bAULIANA Agnostic Monontheist Belief System of the Bauls in Bangladesh

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FOREWORD

The first time that I came across the name Maqsoodul Haque was in an article written

by him in the weekly Holiday on the subject of racism in South Asia around about 1998

or 1999. As I was fairly new to Bangladesh I did not know of his musical background but

was fairly impressed by his articulate writing style and the force of his argument, whichrequired a lot of courage due to the prevailing political climate at the time, and the

subject he wrote upon was considered particularly controversial and sensitive. It was,

however, after a further two years that we were in regular communication with each

other through the medium of the Internet and emails. We both contributed articles to

various Bangladesh focused websites and soon we became personally acquainted.

Sometime during this period he had also challenged the musical puritanism that

surrounded the compositions of Rabindranath Tagore in a quite audacious manner by

rendering some of his songs with a modern touch and flair. This sent many orthodox

musical experts into a frenzy that led to several months of complaints and letter writing

in The Daily Star against the innovations introduced by Maqsood but his actions opened

up the music scene in Bangladesh which now saw a level of creativity, imagination and

inventiveness not witnessed before.

Unfortunately, while Maqsood has been writing for almost 20 years on various subjects

ranging from culture to politics to music he remains a ‘restricted writer’ in the sense

that the media and press have tended to avoid publishing his work. His no-nonsense

approach has generally not endeared him to certain vested quarters that feel

threatened by his breaking down of intellectual and musical barriers and the episode

involving Tagore made him a favoured target of these groups. This did not, however,

deter Maqsood and he next explored the subject of Baul music in several articles written

for Holiday in a serialization that lasted for five or six weeks but became compulsoryreading for anyone interested in music in an academic context and background. The

articles received rave reviews and the public appreciated the research, experience and

knowledge that went into writing them and he was duly recognized as a pioneer and

thinker in the music scene. This present book is the latest development of those ideas

but now covers new ground and important themes of which I hope to provide a brief

overview with a few of my own personal musings and comments.

While engaging in some private research on the subject of Bauliana primarily for this

foreword I was intrigued to discover that the only in-depth study of the subject has

been by Maqsood. While Baul music is a common and accepted feature of the cultureand history of this region there is very little that has been written on it of any real

substance or value. So the book ‘Bauliana – Worshipping the Great God in Man’ is a

breakthrough at several levels. As the title would suggest it is not a book merely about

music but it is a discussion of philosophy and a guide to living. At the outset there is a

hint of rebuke at the omission of cultural scholars to recognize the significance of Baul

or as Maqsood puts it, “For Bangladesh the year 1991 passed uneventfully in our willful

exclusion of an epochal event of historical significance.” He was, of course, referring to



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the death centenary of Fakir Lalon Shah who was buried in Seuria, Kushtia which

happens to be the district of my forefathers and so was of added interest to me having

previously heard so much about him but receiving very little real wisdom or insight on

the subject.

For Bangladesh the symbolism surrounding the life and death of Lalon Shah stillreverberates today as, “his legacy has been one of diabolical ignorance, a heritage of a

insane struggle to assign him either an Islamic identity by hard-line Islamist fanatics,

which lay directly in confrontation with the dominant city bred (then Kolkata in West

Bengal – Dhaka having evolved in importance much later) middle-class precepts of the ill

defined Hindu Brahminist supremacist ‘secular’ Bengalee culture.” As Maqsood points

out Lalon Shah repudiated affiliation to any organized religion and the concept of

‘Bauliana’ as practiced by him was less a religion but more a quest for the ‘omnipotent

maker’ through introspection. The term Bauliana’ is not meant here to suggest that Baul

music originated with Lalon Shah (which in fact predates him by many centuries) but

that the concept of ‘Bauliana’ is a phenomenon with global resonance opening avenues

to cultural comparisons and is signified by an alternative way of life that has one of its

many exemplars the Rastafarian belief system and the music that grew from it called

reggae whose most famous and accomplished singer and composer was Bob Marley. In

a similar way, Lalon Shah used the vehicle of Baul music to disseminate his views,

philosophy and opinions about life to a receptive audience.

The relevance of the Bauliana quest to the deep religious and cultural divisions of the

contemporary world has been described by Maqsood in chapter 16, “The quest for

Bauliana today … is a revolt against the hackneyed order of medieval thought processes,

permeating and afflicting the sensibilities of Man, in its unflinching brutalization of

fellow Man. It becomes all the more important that we stop and ponder, because allWars today, all conflicts, all our anger to fellow Man, is directed NOT because we

disagree on fundamentals of the Maker, but because we have allowed ourselves to be

conducted on implied Superiority or Inferiority of our respective ‘Gods’. We never hear of

any attempts anywhere in the world about a ‘Consensus on God’ while we hear about

‘clashes among civilizations or religions’ when civilization is nothing more that an

extension of hate, for whatever we may have inherited, we have failed in inheriting a

civilization of ‘good’ as we go looking for ‘Axis of Evils’ – which allows only the devil and

not Man to smile.” The Baul outlook is, however, not pessimistic as it abhors doubt,

which brews from suspicion, and mistrust, which appears coincidentally to be the cause

for all the violence and conflict, witnessed in recent invasions based on highly dubiouspretexts. Maqsood elaborates his own theory in Chapter 19 based on the needs and

requirements of the military industrial complexes (that President Eisenhower warned of

several decades ago) as well as to man’s propensity for chaos that is engendered by his

fear of his fellow man which are amongst the many other things discussed in this wide-

ranging section of the book that surprisingly ends on a cautionary note on the fate of

man.



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Essentially the book is a deeply personal journey undertaken by Maqsood after his many

hard and some might say bitter experiences in life and with his relationship to Bauliana

and the teachings of Fakir Lalon Shah and the other Bauls. The book had developed out

of Maqsood’s close association with the Bauls and is obviously autobiographical in

nature. He had accumulated numerous notes during the periods of teaching and

instruction imparted to him by the bards and he has made good use of them in thebook. Other than a musical album of the same name, recorded with his former band

Feedback, Bauliana can be said to be his scriptural testimony to his personal belief

system that is based on a fusion of Buddhist and Islamic precepts that has similarity to

the Bauls way of life which he has chosen to adopt. The cause for this attitude appears

to be a consequence of his frustration with religious quarrels that now plague our world

and the wars that feed on these sectarian and communal squabbles. In short the

Bauliana lifestyle is a pacifist movement, which is unique to Bangladesh in that it crosses

boundaries and attempts to bring mankind together, and has been claimed to be the

dominant culture of Bangladesh (and this region of South Asia) for at least 2000 years.

The book will provide to the sociologist, cultural historian, anthropologist and the

thinking musician a wealth of information about Baul and the man Maqsoodul Haque.

Barrister M.B.I Munshi

Banani, Dhaka



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INTRODUCTION

I was less than ten years old when I first saw a Baul. This was in 1967 and happened in

one of the many trips I would go off with my father during school holidays. My father, a

dyes and chemical salesman for a Swiss company averaged at least two tour of dutyeach month to nooks and a corner of what was then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). It

was always a delight to accompany him in the World War II vintage company jeep that

he would drive despite fact that it would break down every now and then. And so it was

during one such breakdown, somewhere near Kushtia that an old man startled me with

his very sudden appearance. In his hand was a single string instrument of a kind I had

never seen before, and a small tabla-like drum was slung at his waist. On the tip of a

stick he carried a bundle of clothe. He was lithe, tall, bare footed, wore a white robe and

sported long hair that he tied into a neat bun on top of his head. A flowing white beard

completed his sage like looks.

My father an accomplished car mechanic as well, was busy fixing up the jeep when the

old man arrived and attempted to make small conversations. He was polite to a fault,

and father treated him with a sense of reverence, which surprised me somewhat. Soon

the man on some prodding from father started to sing. His voice was strong considering

his age, but the music combination in retrospect was of a kind that I do not remember

hearing, not even on the radio to which I was hooked to, even at that impressionable

age. Soon the jeep started up, and we were on way to Kushtia. We dropped off the old

man a short distance away.

It was from my father that I learnt firsthand about the Bauls. I must admit that I was far

too young then to understand the deep words of spirituality that he was taking pains toexplain; that were part of the lyrics of the songs we had just finished listening. I was

happy to see him elated and joined him repeating two lines over and over again, which

he explained later was from a song of Fakir Lalon Shah and one I would be destined to

memorize on that auspicious day for life:

Sunnot diley hoi Musholman/ hairey Nari loker ki hoi bidhan

If circumcision be the mark of a Muslim male/ how do I recognize it’s female

Ami Bamun chini poitey pomoan/ ami bauni chini kishey ray

If the sacred thread be the proof of a Brahmin male/ how do I recognize it’s female

Since that very first orientation to Baul music and their agnostic philosophy from my

father, little was I to know that much of my adult life would be spent soliciting the

company, music and philosophy of these great men and women of wisdom who choose

to live their life in rejection of the status quo, and who with great degree of pride

represent the poorest of the poor in Bangladesh. What I found particularly endearing

about them is the patience they exercise in face of insurmountable odds, and in their



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very strong pacifist character, that evidentially is the outcome of their peaceful

coexistence with nature.

