The strings of the heart

The strings of the heart are very loose. The strings of our hearts are not tight at all. Do we know something like love? We know anger, we know envy, we know jealousy, we know hatred. Do we know something like love? Perhaps we would say that we do. Sometimes we love. Perhaps we would say that we hate and we love also. But do you know...? Can there be a heart which hates and loves also? It is the same as saying that a person is sometimes alive and sometimes dead. We cannot believe this, because a man can either be alive or he can be dead. Both these things cannot happen simultaneously. That a man is sometimes alive and sometimes dead is not possible, it is impossible. Either the heart knows only hate or the heart knows only

love. There can be no compromise between the two. In a heart which has love, hatred becomes
impossible.

There was a fakir woman named Rabiya. In the holy book which she used to read, she canceled

one line. She crossed out a line in it. Nobody cancels any line in the holy books because what can

one improve in the holy books? Another fakir came to stay with Rabiya. He read the book and he said, ”Rabiya, somebody has destroyed your holy book! It has become unholy, one line has been canceled from it. Who has canceled it?” Rabiya said, ”I canceled it.” The fakir was very shocked. He said, ”Why did you cancel this line?” The line was, ’Hate the devil’. Rabiya said, ”I have got into a difficulty. From the day that love for God arose in me, hate disappeared within me. Even if I want to I cannot hate. Even if the devil comes in front of me then also I can only love him. I have no other choice, because before I can hate I need to have hate in me. Before I can hate, I must have hate in my heart. Otherwise where will I get it and how will I do it?”

The coexistence of love and hate is not possible in the same heart. These two things are as contrary as life and death; they cannot exist together in the same heart. Then what is that which we call love?  When there is less hate we call it love; when there is more hate we call it hate. They are lesser and greater proportions of hate itself. There is no love there at all. The mistake happens because of the degrees. Because of the degrees you may mistakenly think that cold and heat are two different things. They are not two different things. Heat and cold are gradations of the same thing. If the ratio of heat becomes less, then something starts feeling cold. If the ratio of heat becomes more, then the same thing starts feeling hot. Cold is another form of heat. They seem to be opposite, different, enemies of each other, but they are not. They are condensed and non-condensed forms of the same thing. We know hatred in the same way. The less condensed form of hate we understand as love and the very condensed form of hate we understand as hate – but love is in no way a form of hate. Love is a totally different thing to hate. Love has no relation to hate. The strings of our heart are totally loose. From those loose strings the music of love does not arise – neither does the music of bliss. Have you ever known bliss in your life? Can you say about some moment that it was a moment of bliss and that you recognized and experienced bliss? It is difficult to say with authenticity that you have ever known bliss.