Question – Who has originated Bauls? Please explain.
Osho – People like bauls are never originated. Religions like the Baul religion are more like happenings. Who originated the roses? Who originated the songs that the birds go on singing every morning? No, we never ask that question. It has always been there.
Philosophies are originated; you can find the originator. ‘Isms’, dogmas, creeds are originated. The Baul is not a creed, it is a spontaneous way of life. People have always lived that way. People who have ever lived have always lived that way. People who have ever been alive have been alive in no other way. Whether they were known as Bauls or not is immaterial. The name may have some origin somewhere; I’m not concerned with it.
The word simply means ‘the madman’: madly in love with existence, madly in love with life — but this madness has always been there. And it is good that a few people have always been so mad that we have not lost contact with the roots of existence. It is because of them that we haven’t. They could sing and dance and live and love — real people,
authentic to the very core.
So, I don’t know when they started. They must have started from the very beginning, if there was any beginning. They must have started with the first man, because their whole teaching is about the essential man. In fact, by and by, they have disappeared. They must have been more in the beginning. By and by they have lessened; their numbers have become less and less and less every day. Because the world has become too worldly, and the world has become too cunning and clever, it does not allow the simplicity of the heart to exist. The world has become too competitive and too ambitious. It has forgotten all that is beautiful, it has forgotten all that cannot be manufactured, it has forgotten how to surrender, to allow the eternal to happen in time. It has forgotten the language of ecstasy. The more we move back, the more and more Bauls you will find. In the beginning the whole humanity must have been like the Bauls. Even now you can watch it: every child is born a Baul, then later on he is corrupted. Every child is again born as madly in love with life, but we cultivate him, we prune him, we don’t allow him spontaneity of being. We condition him, we give him a certain character.
The Bauls have no character. They are men of consciousness, but not of character. In fact, a man of consciousness never has a character. Character is a fixity, character is an obsession, character is an armor. You have to do only that which your character allows. Character can never be spontaneous. Character is always imposed by the past on the
present. You are not free to be, you are not free to respond; you can only react. The Baul believes in the SAHAJA MANUSH, the spontaneous man. The Baul says the spontaneous man is the way to the essential man. To be spontaneous is to be on the way towards being essential. Every child is a Baul.
So as I see it, in the beginning — if there was, any beginning — the whole humanity must have been like Bauls: true, authentic, sincere, mad, deep in love, rejoicing — rejoicing the opportunity that God has given, rejoicing the gift.
We don’t have any claim on life. Have you ever noticed it, that we don’t have any claim? If we had not been, there would be no way to be and there would be no way to appeal it. There would be no way to complain against it. If you are not, you are not. The next moment you can disappear. Life is fragile, and without any claim. We have not earned it!
That is the meaning when we say it is a gift. A gift is something that you have not earned; you don’t have any claim over it. You cannot say that you have some right to get it. A gift is something that is given to you.
Life is a gift. It has been given to you for no reason at all. You cannot have earned it, because how can you earn it if you were not? Life is a gift, but we go on forgetting it, we are not even thankful. We don’t have any gratitude. We certainly complain for a thousand and one things which we may think we are missing in life, but we never feel grateful for life itself.
You may complain that your house is not good: the rains have come and it is leaking. You may complain that your salary is not enough; you may complain that you don’t have a beautiful body. You may complain that this is not happening and that is not happening – – a thousand and one complaints — but have you ever seen that the whole life, the very possibility that you can be, breathe, look, see, hear, touch, love and be loved, is a gift? It has been given to you because God has so much to give, not because you have earned it.
The Baul lives in tremendous gratitude. He sings and dances — that is his prayer. He cries. He simply wonders why, for what has life been given to him, for what has he been allowed to see the rainbows in the sky, for what has he been allowed to see flowers, butterflies, people, rivers and rocks? For what? Because life is so obvious you tend to forget the tremendous gift hidden in it.
In the beginning, everybody must have been a Baul, because civilization was not there to corrupt, society was not there to destroy. Priests and churches were not there to give you a character, to give you a narrow passage. In the beginning, life must have been overflowing. Everybody must have lived out of their own beings — not because of any commandments, not because of scripture. There was no scripture and there was no commandment. Moses had not appeared yet. Everybody must have been a Baul in the beginning; and every child, when he is born, is a Baul. Watch a child to understand what this phenomenon of being a Baul is. See children delighting for nothing — just shouting out of joy, just running here and there out of overflowing energy. When you become a Baul you again become a child.
To become a Baul is to become a primitive. To become a Baul is to reclaim one’s primitiveness, one’s primalness. One is reborn; it is a rebirth — the child happens again. Your body may be old, your mind may be old, but your consciousness is released from the bondage of the body and the mind. You have a past, you have many experiences, but they no longer burden you. You put them aside. You use them when needed; otherwise, you don’t carry them continuously on your head for twenty-four hours. This is what liberation is: it does not liberate you from existence or from life or from flowers and love, it simply liberates you from your past. In fact, the more you are liberated, the more you fall in love with God. The more you are liberated, the more you become capable of rejoicing and loving.
So don’t ask me who originated Bauls. Nobody has ever originated things like that. The whole emphasis is on spontaneity. Of course, to have a theory like Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, an Einstein is needed. Without him it cannot be originated; without him it would not be in existence. A very complicated mind is needed to discover the
complicated Theory of Relativity.
Bauls don’t give any theories. They simply say, “All that you need be, you are already.” It is not a question of being very clever, it is a question of just being simple. No talent is needed to become a Baul. That’s the beauty of it: no genius is needed. What genius is needed to be a child? Every child is born as a child. The sages and the fools — all are born as children. No talent is needed. Childhood is simply everybody’s nature.
To be a Baul nothing is needed. In fact, the moment you need nothing, you become a Baul. The moment you are unburdened and you don’t possess anything, any past, you are a Baul. No, things like that are never originated. Nobody creates them; they happen. They are part of nature.
Source – Osho Book “The Beloved, Vol 1”