In 1989 I was part of a select team headed by my now deceased musician friend the Late

Somnath Chatterjee from HMV/EMI, Kolkata that traveled to Harishpur, Harinakundu in

Jessore and then on to Seuria in Kushtia to record ‘rustic’ Bauls LIVE! and on location.We visited several ‘ankhraz’ (Baul hangouts) in the region and recorded about thirty

men and women, later short listing ten exceptional ones to come to Dhaka where we

would then record them at a professional studio. The total duration of both the live and

studio recordings lasted about fifteen days, and I took pain to befriend a few. I may add

that it is not always easy to make a Baul your friend, or vice versa! The rituals of

acceptance can take a long time, and one may even be rejected if you are found

arrogant, or have a communal bent of mind. This was indeed my first experience to the

rigour of Baul life and music and I expanded on those initials contacts by making short

trips to several Bauls based in Chuadanga, Kushtia, Jessore, Faridpur, Bhanga, Narail,

Gopalgunj and Sylhet among others. Likewise I opened my parental home in Pallabi,

Mirpur to the Bauls, and many would saunter by in their usually brief sojourn to Dhaka,

have a meal with me, sing a few songs, discuss tottyo or scriptures, and move on.

By 1990 I was ready for my first Baul music experimentation with my erstwhile band

Feedback. It was “Diner Alo Nibhey Gelo” (The End of the Light of Day) a catchy Baul

dirge to ‘celebrate’ death, which we went ahead and set to a funk beat, and a raving

Bass line. A show in the Government owned Bangladesh Television (BTV) with the tune

in 1991 assured the band a berth in the national folklore heritage and there was to be

no looking back. Baul music had by then on its own merit entered urban Bengalee

households. In 1995 Feed Back was commissioned on a very short notice by BTV to

produce a fusion version of the Baul song ‘Deho Ghori’ (The Body Clock) for an Eidspecial program. The legendary Baul Abdur Rahman Boyati joined us in the production

and the music video followed by a single song album went on to create history.

Feedback by then was ready to take the next big step – to be the first band in

Bangladesh to produce a complete album of Baul music. Titled Bauliana, the

groundbreaking album was released in 1996 and was to be my last work with the band. I

quit Feedback for personal reasons in early 1997. However my close relationship with

the Baul’s and their music that started in 1989, continues till date and I remain

committed and have since recorded several tunes with my new band dHAKA, the most

recent being the 2006 album Ma’arefoter Potaka (The Standards of Extelligence).

There is fundamentally more to Baul spirituality and scripture than merely the music

and lyrics that one comes by, and conceivably nobody can ‘delve deep’ into the music

form without having some basic understanding and concepts about its tottyo. This book

is an attempt to understand and explain the intricacies of the Baul scriptures. The

esoteric couplets, sentences and arguments that usually have moral or historical over

tone, the pointed reminders, the signature lines, and the over all thrust of arguments

within a very short periphery of time, the alankar (embellishments), all mesh in and



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combine to create a completed aura of ethereal munificence. Baul music with

exceptions follows different traditions and Guru’s in every district of Bangladesh, and

sometimes each has its own unique Guru Shishya parampara (student/teachers

discourses), leading on to birth of newer, progressive and more challenging schools of

thoughts. While Fakir Lalon Shah is the most celebrated of sages of Bangladesh, the

schools of Baul thought encapsulates perhaps several hundred more sages and men of great wisdom, whose writings and philosophies continue to inspire and whose graves

more often than not, take on the shape of shrines, usually devoid of any religious or

sectarian symbolism. Being an oral tradition Baul music ironically is also one of our near

extinct heritages as most of the works have either disappeared or have been claimed by

unscrupulous people over time. Studies on authorship of many Baul songs (including

those of Lalon) and their relevance to original scores and or manuscripts remains a very

complicated process and is mired by many unfortunate controversies. To top it off, it is

believed that while there were over 300 different types of Baul melodies or tunes; today

we are left with scarcely 35. While researching the Bauliana album, I could identify only

20 authentic tunes.

The essays ‘Bauliana: Worshipping the Great God in Man’ in 2003 were written through

a feeling of guilt and remorse. While I did receive praise for my work for the musical

album of 1996, troubling me intently was a feeling of not been able to share the many

words of wisdom that were imparted to me by the Baul’s over the years to a wider

audience, teachings I was sure would benefit a lot of later day enthusiasts. I had made

scores of notes at the time, as also consigned most of the teachings to memory but

there was always a deep apprehension, that unless my writings were passed on hand to

hand; all the hard work that went into it, will fail my original intention i.e. opening

newer dimensions into reading on Baul music, lyrics, philosophy and way of life.

My decision at writing couldn’t have come at a better time. Remarkably by early 2001,

Baul music caught up in a big way in Bangladesh and sent ripples down the music scene.

New bands like Bangla, Ajob, Meghdol, Shironamhin, Taan etc created music that would

go on to convincingly reaffirm Baul music as the most dominant of a new fusion music

genre in the country. Indeed the years 2000 to the present would be marked in our

musical history as a time of serious heritage and country musical revival – almost a

revolution of sort – with commitments made not only to music, but also in the lifestyle

and fashion statements of the day. This book could well have been written in Bengalee,

but I chose to write it in English, for in my research I found very few materials that

would satiate my personal thirst for ‘Baul knowledge’. The Internet is littered withmisinformation and sometimes travesties with some websites in particularly bad taste.

The recent controversies on the Baul ‘way of life’ that have cropped up unnecessarily is

because of the easy availability of unreliable materials suited best to solicit funds or

grants from Western donors to document Baul music and or produce movies, NOT to

advance the cause of our glorious ancestors – our Baul forefathers. While there is a

genuine interest about the Bauls in the West, I believe the best way to serve the

purpose of our glorious heritage is to explain Bauliana through the relevance and



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historical importance it has in our culture, in our way of life that has stridently risen

above the pettiness of communal strife, religious disharmony and xenophobia.

I am deeply indebted to the Late Mr.Enayetullah Khan Editor of HOLIDAY and Mr.Nurul

Kabir, the Editor of New Age for encouraging me to write my thoughts on the Bauls and

later serializing an abridged version of this book for eight weeks; to my friend and‘comrade-in-thoughts’ Barrister M.B.I Munshi for taking time to go through the

manuscript and writing the foreword to this book; to Shams Monowwar of InkMark for

publishing this book, my first in the English language; my wife the Late Nazreen Haque

Niboo for tolerating my life with the Baul’s and the exasperating periods of

unannounced disappearance; Tareque and Catherine Masud for introducing me to the

Late Sontosh Baul of Bhanga Faridpur; to Late Hiroo Shah the oldest Baul in Lalon’s

Shrine in Seuria, Kushtia, Baul Nadim Shah of Kushtia, Baul Latif Shah and Bimol Biswas

of Chuadanga, Baul Hashem Chisti of Dinajpur, the septuagenarian Baul Shah Abdul

Karim, his son Jalal Shah and Baul Roohi Thakur of Dhirai, Sunamgunj, Himangshu

Biswas, Tanbhir Tahlil Shipul and Harold Rasheed from Sylhet, Buno, Anusheh, Lubeek,

Nitu, Rajoo and Amit here in Dhaka for rocking Bangladesh with Baul fusion, and to my

son Dio Haque for his love and respect for the Bauls and what they stand for.

Maqsoodul Haque

Niketon, Dhaka,

23rd May 2007

[email protected]

http://bauliana.blogspot.com

http://bauliana.blogspot.com/

http://bauliana.blogspot.com/



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1. FAKIR LALON SHAH

For Bangladesh the year 1991 passed uneventfully in our willful exclusion of an epochal

event of historical significance. It was the death centenary of the agnostic sage Fakir

Lalon Shah, whose date of birth while a mystery, it is said that at the time of his

‘departure from planet earth’ - he was well over 100 years of age. In as much as proofsof physical dates, place of birth or his ‘religion’ is concerned, Lalon Shah remains

enigmatic and many mysteries surrounded him them, as much as they do now.

In Seuria, Kushtia, Bangladesh where Lalon Shah’s body was interned without any

religious ceremony, his legacy has been one of diabolical ignorance, a heritage of an

insane struggle to assign him either an Islamic identity by hard-line Islamist fanatics,

which lay directly in confrontation with the dominant city bred (then Kolkata in West

Bengal – Dhaka having evolved in importance much later) middle-class precepts of the ill

defined Hindu Brahminist supremacist ‘secular’ Bengalee culture; matters even till this

today remains complicated in the understanding of the great man and his vision.

Compounding more into the confusion are recent forays by local NGO’s propelled by

donors money to research the great sage, and the Baul way of life.

There were no fewer attempts to make a Hindu or Muslim out of Lalon as he lived and

the century since he died. The sage during his lifetime steadfastly repudiated any

attempts to be branded a ‘follower’ of an organized religion. Thus till this day for his

followers unwilling to infer religiosity on Lalon Shah, he is simply ‘Shai-ji’ and Bauliana is

no religion but a quest, in small insignificant ways, perhaps even a permissible way of

life. Lalon never believed in looking UP for inspiration, but inspired others to look within.

Where he was starkly different is he did not imply that looking within, meant worship or

the deification of one man alone – but MAN, any man - the creation of the omnipotentMaker.

The ingrained communal hatred espoused by extremists of both end of the spectrum,

stirred by no end of senseless debates as to whose “God” is the better or more

powerful, made a small yet significant part of the thinking population to move away

from the dichotomy of it all, and examine, identify and try to grasp the aspirations of

our ancient Baul heritage. The author of this series of essay is one among many. There

were valid reasons for these individual quests. The philosophy, poems or reading into

the life of Fakir Lalon Shah, a world class sage is absent in any Bangladesh educational

curriculum, while more banal, under-average personalities have been ‘respectably’accommodated.

