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to their learned discourses, to their discussions and to their arguments for and against, but that he returned empty-handed, that he obtained no glimmer of true knowledge whatsoever from them. You can never get anything from them. Even if you memorize their words nothing will come of it; you will always come home empty-handed.
Is anything more lowly than a word? Yet it is very interesting that a man with nothing more than a vast storehouse of words is so proud of them and considers himself to be a man of knowledge. It is interesting how such a man thinks he really knows something. This is sheer foolishness.
STUDYING GREAT BOOKS MANY HAVE DIED.
NONE EVER BECOME LEARNED.
TWO LETTERS AND A HALF IN LOVE,
WHO STUDIES THEM IS LEARNING.
And then:
KABIR SAYS: CLOUDS OF LOVE
CAME ON ME SHOWERING;
SOAKED THE HEART,
GREENING THE INNER JUNGLE.
Can there be rain from word-clouds? And if rain could pour down from clouds of words would they make your garden green? You cannot cheat the trees. They will not be deceived by a shower of words; they require real water to flower. The water of experience is the real water.
KABIR SAYS: CLOUDS OF LOVE
CAME ON ME SHOWERING...
No sooner do you do away with the head than the rains come. The clouds will begin to shower on you as soon as your ego disappears. The clouds of love are always hovering above you. They have not forsaken you, not even for a moment, because love is your innermost nature. Love is the nature of your soul. It is not something you amass on the outside and then distribute to others. Just as heat is the nature of fire and freshness is the nature of water, love is the nature of the soul. But your eyes are not focused on the clouds of love. Your gaze is always downcast. The clouds hover about you, and sometimes you hear their call but your mind is such that you give some other interpretation to what you have heard.
In one of his famous poems Rabindranath Tagore tells of a huge temple served by one hundred priests, of a temple where lakhs of rupees were regularly spent on food and on various rites. One night the
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