Kabir was no scholar; yet he expressed the very essence of life: “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”.
There is only one way to obtain love: the man who wants love gives his head. He will have to sacrifice his ego, his pretence, his false show.
This is what Kabir means by ‘head'. There are two dimensions to this. One aspect is that your ego - that is contained in the head - must disappear.
Love means the transformation of the centre. An egoist considers himself to be the centre. He says, “I must be saved even at the cost of the whole world”. The ego is aggressive, so when the egoist shows his love for someone he destroys him; he tries to destroy the other's individuality. In this kind of false love countless people have lost their individuality.
The second meaning is, losing your thoughts. Your head is a collection of thoughts. Your mind is nothing but a vast crowd of thoughts. And it is a very busy and active crowd indeed. Because of it your whole energy is wasted, and you have no energy left for love.
The head is an exploiter. It drains you to such an extent that the flow of energy is unable to reach your heart. And 99 per cent of your thoughts are useless; they have no substance.
When you are sitting quietly, do you ever observe your thoughts? Have you ever watched the rubbish that goes on in your mind? What do you hope to achieve by permitting all this rubbish? It goes on, day and night, in your waking hours and in your dreams. Even the most trivial thought consumes energy.
Scientists conclude that the amount of energy you would expend in one hour digging a pit is the same as the amount you expend in 15 minutes of thinking and worrying. So mental activity requires four times more energy than physical activity.
These days, man's physical activity has decreased, but his mental activity has increased. The head has become an exploiter; it does not allow energy to flow anywhere else. The head consumes all of the energy. The heart is not aggressive. It waits.
Kabir says, many people spend their lives reading. They read countless books and scriptures and finally they die, but they do not attain to wisdom. Wisdom has no relation to information. As you keep on reading and listening and accumulating facts your memory becomes very full, and you will know much without really knowing anything.
According to Kabir, a man of letters is a scholar who has only read about love. The Hindi word for love is prem , and is made up of two and a half letters. Kabir says to read these two and a half letters in a book is meaningless.
Only when a person falls in love with someone do the two and half letters of Prem become complete. One letter is for the lover, the second is for the beloved and the half is for something unknown that exists between the two.
No matter how hard you try, love never becomes complete. You are never content... It is also an indication that it is everlasting. Remember, whatsoever attains to completion, dies. To remain incomplete is love's nature. So a lover is never satisfied and therefore his joy is endless.
Excerpted from The Guest, Courtesy Osho International Foundation. www.osho.com.