In the absence of detailed accounts, verifiable or reliably published documentation

about him or of the times he lived in, and his entirely private, controversial and

secretive quest for a union with the Maker of the Universe, that went public with its

wide acceptance, it is not surprising that every aspect of his life has been up for scrutiny,

and the resultant curiosity have led to myths, half-truths and unfortunate fabrications



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about the message that he wished to convey, is what we are faced with today. Ironically

more than his message and its interpretation, the persona of Fakir Lalon Shah have

become of sole importance in serious study of Bauliana to many.

However even before we start discussing the Baul’s, a word of caution here: contrary to

popular misconceptions, synonymity with Lalon Shah, and inference to him being a Baul‘guru’ borders on middle class fascination for tokenistically tagging philosophical quests

of the marginalized, to a particular human ‘avatar’ over a period in time. The truth is

Baul’s existed hundreds, maybe thousands of years before Lalon Shah not only in

Bengal, indeed similar lifestyle and expressions can be identified in other parts of the

world. It is a rarely ‘advertised’ global concept of the alternative, and thus appropriate

that we have used the term “Bauliana” in context of these essays.

Music was the vehicle of Lalons’ message, and no matter how esoteric the contents

were, it never failed to find a ready audience as the natives of Bengal had a natural

inclination and talent for the art form. Together, Fakir Lalon Shah was exceptional in

that he personified what the Baul’s in the good old days ascribed as a ‘belief system’ and

this saw huge numbers flock in admiration of the great man. Lalon also gave a voice to

the Baul’s struggle in his poems set to music of the poorest of the poor, something that

was sadly lacking at the crossroad of our socio-political-spiritual struggle that started

hundreds of years ago. For Baul’s, Fakir Lalon Shah (as is the popular misconception

among urban enthusiasts) was never a ‘guru’, for they never needed one for they were

not a ‘community’ or clan, nor were they a mutual admiration society. To suggest any of

the above makes us question: Why then do Baul’s reject any ‘home’ greater than the

body that houses our unanchored and restless souls?

Rejection of the ‘inevitable self’ then, as much as it is today, as an extension to the‘inquiry of the self’ was never so obvious. Within the prevailing dogma it immediately

elevated anybody with a sense of mission and purpose, to a pedestal for worship. Quite

on the contrary Lalon Shah worshipped man in manners that did not subscribe to the

prevalent ‘hub and spoke’ notion i.e. Man on Earth and his ‘almost humanoid’

resembling Maker, trillions of kilometers up away in some celestial Heaven – where HE

apparently resides!

Removed from society, and in grief and tragedies Lalon Shah evolved: his depth came

not from wallowing on the periphery of mainstream beliefs, indeed his protracted

period of isolation forced upon by the dominant Muslim and Hindu clergy of the day,were harbingers for his immense understanding into the intricacies of life. Passing on his

Message to counter social and religious prejudices in the simplest of couplets for the

average person to understand was his mission. Life’s complex equations explained in the

simplest of term were his forte. It is therefore not unusual that the word ‘Fakir’

precedes his name, a title and a derivative from the Arabic word Fiqh meaning someone

who has acquired deep insight and knowledge through practice, patience, inquiry and

sacrifice.



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2. THE BAULS OF BENGAL

The attempts to render Baul’s to a farce has been unending, specially since the status

quo is one that has no temerity to understand or even delve deep into the minds and

works of Bengal’s folk philosophers who we have deliberately termed a 'subordinateculture' to overcome and satiate our inadequacies, our lack of basic knowledge, our

ingratiating and perverse sin in claiming to be ‘Masters’ of our own destiny.

To understand the Baul therefore, is to understand the state of nothingness associated

with his rejection, by which it is not to be construed, as a willing suspension of disbelief,

nor a reckless abandonment of responsibility or that of becoming inordinately fatalistic.

It is a living quest to go back to the dynamics of where it all began: to our infancy as

much as the first moments of creation. It is a quest we cannot undertake without some

prodding assistance, albeit to our well charted ‘roots’, if we have one? Clearly, life is a

blessed moment of procreation and an extension of the continuous cycle of Mother

Nature which rolls on over, when we know all too well, it is also a process that simply

cannot be rolled back.

It is in context of looking for meanings to living, versus that of death which is as an

instant, if not completely the end of reasoning, and the probabilities of a life devoid of

answers to the future and where it ultimately places us, is the harrowing spectre Man is

condemned to life in his living. This premise of not knowing where ‘everything’ if ever

ends is one that significantly dilates the implication and importance of NOW.

Birth is neither conditional nor a deviation, but an extension of Mother Nature’s

continuation. Like every child born, the nucleus entity ‘family’ bears charge for itsgrowth, nurturing and makes imminent strides into life and his/her ultimate acceptance

in society, which is indeed the creation of man. That is only part of the man made

equation half understood, and one we have no easier option but to live with, there are

yet many consequent travails in this journey called ‘life’, which cannot easily be guided

by any rationale at all, nor explained, with the most hazardous aspect: its

unpredictability.

The Baul philosophy of agnostic monotheism is therefore universal in its application and

not something that evolved in whimsical isolation. While we explore, understand and

appreciate the lifestyle of great minds who have too often moved away from groundednorms of life and living, to one of selflessly rejecting the status quo with great peril to

themselves like Fakir Lalon Shah, we are reminded of someone who gave up on the

richest of riches, an adoring society, palatial homes and a loving family, who turned

recluse, a hermit, not because he was ostracized – but by choice. He was Gautama

Buddha and his quest was for ‘Nirvana’.



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3. THE MYTH: ‘AFFECTED BY THE WIND’

Nature as we know it is exacting and when, how, and why we go against the natural

process and adopt deviant ways of life that we consider inherently ‘natural’ is mind-

boggling. Consider for example the breathing of an infant.

Nature has designed every human to be diaphragmatic breathers: observe any newborn

sleeping face up, steady rise and fall of the stomach – (and not the chest) punctuates its

breathing. Yet in less than the time it takes for an infant to sit up and warble a few

words, the entire breathing process is taken over by extreme pressure to the lungs?

Yoga taught us proper breathing thousands of years ago, but it is only recently that the

medical profession has seen its merit in treating cardiac and asthmatic patients and

relaxation exercises for mental well being.

This deliberation on breathing is essential in our real understanding after translation of

the word Baul, for ‘affected by the wind’ it may mean from its Sanskrit (some say

Persian) variant Batul, the underlying tragedy is the term has often been most rudely

conjured as ‘going mad’. The lampoon-isation as if, it were the lifestyle of a bunch of

lunatics with some insinuations even implying this, as the aftereffect of all the ‘wind’

consumed in chillums (bongs) full of ganja or marijuana, with the word Batil or ‘wasted’

only a continuation of Batul. It is only but fair to say that cannabis smoking was never a

part of the Baul creed (although many smoke it), with Lalon Shah cautioning (if not

condoning) his followers of its dangerous after effects.

What then is the ‘wind’ that the Baul’s believe in? One answer could well be ‘stop

breathing and find out’! In the trinity of earth, wind and fire that underlines

monotheism today, it is entirely a unique attribute of the Baul how he interprets Adam,the first ‘Man’ for our understanding. Apparently the Maker chose to breathe wind to

cool down the fireball he ejected from the Sun (Big Bang theory?) and send hurtling

down to the planet we have now inherited. Science confirms that rainfall and

precipitations continued for millions of leading to formation of what we call the planet

Earth. Yet the advent of first Man whom many will not reject in that it amounts to

rejection of ones owns existence is flawed, temporal and at the least unconvincing on

one basic premise: we have no clue if the ‘being’ was actually a humanoid?

Ilm-e-Tussawuf (commonly Sufism) connotes Adam as a fusion of two Persian words –

Aag (as in fire) and Dum (as in breathing). ‘Thinking life’ on the planet by somecalculation of the Maker had to be of the ‘breathing’ variety, to be of some

consequence, to appreciate existing and existence and this placed Man in a category far

removed from other ‘creatures’.

The Baul believes the Maker breathed life into all of us, and we are only but a

continuation of the force of that very first breath, the very first wind, and scientifically

‘first life’ was possibly an air-borne virus, trapped in the fiery dust debris that fell, cooled



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off and evolved underwater and went on to produce bacteria’s, cells, till it moved over

land, and what have we. Essentially we have no proof other than our instincts to

confirm any of the above speculations – scientific or otherwise.

Be that, life for the Baul is an extension of the ‘first wind’ and what we call SOUL that

charges our dynamo and keeps that infinitely complex vehicle called the BODY going.The body is synchronized not to hours, minutes or seconds that we calculate, but the

numbers of time we breathe in and breathe out and ironically how many times we may

do that in a lifetime is beyond scientific reasoning are ‘serious’ matters the Baul wishes

to reason with. Therefore every Man no matter his faith or ‘religion’ receives a Baul

farewell or so to speak, when obituaries read ‘he breathed his last’ or poignantly ‘he

passed away’.

Science’s quest is unending for it is a study of nature and what we say today in

agreement may well be doomed obsolete in the days ahead simply because nature

deemed it fit, with newer interpretations, led on by Man’s inquisitive discovery. One

therefore ought to stop and wonder if millennium adventures of looking for LIFE in Mars

are conditional on finding water, or the right WIND. ‘Life’ is a ‘wind’ and let us not blame

the Baul for pointing this out. If they have been ‘affected by the wind’ it is merely

because they have pointedly reminded us to our insane and mad rush to live life in

subterfuge - in hypocrisy. If this truth overwhelms any of us, let us pause and take a

deep breath!

