Attach yourself to that Master who will free you from duality, and take you to the Supreme Lord.
Make no mistake, the Supreme Lord did not come as an avatar in Dashrath’s clan; He did not harass the king of Lanka; He did not enter the womb of Devaki; Yashoda did not fondle him in her lap.
He did not live on earth to destroy or pacify it; He did not enter the nether world, to deceive Bali.
He did not strike King Bali; He did not strike down and kill Hirnakusa. He did not as an Avatar in the form of a boar slay the Kshatriyas to rid the world of them. He did not hold aloft the Govardhan hill; He did not roam in the woods in the company of milk-maids. He is not Gandak, Saligram, nor is He a stone.
He did not swim in the river as an avatar in fish and tortoise forms.
He did not die in Dwarvati, nor was he buried in Jaggannath. Kabir loudly proclaims, be not misled from the path that leads to God.
The Lord about whom you form your fancies, but whom you have never seen, is neither of astral nor of material form. He is pure spirit, all love.
The seeker of the Lord
Cut off thy head (the ego) from thy mere human body, and hurl it down like a stone. Rare is the hero with the courage to do this, but that is the rule of the game for going home
There are many who wish to enter the battlefield, and many carry arms and put on airs. But few, indeed, stand fast and then fight the good fight, in the presence of the Lord
O Kabir, destroy all the five passions, for by killing them thou wilt obtain real peace. All will applaud thee and none will call thee murderer.
O Kabir, he only is a hero who battles bravely against his own mind. Holds down firmly the five perverse senses, and thus removes the source of all his troubles.
O Kabir, he only is a hero who holds all of five strong worldly passions within the hollow of his hand. He who cannot command these five, can never have the inner company of his Master.
The Master
Know ye, O seekers, one are both the Lord and perfect Master: All else is outward forms, creations of illusion. Give up the ego, worship the Master with your heart, and meet the Lord. A simple task it is, or so it seems.
Quite blind are those who see the perfect Master as only an earthly being like unto ourselves. Their fate is to be drowned in hapless sorrow, and to be captured in the net of Kal.
The Lord is manifested in the Master. How else, pray can you worship him? Bend low thy stiff neck at his holy feet, become his slave, and not that of the mind, and every moment contemplate his form. Be merged in the eternal Sound and meet the Lord.
The Master is the washerman, his devotee the cloth; the Word is the strong soap that cleans the mind. If the mind and soul are made clean by the Word, the cloth will shine with luster indescribable.
The Master is the potter, and his devotee the clay. He kneads the clay, removing its impurities. Then shapes the pot, supporting it within, with his own hands, unfailing, strong; beating the clay from outside alone.
Should the Lord and perfect Master both appear together, at whose feet should I then prostrate myself? It would be my Master’s feet, of that be sure. For he it was who showed the invisible Lord to me.
Excerpted from Kabir the Great Mystic by Isaac A. Ezekiel. The 575th birth anniversary of Saint Kabir was observed on June 2.
Saint Kabir