Between Sex and Samadhi, The Bridge is Love

The Bauls are called Bauls because they are mad people. The word 'Baul' comes from the Sanskrit root vatul. It means: mad, affected by wind. The Baul belongs to no religion.
He is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian nor Buddhist. He is a simple human being. His rebellion is total. He does not belong to anybody; he only belongs to himself.
He lives in a no man's land: no country is his, no religion is his, no scripture is his.
A Baul is a man always on the road. He has no house, no abode. Existence is his only abode, and the whole sky is his shelter.
He possesses nothing except a poor man's quilt, a small, handmade one-stringed ins-trument called ektara, and a small kettle-drum.
He plays with one hand on the instrument and he goes on beating the drum with the other and he dances.
Dance is his religion; singing is his worship. He does not even use the word 'God'. The Baul word for God is Adhar Manush, the essential man. He worships man.
He says, inside you and me, there is an essential being. That essential being is all. To find that Adhar Manush is the whole search.
The Baul wanders singing songs. He has nothing to preach; his whole preaching is his poetry. And his poetry is also not ordinary poetry, he sings because his heart is singing.
Poetry follows him like a shadow, hence it is tremendously beauti-ful. He's not calculating it, he's not making it. He lives his poetry. That's his passion and his very life.
His dance is almost insane. He has never been trained to dance. He dances like a madman, like a whirlwind. And he lives spontaneously, because the Baul says, "If you want to reach to the Adhar Manush, then the way goes through Sahaja Manush, the spontaneous man".
Spontaneity is the only way to reach to the essence... so he cries when he feels like crying. You can find him standing in a village street crying, for nothing. If you ask, "Why are you crying?" he will laugh.
He will say, "There is no 'why'. I felt like crying, so I cried". If he feels like laughing, he laughs; if he feels like singing, he sings — but every-thing has to come out of deep feeling.
He's not mind-oriented, not in any way controlled and disciplined. So you cannot find two Bauls that are similar; they are individuals. Their rebellion leads them to become authentic individuals.
He leaves the world to itself. He does not interfere, he does not meddle with it. He starts changing himself. His revolution is absolutely inner.
A Baul is ready to die any moment because he has lived life as deeply as it was possible to live. He has no complaint, he has no grudge against life, and he has nothing to wait for. So if death comes, he is ready to live death also. He embraces death.
A Baul dies dancing, a Baul dies singing, a Baul dies playing his ektara and his duggi. He knows how to live and how to die.
He knows how to transform sex into samadhi; he knows the secret. And what is the secret of transforming life into eternal life, time into eternity?
The secret is love. Between sex and samadhi, the bridge is love. Through love, the Bauls say, one reaches the eternal home.
So that is the only provision for the path: love. Love is their worship, love is their prayer, love is their meditation. The path of the Baul is the path of love