4. SOUL: COMPLICATED SIMPLICITY VERSUS SIMPLICITY COMPLICATED

For the Baul a human body is a vessel: a potent vehicle for the omnipotent Soul. The

Soul again is energy, in description no different from what science offers i.e. it canneither be created nor destroyed. The Maker apparently fashioned the Soul after many

a trial and error, for he wanted to create a ‘superior life’ form that could replicate his

goodness and creativity on the one hand, and bestow powers of Mercy and

Benevolence on the other, a mission not ‘foretold’ in other life forms ahead of Man. It

had thus to be Man to sing the Glory of the unseen Maker, and the Baul among others

was born.

The Baul’s attest the process of creating the ‘ultimate creation’, saw the Maker inflicting

rigors of ‘fire and black smoke’ on the Soul for ‘forty thousand years’. This did not result

in the desired allegiance or gratefulness of the Soul to its Maker. Another spell of ‘tenthousand years’ followed, the difference this time around: the Soul were kept hungry,

and the denial of food apparently resulted in its unequivocal surrender to the Maker,

and the recognition of His infallibility.

Metaphorically juxtaposed, ‘thousands of years’ that it took for the ‘Soul’ to be roasted

in fire and smoke could well be ‘billions’ of man years, that science approximates is the

time the Earth underwent to cool down, and it is quite likely that fires smothered by rain



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and mists created ‘black smoke’. Long before the ‘Gregorian’ calendar or numerology

came to the earliest man, ‘thousands’ could well have been infinity, much as we stretch

out calculative imagination to nanometers today.

The Baul yearns to seek rationale in abysmally simple arguments by referring to nature,

about nature, through his intense probe. Man in his ignorance has made the entiregamut of first life and existence an unnecessarily complicated exercise. Because we do

not readily refer to answers available in nature to our questions, our complications stem

from a singular obsession of equating human nature or 'Man's nature' as a separate

entity outside of the natural process. Our alienation from nature, our Maker and the

'self' begins at this precise point.

More often than not, we end up creating ‘superhuman’ among men, fired with an ego

higher than the seven skies, and it is only when we come crashing down that our frailties

and limitations commensurate in such mindless quests of the ‘Self’, which we have

horribly mixed-up as being that of our Soul, results in portent attempts to belittle the

Maker, to deny his existence.

The denial of the Maker comes with the denial of the ‘self’’, almost like looking at a

Mirror, and trying to figure out our deflected reflection, a necessary aberration that we

consider ‘real’. We ‘live’ because we seem to have proof of the same, yet we have

decided to take ‘life’ as nothing beyond what our physical eye manifest, in what our

senses determine. We nonetheless superstitiously invoke ‘life’ into invisible beings that

our hallucinations conjure, things that go ‘bump in the night’. Our proof of our being is

only in our ability at seeing, yet there are thing unseen that our eyes and general

sensory organs seem unable to register. Things which appear under the gaze of

powerful microscopes in research laboratories, things like ‘mysterious particles’, whichremain the exclusive domain of specialists and scientists, but what about us – is a

question that is deliberately removed from the ‘self’ selflessly. Do we by mistake if ever,

use the faculty of our ‘third eye’, the eye of our nascent consciousness to reach

conclusive judgement, without being ridiculed as superstitious?

Where does the WE in all of us fit in, when the ‘I’ as such, is no more? What is the

motivation that drives us around a bend in an alley, when we more often do not know

where it leads? What made desert or sea voyagers in our glorious past, seek and find

fortunes in the unknown, at distances unthinkable? Is it instincts that leads us on, or is it

what we call rationales that decide events in our lives when so-called ‘empiricalevidence’ meanders and fall flat? If so, what then is ‘irrationality’ other than

conditionally suicidal attempts to condemn our yearnings for the Truth, by abusing what

is certainly alien in Man’s nature, his PRIDE, which again is only an extension of our

deeply held prejudices?



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The Baul believes that it is only in ignorance we have decided to step beyond what we

know, to go as far as to pilfer and adorn ourselves the apparel of PRIDE, unbeknownst

that it is the prerogative of the Maker, not Man.

5. HAWADOM: THE GUST AND MOTHER OF ALL WINDS

Since the Baul’s believed Adam evolved when the Maker breathed into fire, Eve in the

folklore and languages of South Asia, (Arabic, Persian, Hindi, Urdu or even Bengalee) is

‘Hawa’ or the WIND, the difference if at all is comprehensible when we translate the

term into English as a ‘gust of wind’! It is also worthwhile mentioning that Eve the

mother of all mankind is referred to as ‘Ma Hawa’ or the ‘Mother of Winds’ in common

cultural parlance, paradigm and usage. While the Baul interprets Adam as product of the

original ‘breath of life’ of the Maker, apparently a secondary and very long ‘gust of

wind’– ‘Hawa’ or Eve, possibly caused the planet to cool, condense, precipitate and

make ‘bearable’ conditions for an environment where life as we know it today, could

emerge, and for procreation to start in earnestness.

It is thus no mystery that wind is the infinite catalyst for all that is considered ‘forceful’

to initiate change, a gift of nature that bestows upon us, the blessed ideas of comfort,

peace and Mercy. Procreative conditions, they are bounties for Man, for the Wind carry

clouds laden with water, pollinate flowers and so on, as much as it is FREE, because

nature is inherently free with no ‘religion’ claiming to be its sole proprietor? Wind has

ways to reciprocate Man’s ingratitude by its action as a force of occasional destruction,

but thankfully we call these ‘storms’!

In the song ‘Hawadom’ (Seeking him in Wind and Breathe) composed by Fakir Lalon

Shah, the intricacies of creation, and the reference to fire as precursor to life isdiscussed semantically. For the uninitiated to Bauliana, this song has sometimes been

interpreted as seeking union with the Maker in the dom or puff of the marijuana herb,

with hawa meaning the smoke that enter and exits the chillum (bong) through Man.

While it is not our intention to dispute the many schools of thoughts in the Baul

pantheon, this analysis especially of the last two couplets followed by the signature line

of Lalon Shah seeks to go beyond the mundane. It is our belief that this is an inquiry

about Adam and Eve, with the pro-feminist Baul deliberately adding the name of Eve

before that of Adam in reverence. Since it is never in the interest of the Baul to preach,

we remind readers that this analysis is subjective and open to scrutiny and NOT to beconstrued as the ultimate truth, or the ultimate analysis.

Hawadomay dekho taray, tar ashol baina

Seek him in the wind and breathe, in advance, in full measures

kay banolo emon rong moholkhana

Who is it that created this colorful abode?



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The couplet sets the tone for the Baul quest of the Soul, devoid of physical attributes

that we ‘humanoids’ have inherited and ‘naturally’ latch on to, and further the debate

as to WHO created us in all our color, sound and fury. The search realistically is within

than without.

Man is ‘debatably’ superior to all other species on Earth because he has the capacity to

reason, analyze and these attributes leads him on to disseminate his thoughts through

his intellect and speech. The appreciation of the spirit of the living being in compassion

as a human attribute in its totality is underscored by use of the word ‘baina’ or an

‘advance’ as in commerce, more aptly an inference to universal conscience devoid of

any ‘strings attached’ to inconsequential earthly entities.

Commerce plays a significant part in the Baul and his interpretation of life, for it reminds

him that it is a debilitating and destabilizing force in the sustenance of the Soul, as it

invokes the acceptance of the foremost of human vice, Materialism. The condition by

which the Maker subjected the Soul to ‘thousands’ of years of hunger, is only to

reinforce the ideal that Man ought to share a collective bounty, and in as much as the

Wind and Sun is a free natural commodity, so is Food.

Contrary to popular misconceptions the Baul is no beggar. He is a roving minstrel for

rekindling, renewing, reviving and reminding a world gone astray that love and

compassion may have eluded Man, it has NOT the Maker. The beauty of the Baul’s

yearning and music are in questions they raise, and the answers we readily do not have,

nor do they themselves offer. To face up or question the Baul doctrine is to be humbled

into silence. It is a willful acceptance of fate accomplii, without being fatalistic.

Tampering with the food chain is a Sin like no other in Baul belief. The Baul agonizes that

Man has deemed it fit to doom food as a tool for oppression and exploitation, for gain.

Nature providentially guarantees food to every living organism on earth from the tiny

ant, to the birds in the sky, to the mighty elephant, to the whale in the ocean – as much

as it does to Man. Seeking answers about our food source determines existence through

‘wind and breathe’ and the analogy is to touch our Soul through that of Adam and Eve,

as in the ‘ashol’ or in full, all paid up measures, in total, unconditional supplication. No

jokes here about a half-empty or a half-full glass!

The rationale is as simple as saying ‘pay up or lose’; the difference being: Man is being

asked to pay an ‘advance’, a ‘baina’ for his Soul, since he has made it a habit of giving

importance to things that have price tags or ‘value additions’ and consider only those

‘worthwhile’. Since intangible values are rarely recognized: ‘fair enough’ says the Baul -

wisdom is not FREE either.



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Adam and Eve are not exclusive to creation and akin to the sustenance of life,

complimentary and conditional. Likewise in the human species while the Male is

condemned to a life in Labour, the Female is condemned to Labour in ‘bearing’ life, and

as civilizations move ahead and more women set out to labour and toil as much as the

Male, Adam’s may relate to all pains real or imagined of the Eve, he is ‘blessed’ NOT to

endure or feel the pain or the process of birth.

