To reach to the essential man, you have to go through 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, I felt like crying, so I cried.” If he feels like laughing, he laughs; if he feels like singing, he sings — but everything has to come out of deep feeling. He’s not mind oriented, not in any way controlled and disciplined. He knows no rituals.
He’s absolutely against rituals because he says, “A ritualized person is a dead person.” He cannot be spontaneous. And a person who follows rituals, formalities too much, creates so many habits around him that there is no need to be alert. Alertness is lost; habits are formed. Then the man of rituals lives through habits. If he goes to the temple he bows down, not in any way conscious and alert of what he is doing, but just because he has been taught to do so, he has learned to do so. It has become a conditioning.
So they don’t follow any ritual, they don’t have any technique, they don’t have any habit. So you cannot find two Bauls that are similar; they are individuals. Their rebellion leads them to become authentic individuals.
This has to be understood: the more you become a part of society, the less and less you are an individual, the less and less you are spontaneous — because the very membership in the society will not allow you to be spontaneous. You will have to follow the rules of the game.
If you enter a society, you accept to follow those rules that the society is playing, or has decided to play. That’s what membership means: you enter into a certain organization; you have to play the game. Bauls have no organization, so each Baul is individual.
And that’s what religion really is: it is an individual approach towards truth. One has to go alone, one has to go in his own way; one has to find one’s own way. You cannot follow another, you cannot move on a readymade track. The more you search your own way, the closer you will be to God, or to truth, or to reality. In fact, the way is created by walking. You create it as you walk. It is not ready there for you, waiting to be walked on. You walk and you create it.
It is as if you are lost in a forest. What do you do? You have no map and there is no way leading anywhere — trees and trees and trees all around, and you are lost. What do you do? You start walking, searching, seeking. By your very walk, by your very search, a path is created.
Life is wild, and it is good that it is wild. It is good that it has no map, that it is not charted, that it is still unknown. And its unknowability is such that there is no way to make it known. Otherwise, all charm will be lost, all beauty will be lost. Then life will not surprise you; and if surprise is lost, all is lost. Then there will be no wonder, no wondering.
Then your eyes will go dead and your heart will stop beating; the passion will disappear. Love will not be possible. Awe, wonder, surprise: these are the ingredients of the charisma, of the mystery of life. So it is good that there are no scriptures; it is good that there are no ritualized religions; it is good that you are not on a super-highway.
