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at the minimum, you are not living at all, you are living very grudgingly, you are living very reluctantly, you are living with a deep complaint that you don't want to live and you have been forced to live. You don't want this world at all: the rainbows and the trees and the stars and the people.... No, you don't want to relate with anybody.
When you don't want to relate with anybody, your contact with God is diminished, TERRIBLY diminished. When you come into relationship with a man, or with a tree, or with an animal, you are coming in contact with God in different forms.
Kabir says: To be in the community is the only way to be really alive. Relationship is life, and relationship is beautiful.
The third thing Kabir says is: Don't make religion a ritual. Ritual is a way of avoiding religion. Religion should be spontaneous, non-ritualistic. You should do it because you love doing it -- not that it is a duty -- and you should do it only spontaneously, when your heart feels like it. There is no need to go to the mosque or to the temple every day. There is no need to pray every day in the same way again and again -- because if you repeat the same prayer every day, you will not repeat it consciously. It will become mechanical.
I have heard....
It happened: One German scholar came to India to see a certain old sage. His name was very famous, because he knew the RIG VEDA just by the memory. He had memorised the whole RIG VEDA; that was his fame. I don't think he was a sage; he was just a great scholar, with a very good memory. You can call him a good computer, but not a sage.
And this German scholar came to discuss something, and he told him a few sutras from the RIG VEDA: `I would like you to discuss these with me.'
The old man said, `Never heard of it before' -- because the German scholar had not said that these were from the RIG VEDA.
The old man said, `Never heard it before.'
The German was surprised. He said, `I have heard that you know the whole RIG VEDA, and you say you have never heard this before?'
He said, `I cannot remember pieces. I remember the whole text, from the beginning to the end.
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