6. JOI GURU: FOOD, ‘BEGGING AND THE CURSE OF MATERIALISM

A parallel to the Baul belief is found in Buddhism, in the monk or the Bhikkhu, whose

penance is exemplified in his head bowed in humility, and in his grim routine of

‘begging’ for his meals. This again only at times he is not fasting – for in his fasting he

epitomizes his contribution to the food chain, ensuring that somewhere down the line

another Man does not go hungry.

Since every Man by Providence is guaranteed food for his survival no matter how

meager, and because the Maker of the Universe will not tolerate individual poverty as

the food supply has been evenly balanced out, the Baul in return for a ‘favor’ of a meal,

is thus, NOT expected to pray for ‘individuals’ that have fed him. His prayer in the chant

‘Joi Guru’ (Salutes AND Supplication to the Great God in You) is for all humanity, a

celebration that life and living prevails. The difference in other monotheistic faith and

agnostic monotheism of the Baul is in the act of giving willingly, and in the purpose of

sharing. For instance those that have ‘fed’ the Baul, there are no promises of a ‘blessed

life’ in the living, or ‘Heaven’ in the afterlife, but simply an acceptance that the cycle of

accommodation within the natural process, a continuation of justice that the Maker had

deemed fit – as much as nature demands; has been completed.

There is no denying that there is an underlying and atypical attribute of ‘commerce’

associated, as well as a perverse attempts by many to ‘bribe God’ to beg ‘Mercy’ for

ones tainted Soul, by offering a meal to the Bhikkhu, the beggar or the Baul? The truth

is, the critically tilted cycle of food balance is partially set right every time an offering of

food is made to the hungry; it is however never a permanent solution. The Baul seeks

his meal, goes hungry, feels the pangs of nothingness and sometimes sleeps with stones

tied to his stomach, just like animals and birds are forced to eat stones when they have

nothing else to feed themselves. His ‘gratefulness’ if at all, is only to the Maker who

created food in the first place which Man has willfully doctored it to a state of

unavailability.

In offering or the acceptance of food is proof that kindness and Mercy together with the

Maker survives and all praise is to him. Conversely, Man offers food to fellow Man,

without the basic understanding that he or she is repaying long overdue ‘dues’ as it

originally came FREE from the Maker. In feeding a Bhikkhu or a Baul therefore, Man

does no overt individual favor; all he does is ‘repay’ the Maker, and nature, what is



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rightfully the property of Man. He actually does himself a ‘favor’, for anything in the

world may be alms – not food.

7. ‘TRUE WORK’ ENERGY AND ‘BURNING WITHOUT FUEL’

For one, the Baul does not belong to an institutionalized clergy, nor has any need for ahome when the world as such is his home, with the sky his roof devoid of intrusive

pillars or columns, and his Soul the Monastery where his Maker the Guru resides and

sustains him. The Baul seeks the cleansing of the Soul of man, pointing out that we have

permitted injustice to creep in and taint our psyche, our Soul, to the extent of accepting

it as a natural attribute, and he poignantly explains all of it in few words of deep

philosophies, in matter of fact terms in his songs – in singing the glory of Man and his

Maker.

The Baul rules for Nature rules and the Maker rules. A continuation like no other that

affects the destiny of Man, the inappropriate ‘being’.

Bini telay jalai baati / Dekhtay jemon mukto moti

Burning a lamp without oil, it looks like a pearl

Jolonmoi tar choturbidhi / Modhyae taa na*

Burning in circular abandon, yet not in the center

*The word ‘thana’ is also sometimes used in some rendition of this song, meaning a

caged ‘lock-up’. The Baul query as to the placement of the Soul in the Makers scheme of

things is addressed in the above couplet.

No fire is as such possible without a fuel source to burn. In other words, a fire will burnas long as there is fuel: wood, coal, petroleum, gas - whatever. ‘Millennium Man’ will kill

his fellow Man, reduce him to a pauper, and enslave him, if ever the source of his

expendable energy is threatened. 'Bestialities' seeks to remind us that anything and

everything might have changed in 'modern' man, not his antiquated and barbarian

pursuit of war, for one singular obsession, ENERGY and his fear of a life without it. All of

this, despite the fact that Mother Earth has more 'untapped' energy resources in her

womb, than we have discovered or consume every single second. Herein lies the

perplexing gamut in the energy we extract for our use, and expend for our survival, in

contrast to the 'unseen' energy source in the human Soul. Whatever science may have

discovered, it has failed thus far to locate the epicenter of this huge reservoir, or breakdown the chemical composition of the 'force' in all of us, that keeps us going for our

times on Mother Earth - in our Soul the keeper of our consciousness, if we care to

recognize that we have one.

Understanding that Man is incapable of launching an 'exploratory mission' into the

depth of his Soul, the Baul predicted the species impending doom in our disrespect for

energy readily available, and that happened hundreds perhaps thousands of years ago.



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The 'fire' in all of us he explained is a fire that we are left with no choice, but admit as

un-superstitiously as possible, is one that defies man's extremely limited imagination to

fathom. An un-tradable commodity ENERGY therefore is the property of no country, no

nation, no color, creed or religion, but that of all Humanity - and just like, air, water and

food is deemed FREE. We are after all, only a part of what the Baul refers as 'lamps

without oil' that started the first fire. In the quest for truth the Baul says “there is nosuch thing as true word, or a true path or even the TRUTH. There is only one TRUTH and

that is TRUE work.”

What then is TRUE work?

The Maker and his creation where Man is only but one of trillions (?) of life forms is best

served in work which is TRUE. Ostensibly True work is to seek The Maker as in one,

because nature is as one, because the Earth is as one, because each one of us, are ONE -

from the ONE and same energy source. We have decided to break our oneness in our

contradictions based on individual schools of existence that leaves us deviated,

confused, and splintered even further, resulting in our consistent and immoral

fragmentation. Why? Because we allow our 'beliefs' to be based on 'proof' and 'truth' –

and what we do not see is what we do not believe: devoid from our thinking is many

'truths' over periods of time, no longer remain the truth, and newer truth’s are

inevitably 'discovered'! Fair enough - but let us not delude ourselves that in all the

contradictions we have, it is in the contradiction between existence and non-existence

lie the ultimate PROOF of all EXISTENCE. Would we really argue about things that does

not exist - is the only Baul question meant to humiliate us, to see us through, in our

idiosyncrasies.

Far from the TRUTH we all seek to rush into with a forlorn sense of obliquity, assessingthe worth of truth comes in labour that has primordial overtones of being of service,

assistance and its usefulness to Man, without conditions of deceit attached. In

deception to fellow man, we only deceive ourselves and nature. While we expect truth

to be 'as pristine and predictable' as the waking morning, we forget that, that for us is

Nature in its full bloom of TRUTH and one we can only behold, while we remain in our

'trial and error' retinue in the denial of nature. In as much as we try to make the best

out of the Makers bounties, nature is intrinsically ever forgiving to the mistakes we

make.

Let us have no reasons to doubt that for the Baul, TRUE work is not to be construed as'error free' work for that is impossible. He recognizes half in jest, two types in the

human species that do not make errors. The first is those that do not WORK, and the

other is one whose WORK it is to detect errors! More often it is people of the later

category that make the most unnecessary noise.



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8. THE LIGHT OF OUR ‘LIFE’

Each of us produces 'light' that we understand entirely personally. A Light we know that

can neither be ignited nor whiffed away, yet whenever we procrastinate with a deep

sense of humility, we discover that its is a humbling and inescapable circularity of the

ways things have been planned for all of us, a plan we have neither the ability topreview, pre-empt, preclude, predict, edit or worse even delete.

We however know for certainty that the most important moment for all of us is NOW.

What then is the composition of the Soul? On Energy, if one takes a close look at a pear-

like flame in a candle or an open lamp, the epicenter i.e., from where the fire emanates

is a pale blue yonder. The Baul says it is here, in the center of it all, within the fire,

where there is 'no fire' to the naked eyes, is where the 'Soul' of the fire exists. He

relates this to Man in that the Soul is energy within each man which burns and creates

the fire that keep him going, is also the energy that has to be nurtured to reach

salvation, to dissolve with the ways of the Maker, to attain Nirvana, which again, is not

‘attaining’ anything as such – but ‘shedding’ residues of complex ‘fossil fuels’ which over

the years have kept our ‘cravings’ rather than our souls alive, akin to occasional

cleansing of a car carburetor!

The ‘Breathe of God’ that caused a portion of the Sun to split and move beyond its axis,

solidify and then form a mass we call the EARTH, where 'life' first evolved, has

everything fashioned for one paramount eventuality, extermination. Since all we know

is fire burns with Energy, what we do not know or cannot accurately predict, is when

exactly does the 'gas tank' in all of us runs dry? Complicating all that we wish to predict,

we have no 'fuel tank meter' either - do we?

In his thinking realm Man can theoretically 'Move Mountains' or at least has invented

devices like nuclear bombs to make the Himalayas disappear at colossal peril to his

species. He has traveled to Moon, Mars is next on his 'invisible road map' - but never

ever do we hear about any undertaking to explore the SUN or 'land' on it. The Baul on

the other hand reminds us that we need not go 'exploring' anywhere beyond our own

bodies to appreciate that Energy in Man remains untapped, unexplored, undiscovered'

and 'un-landed'.

Let us hope that the next time we switch on an electrical bulb, or sport a mean pair of shades to protect the Sun's ultra violet ray off our eyes, that we do not get too

'philosophical'!



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9. THE WEIGHT OF THE SOUL – IN DISBELIEVING THE SEEING?

