you showed him you were somebody, how you made him bow his head. The head has become the symbol of the ego. That is also why you lay your head at the feet of the one to whom you have surrendered. Why the head? There are other limbs to the body, but it is because the head represents the ego. So you bow down and lay your head at the feet of the person to whom you have surrendered yourself completely. And when you become angry with someone you hit him on the head with your shoe. The head is synonymous with the ego. This is its domain.
Kabir says that if you give up the ego it makes no difference whether you are poor or rich, white or black; he says that you can fill yourself with love, that you can take as much as you want.
You cannot purchase love in the market because then
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