Til poriman jagay shey jay / Choddho roop tahari madjhay

Size no bigger then a grain, its disguised face at the epicenter

Kaanai shunay andhai dekhay / Nyangrar nachna

The deaf hear and the blind see the dance of the lame

As explained in the previous couplet, we do know what pearls mean to all of us: a semi

precious natural adornment. For the Baul in his quest is for 'sizes' of various things and

he does not use this metaphorically for any reason of ‘value’, but to relate grain for

grain the sand that caused its formation. It is not the sheer beauty or the 'worth' of the

pearl that awes the Baul, but its weight. He compares this to the size of the Soul and

concludes it is no bigger than the size of a 'til', a grain of pulse - perhaps smaller than

this [.] full stop.

Being less that the lowest scale of measure known to Man, the Baul implies the weight

and size of the Soul is quite the reverse of 'infinity' as we understand it, and till such

time we have 'conclusive', verifiable, scientific proof to this basic question, as opposed

to the various organs in our body, it only makes sense that we let the wisdom of the

Baul prevail. The 'disguised face (is) at the epicenter' is an apt reminder, that even if

Man is able to reach at the center of his own Energy reservoir, it might well be a limited

'discovery'.

He points us that perfect man with all his five sensory organs intact and a 'sixth'

unexplainable and intangible 'sixth sense' ought to study and figure out how the deaf

‘hear’ without their ears, the blind ‘see’ without their eyes and importantly the lame can

dance, and yet all three disadvantaged of human species can communicate, even as weseek their social ostracization, blaming the Maker for a 'defect' in their births.

Paradoxically it also seeks to lead us on to what most would not accept; the existing and

highly advanced sixth sense of the disadvantaged, which try as hard, may never be able

to acquire.

Man sins again, a SIN most repulsive and revolting for the Baul, for he wishes to know,

how many among us can actively seek 'friendship' of a deaf, a dumb, a blind or a lame?

Isn't our ‘love’ for them a demonstration of our pity, which only seeks to degrade the

Soul in them? Yet, how these very brave spirits survive their times on Mother Earth

without our 'support' or patronization - if only and purely by a full understanding,exploitation and use of the 'sixth sense', that we have decided to rubbish as non-

existent and 'pure figments of the imagination' is where Man fails, but not the Baul. Our

disregard for the disadvantaged is disregard and disrespect for our Maker is the analysis

of the Baul.

This leads us to be cursed by blindness even though we have the faculties of our vision

intact, dangerously mis-communicate even when our gift of speech survives, and while



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our feet take us more miles than the lame, we are unable to ever arrive at a destination

more beautiful than where the Makers 'Heaven' is only comparable with the mythical

Shangri La of the movies.

The Universal Quest of the Baul is no myth, for Heaven and Hell are conditional to a

'journey' that we will never hazard if we can avoid it. Despite the 'paradise' Heavenoffers, or the Brimstones that await us in Hell, we are so inherently fearful of the

unknown, that much as we would savor Heaven if we can afford it, none of us would

quite consider a journey to Hell, even to check out if there is so much as the TRUTH. In

all that we have been conditioned to believe in our lifetimes, in his rejection the Baul

will however take this journey, as to him it is the natural thing, for Heaven and Hell if

they at all exist, cannot be something alien to Nature - even as Man through his

irresponsibility has certainly become one.

10. SHAH: THE ‘REGAL’ LAMP

As much as unthinking people have tried in vain to find out who Fakir Lalon Shah was,

where he appeared from, or his faith, creed and 'religion', what cannot and should not

pass any of us by, is our curiosity have all been focused about the 'man' and not what he

stood for, or wanted to share as a complete, yet simple vision of faith for our

understanding.

Word for word, couplet for couplet Lalon, embedded gems in his compositions, for all of

us to contemplate, mediate and find our individual answers. True work is in deciphering

not just the 'song' that a lot of musicologist and pundits have tried a wide brush-over, or

'urbanize' to remove their 'frugal rural rusticity', but more the implication of each and

every individual word that were subtly crafted in his masterpieces, is where the quest ishoned in.

Jage uthachay ei roop mohol / na jaani tar roop ti kyamon

This abode of beauty has arisen, wonder what its beauty is like

Shiraj Shai koi nai ray Lalon/ tar tulona

Shiraj Shai tells Lalon, there is no comparison

In the above couplet, one is left only to behold the beauty of the abode that the Maker

has created for us, with the human body, or Man being at its epicenter, only part of a

story understood, a half truth if we may. It is in the signature line, where Lalon closesthe song is where some answers, perhaps only a portion of the truth and not the entire

truth is revealed.

In the first part of this series of essays we have dwelt in length about the term 'Fakir' -

yet until now we have deliberately refrained from explaining what the term 'Shah' or

'Shai-ji' in the Baul's colloquial Bengalee usage means. There is nothing deeply mystical

or mysterious about it.



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'Shah' translated from Arabic or Persian means 'regal' or those worthy of the respect of

a King. Whether it is by his deeds or actions or in the lifestyle and attitude he wished

others to inculcate, or the lives he touched in his times as much as they do to this day,

Fakir Lalon Shah was truly a King amongst men, nay an Emperor. The word Lalon on the

other hand in Bengalee means 'caring', an Emperor, who’s Empire, was the Makersuniverse, his 'wealth', the unsurpassed sense of caring and compassion for fellow Man

who he worshipped as God.

In closing this chapter, it is worthwhile to say a few pertinent words about 'somebody'

that Lalon Shah consistently referred to as 'Shiraj Shai' in most of his compositions.

There have been debates and controversies that Fakir Lalon Shah was a disciple of a

Guru by the same name. Yet there appears to be no historical or scientific evidence

among researchers to confirm the physical existence of any one man by the name of

'Shiraj Shai' from Harishpur, Harinakundu in Jessore where it is thought he lived. One

analysis we humbly submit to our readers probably lies in reflecting on the meaning of

the word ‘Shiraj’.

In Arabic and Persian among the many meanings attested to the word is 'lamp',

therefore in all probability, 'Shiraj Shai' could very well have been, the 'Regal Lamp' - the

Maker. The God of the agnostic Fakir Lalon Shah, had deliberately to be coined in order

it to make it meaningful, and to rise about the pettiness of organized Gods of 'religions'

whose disciples had in the course of Bengal's history, thanks to British Imperialism,

deviated and begun quarreling, as to the 'superiority' of their individual Gods. In any

event the Maker knows best, and the TRUTH as the Baul knows all too well, is best not

arrived at or revealed. Let the Regal Lamp and Light in all of us 'burn' nonetheless.

12. THE BAUL GURU: EXTELLIGENCE OVER INTELLIGENCE

To understand the Guru is to step back to a time capsule of at least 300 years or more

and try to appreciate how life was then. Trapped in our millennium lifestyle of speed,

technology with its associated ease, our imaginations simply cannot comprehend a

scenario of how things revolved around realities where one had no electricity, no cars,

no means of traveling anywhere other that walking, by bullock carts or a country boat

that would take days to reach ones destination, and what we see is a bleak picture of

rural Bengal. Yet on the flip side, we have been regaled by tales of great men of wisdom

or miracles, of teachers, Murshids, Pirs and yes the Guru.

Men and women would traverse the length and breath of Bengal only to catch a glimpse

of these great men, seek their counsel, learn a few prayers, get a talisman or two, or

‘pure water’ with the ‘breathe’ of the sages ‘powerful’ prayer to rejuvenate themselves

or the ailing or dying back home. People went to these seats of learning only to receive

‘salvation’ of one form or the other, and it is not inappropriate to point out that then, as



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even today, a society reeking with superstition was prone to exploitation, and those

vulnerable, were easy prey.

What set these ‘great’ men apart from the rest and ‘capital’ used to conduct their

business, was ‘intelligence’, which they actually misused to offer solutions for those

ailing in ‘spiritual’, if not physical health. Crudely they had more in common withmillennium psychoanalyst or even psychiatrists. The talisman that seemingly exorcised

the ‘devils’ could well have been any inanimate object of no real scientific or spiritual

value, and ‘pure water’ mere placebos that too often worked just by sheer coincidence

or by accident – if they worked at all!

In any case the above observation is not in anyway meant to belittle the herbalist or

Kabiraaj or Ayurveda specialist of our rich heritage of folklore medicine whose

treatment and care of patients were then as is now, based on closely working,

scrutinizing, experimenting and applying scientific judgments on patients, which have

lived through ages and will continue to live-indeed will grow from strength to strength.

The focus of this chapter in this series of essay is to seek an insight into what it was that

sent people thronging to men and women with ‘great intelligence’ centuries ago when it

was the Soul of man that was tormented and needed answers that were not

forthcoming? Let us put this across as aptly as we possibly can that the search for ones

Soul is never as a result of any loss or gain. It is only to rediscover what was always

there, and can best be described as a ‘rebirth’ in ones life, although in extent and

purpose it still fails to capture the quest for Bauliana – for as we mentioned earlier it is

more about ‘shedding’ – not acquiring.

The forever-curious Baul looked at ‘intelligence’ as an internal and selfish quest forknowledge to be used as a weapon for exploitation, for gain. They believed that the

‘intelligent’ would use their knowledge-base to weaken and not encourage the spirit, by

histrionic tales of the omnipotent Maker being a ‘fearfully notorious entity’, whose

advantage was in punishing and avenging the ills of man. Compassion and Mercy were

attributes that were ruefully excluded from the Maker.

The ‘formula’ for appeasement of the Maker therefore, had to be ‘strictly’ as prescribed

by the TRUTH these ancient scamsters upheld while they imitated cultural components

in the quest of the Bauls, specially in forceful use of Music, which we had mentioned

earlier, the natives of Bengal had a natural inclination to appreciate and understand. Letus call this 17th century infotainment for easier understanding!

For the Baul, intelligence just like any other intangible commodity was again a natural

attribute that all Man is blessed with, a gift from nature, and is free till such time Man

wishes to doctor it to a farce. It was the Bauls that perhaps raised the demands for free

education as a birth right of all Man, and what we now call human rights? ‘True work’ is

in educating and education, and no matter how obscure or ill defined that may be, the



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Baul again is no ‘educator’ - he is a pointer, promoter and a referrer to sources of

education readily available in nature; ones that have stood the tests of times, because

they contributed to benefit Mankind.

For application of education to be of any use, the Baul insists on a practical ‘each Man

for himself or herself’ approach, tapping into the radiating aura of the Makers ‘light’that is picked up by the our extra sensory organs which is not to be confused with extra

sensory perception, for perceptions are never reality in the first place, but mirages that

we may seek and never find, unless they are grounded and relate to verifiable real life

examples.

Real examples are based on agreed and accounted premises of rationales, with

irrational quest’s being a time worn domain of the occult, of abject magicians with

words and not deeds. The Baul provided an alternative direction towards the TRUTH if

not the complete truth and he insists on picking up external stimuli’s provided by our

sources of conscience, deep within every one of us, in our Extelligence, which is a

product of sharing.

The process is like polishing a mirror; no matter how bright they appear, or however we

look gazing at it, our urge is always to keep it ever more ‘dazzling’, for in our use of the

same over time, we see new ‘fogs’ appearing to disturb and distract us. The Soul in Man

is as such a ‘commodity’ that needs constant attention, to keep it sharp, focused, agile

and dexterous. Since it is supple in its basic character, it bends at will in distractions that

come together with these natural stimuli’s, and a sieving of the accumulated residues to

leave only the best at the top - is the Bauls ultimate quest.

The Baul Guru therefore is no Man, but the Maker in each and every Man, and it is howwe approach our faculties associated with cultivating knowledge, is the difference in the

Guru that the Baul reveres and ones the charlatans have made a practice to exploit his

fellow Man. The sore bone of contentions that have ravaged the minds and thinking of

evolving thought processes in Bengal however continues unabated even among the

different schools of thoughts of the Bauls.

To equate the Guru to that of the Maker is Sin in the Baul pantheon, for possibilities of

arrogance and subterfuge have appeared, with damming ramification to Mankind. Let

us be reminded of the Pharaohs, long before monotheism came about.



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12. THE BAUL TRINITY: WHERE WIND IS A FOREGONE CONCLUSION

Jolay stholay ognikunday / Moron nai Tar kono Kalay

In Water, Earth or Fire, Death never touches him

In the songs called Gurur Bhab (the Guru’s aura) which was composed by an anonymousBaul and some researchers attest is about five hundred years old, the first two couplets

stirringly reinforces that unlike other monotheistic beliefs where Earth, Wind and Fire is

considered the trinity of life and conception, the Bauls trinity stands at odd, in his belief

that it is Water, Earth and Fire and NOT Wind – which he conjoins with all three

elements.

‘Affected by the Wind’ the Baul is partial to the first ‘breathe’ and the first ‘gust of Wind’

is reinforced not only by a spiritual but scientific deduction i.e. if FIRE is considered the

destroyer, it also needs the WIND to survive or to destroy? The omnipotence of Hawa or

Eve as we have argued in previous chapters is far more superior to that of Adam, for

without wind, Fire as such would not have cooled and Earth and Life could not have

evolved.

13: OF BHOB AND BHAB: THE AURA OF ENLIGHTMENT AND POWER OF SILENCE

Gurur Bhab dhoray jay Boshay achhi/ Choron Dhoray

Catching the aura of the Maker, I sit holding his feet

Gurur Naam niya jay boshay aachi / Nirob hoye

With the name of the Maker in my lips, I sit in sealed silence

The Bengalee word Bhob is a colloquially shortened version of the word Bhubon or theUniverse, whereas Bhab implies an aura of achievable enlightenment, an attitude of

perfunctory ease and calm associated in approaching the Spirit and Soul of Man i.e. inter

alia the Maker.

The above couplet therefore relates to the calm and serenity of those in meditation, in

prayer, in contemplation of the self without the self (as in selfish), in Silence, the most

humbling of all human virtues, and isolation a prerequisite in the search and

understanding of the ‘known unknown’. Man makes strides when he cuts off life and

living from his species and melts into nature. Great wisdom and enlightenment after

protracted periods of isolation have seen Minds evolve for the benefit of Mankind.

Their being no absolutism in the Baul doctrine; other than in reasoning that every Man

is capable of reaching the highest state of enlightenment if there is will, determination,

patience and hard work to ‘touch’ the light that beckons each of us with no disparity at

least on part of the Maker. The ‘beacon’ of the Maker is neither set nor focused at any

one individual at any one time, but an aura that is equal in ‘measures’ and proportion to

all of Mankind.



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In a nutshell the Baul argues if Bhob were the lamp, the aura of light it radiates is Bhab,

the trick is in not in willfully complicating either of the two, for both are again

conditional and complimentary. Bhab is not to be confused with the Halo, indeed it is

quite the antithesis of such ‘adornments’.

14. BAUL MEDITATION: FROM THINKING NOTHING TO THINKING SOMETHING

Although a state of nothingness or ‘think nothing’ is associated in most meditative

practices worldwide, it takes only but a few rude seconds for the mind to deviate and

move and lead it askew to worldly matters. The associated problem: to have a blank

mind is as useless as having a blank hard disk in a computer, and it is best that we load

‘programs’ into our minds with thought process ‘software’s’ that leads to justifiable

‘search’, with the end result, that it will lead us on to working under circumstances and

an environment where we do not have ‘virus’ or ‘worms’ either hanging or deleting files

in our brains i.e. the mind’s CPU – or we to be proven wrong yet again?

So what is it that we can think to get us to a state of ‘no thinking’ thinking?

Jyamon Maye Jaanay Cheler Ador/ Oray Mon Ojana baloker kaalay

Only a Mother knows how much she adored you son/ O Spirit of Your unknown infancy

Shei Roop Guru Jaanay Shishwer ador/ Monay Monay mishalyeelay

The Maker knows the love of his seekers, if you seek him in Your Spirit

As we had said earlier, what is unknown to us and not to our physical creator our

Mother, the Eve, is the love and care that went behind our upbringing. Life to re-amplify

is a blessed moment of procreation that we simply cannot roll back. The Spirit thatreigns within us during infancy and exactly when do we come to a realization as living,

breathing, eating, walking beings capable of having our own strains of thinking and

prejudices is unknown.

It is the Bauls belief to seek and return to that perfectly blissful state of ‘nothingness’,

when our manifest physical self as we come to understand it after ‘understanding’ has

grasped us, and sometime numbs us into semi consciousness, and often takes an unfair

toll, is one that ideally should be assigned the back seat.

It is only in delving deep into actions of the highly disadvantaged Spirit that came withus and the actions of our Mothers, who cared for us and reared us to what we are

today, may lead us to some ‘clues’ to our Maker if not ‘answers’. The importance the

Baul attaches to procreation is underscored. The Maker’s love for Mankind likewise can

only be understood in seeking him within the Spirit.



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15. THE MYTH BEHIND THE ‘STRAIGHT PATH’

Jyamon Pakhi Koray Daaley Basha / Baduray to daalaye jhulay

Like Birds build nests’ in branches / Bats hang on branches

Shei Roop Moner Nirik Thik Na hoilaye / Dal bhangiya Porbi sheshay

if the aim of your Spirit wavers / The branches will break and YOU will fall with it too

The concluding couplet in the composition draws the analogy of birds and bats, while

both are ‘creatures of the Wind’, the use of branches in trees by both species is however

dissimilar. While birds build their nest on branches assured of its strength to carry its

own weight and that of its roosting infants, the Bat on the other hand uses it solely for

the purpose of hanging. Objectively what is referred here is whatever may be the

‘reason’ for ones action it does not imply necessary agreement in use and applications

of another way of life, although the implemented conclusions may just be the same. It is

like case of a Knife: whereas a robber may kill somebody by its misuse, a medical

surgeon may use the same to save a life. The fault lies not in the knife, but in its use or

abuse by Man.

Metaphorically the branch therefore is not a monophonic entity, rather it’s varied used

by both Birds and Bats is symbolic of the direction that leads on to the so-called ‘straight

path’ that seems to be an ideology among branches of monotheism. The confusions of

the ‘straight path’ comes when we imply it being a ‘straight line’ i.e. we fail to realise

that what may be LEFT for one, may well be RIGHT for the other and probably explains

why we discovered ‘dividers’ to regulate vehicular traffic!

The Baul does not reject the ‘straight path’ per se, it his interpretation that sets him

apart, for they are based on scientific premises not emotions or unreasonablereasoning. A ‘path’ if at all he argues, can only be arrived at, if all ends of the spectrum,

the entire canopy that we live under is understood. In other words, ‘blind’ submission to

‘faith’ without using the faculties of reasons may lead one astray. The straight path is

assigned in the center, and as much as the creator has blessed us with two of most

sensory organs, all are fashioned and designed to work in complimentary conditions.

Let us put you through a Baul tests – please read this article with either of your eyes

closed and see where they are focused?

Our focus and direction in reading this essay, in other words the center and theSTRAIGHT path can only be arrived with both our eyes wide open! To reach to the Spirit

of the Maker and be blessed in his enlightenment one thus has to exercise both sides in

the faculty of the cerebral organ we call the brain, to have the third eye of our

conscience to OPEN and be of any practical use to us. The Straight path lies in allowing

our sense of judgment to be weighed by all options and not allow prejudices or

absolutism of any kind to cloud our thinking process.



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16. MESSAGES: FROM PROPHETS TO POETS AND TO THE PUBLIC

The Bauls believe like other monotheist that the messages of all Prophets, which came

from the Maker, needed dissemination to the public at large if this could be of benefit to

Mankind. More that counting rosaries with our fingers, or parroting the ‘holy books’ wehad safely tucked in our homes away from anybody’s reach but the select ‘faithful’

among us, who apparently ‘understand’ its texts, we have reduced them to non-entities

in our willful neglect. It was perhaps the will of the Maker that Man in the Natural world

be guided in methodology easier and useful to reach, and not by means where ‘fear’ is

the key to the discovery and appreciation of the Omnipotent or the Omnipresent.

Among those suited to deliver Messages and undertake this responsibility of great

acumen, were Poets, for they had the ability and talent to introspect and arrive at

deliverable conclusions and make clarifications at the shortest possible time. This was

long before the radio had been invented, and there were no other avenues available

other than word of mouth. They combined poesy with music, as mere recitation or

incantations could affordably not interest anyone. Bards and rural minstrels were the

Poets of the time, who traveled on foot, on bullock carts and boats, carrying the Makers

message in their hearts and in their songs.

With his simplistic Ektaara (one string pitch instrument) to signify the one Maker of

Mankind, and the Baaya (meaning a left handed bass drum, strung to the waist, to keep

time and rhythm) he was a one man band who could move faster with the message than

anybody else. Other that his minimalist musical talents, he was usually a singer of some

repute, his competence as a Poet, who could compose at will at any location, and pass

on a message as and when it crossed his mind was his forte. His acceptability came fromhis instant streaks of wisdom as he was more attuned with Nature than most else.

In Bengal’s tradition of Kobi Loraai (or Poet-Bard duels) that lasted all night-long and

sometimes continued for days, challenges were thrown, and theological debates

interspersed with music, left everybody in states of mixed emotions from euphoria,

humor, and anger to tears. To this day most couplets are composed impromptu and in

the heat of ‘battles’ of the village Poets, fascinating arguments usually leaves the

uninitiated to the phenomenon at a complete loss in wonderment. So powerful and

intense is the display of Extelligence of those we consider rustic, frugal and not worthy

of our urbanized ‘respect’, that benign respects overpowers us into submission andhelps us relate and appreciate many unanswered questions in our quest for Bauliana.

Let us make no mistake here that Bauliana is not a quest that is so fragile that it can not

survive the spirit of inquiry. Blind faith is prejudicial faith, and the Baul is not afraid if he

is ever challenged, for he has always been respectful to differing opinions, and believed

in Democracy, free speech and expression, even before these now ‘holistic’ terms were



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invented! He never believed that what he said was the truth and his only yearning was

for WORK that was true.

As time moved on, and life reached a pitch in its sheer speed, attention span in humans

faltered. On the other hand a constant reeling back and forth in this esoteric exercise of

keeping the mind thoroughly engaged on thoughts ONLY of ‘messages’ from the Makerin relation to Man i.e. life could well….become very boring to say the least! With the

struggle for daily survival in rural Bengal, our denizens of yore simply could not afford

this ‘luxury’, especially when putting a square meal for the consumption of the family at

the end of the day was a priority that overtook all else. It is thus not unusual that most

Baul compositions have references to, or have pointers based on what we may term in

today’s context: ‘market dynamics‘.

Much as society moved away from a collective cooperative spirit of survival, to a vulgar

‘perform or perish’ preponderance towards materialism, the compositions were thus

designed to cater to those with a ‘cursed sense of simplicity’, a reminder that life and

living is going through spins of extremities where more often, exploitations were as a

direct result of ‘intelligent’ humans spreading the tentacles of hate, divisions and willful

yet deceitful capture, nay stealing of others wealth, whether material or immaterial is

not important here.

A new set of filter down institutionalized hierarchy of Oppression of the British

imperialist had made their presence felt in the tyrant class of Zamindars, (landlords)

Jotedars (lackeys of landlords) to the village Muttabors (arbitrators, in other words

‘know all-ers’, read village head man) not to forget the sacrosanct Mullahs (Islamic

clerics) or the Puroheets (Brahmin priest’s) who gave a ‘spiritual angle’ to exonerate the

injustice they skillfully perpetrated.

The Bauls were then as to this day, the butt of ridicule and rancor, as they had the

ability to see through the charades being perpetrated on the innocent, all in the name

of religions and its many Gods. For the poor and marginalised it was the power of the

Spirit, which had to be revived and rejuvenated to fight Oppression in all its forms. Let

us be clear; Bauliana remains a socio-political-cultural struggle, with its only ‘weapon’

the Spirit of Man and its latent power to overcome all extremities, that sometimes

capitulated to limited calamities, but never bowed its head in defeat. “To resist is to

WIN” has always been the Baul credo.

It is in such complex situations that the Bauls reminded its audience that only when we

juxtapose examples in nature in relation to the Makers plans and schemes of things,

would anybody be able to overcome the serious odds that seemed to challenge rural

Bengal.

The quest for Bauliana today is no different, for it is a revolt against the hackneyed

order of medieval thought processes, permeating and afflicting the sensibilities of Man,



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in its unflinching brutalization of fellow Man. It becomes all the more important that we

stop and ponder, because all Wars today, all conflicts, all our anger to fellow Man, is

directed NOT because we disagree on fundamentals of the Maker, but because we have

allowed ourselves to be conducted on implied Superiority or Inferiority of our respective

‘Gods’.

We never hear of any attempts anywhere in the world about a ‘Consensus on God’

while we hear about ‘clashes among civilizations or religions’ when civilization is nothing

more that an extension of hate, for whatever we may have inherited, we have failed in

inheriting a civilization of ‘good’ as we go looking for ‘Axis of Evils’ – which allows only

the devil and not Man to smile.

The Maker knows best.

17. MURSHID: FROM TERRIRORIAL EXTELLIGENCE TO TEMPORAL TREPIDATIONS

The word Murshid in Arabic means a guide. Bauls from the Sufi order used the term in

great reverence to his other ‘religionist’ and in its reference or application is no different

in concept or usage the term Guru i.e. Maker. Bauls predicted that Man would vulgarize

the Maker by sticking strictly to terms espoused by ‘religions’, which causes its usual

biases and leaves one disillusioned, and entrapped within limited spheres and

parameters of understanding or appreciation of the Supreme Being.

Lets us therefore examine the concept of the Murshid in the song ‘Becha Kena’ (Buying

and Selling) which was composed by an anonymous Baul.

Keho Koray becha kena / kehoi kanday

Some buy and sell, while some sit and cry

Rastai poray dhorbi jodi taray / cholo Murshid er bajaaray

If you seek to catch up with him in his path / go look for him in the ‘market’ of the

Murshid

In the above couplet the thrust of the composition is aimed at those Souls who we

referred earlier, have a ‘cursed sense of simplicity’. The paradox of ‘trade’ where some

perform and others perish, where the simpleton is left to only bask in tears is succinctly

addressed.

Simplicity is a human trait that does not always exemplify being humble. An excess of it

is often considered Stupidity, and it is drawing the fine line between what it means to be

humble as opposed to being arrogant or haughty; i.e. the balance of the omniscient

‘center’ that we addressed in the previous chapter, one not defined by any ‘territorial’

consideration but freely available as open source references, in the reservoir of our

Spirit, is one that needs reawakening. No book of knowledge as such has a ‘number’



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value attached. It is only when we decide to give it an aura of ‘holiness’ to TRADE on

knowledge, without going through its contents or trying to understand or share with

others - is when we curse ourselves. The second line however extols the virtues of a

spiritual quest and to understand and use ‘Market dynamics ’ for finding the Murshid ‘in

the market’ is in the spirit of sarcasm, as those who seek the Maker, also in some

roundabout ways expect most unfairly, some form of ‘material gains’ for their search.

18. BREAKING FREE: DEMYSTIFYING THE ‘HOME’ IN OUR MIND

Phuler bonae-ay acchay kaata / moner ghoray chabi ata

Flowers in the jungle have thorn / and the key is stuck to the ‘home’ in your mind

Bhangtay hobay ghorere chaabi / khujbi jodi taaray

Break the key of ‘home’ / if you go seeking him

The quest for Bauliana is never to expect a fine-line or perfect ease in seeking and

searching the Maker in Man, in our Soul. Far from it, the quest is to break free and

relate to what we call our ‘own’ as opposed to what is the ‘we’ in all of ‘us’. It is not a

very complicated equation if we take the ‘Flower in the jungle have thorns’ metaphor.

It is however a torturous quest in its rigor, and not meant for the feint hearted. Let us

face it, the Maker in the grandeur of all beings has created each and every species to

acquire an in-built defensive mechanism; Nature as such is predatory if not ‘territorial’.

For example the best of roses anywhere in the world have thorns, and it is Natures

predisposition that they are what they are, for Man would not be respectful to flowers

without them (thorns). If it were not the disadvantage of being pricked by a few thorns,

man would perhaps pillage all rose plants and drive it to extinction. For most flowers,

thorns are its natural defense. While Man would carefully pluck it, and trade them forprofit, animals conversely would not eat them? The thorns in many flowers make it

impossible for them to either chew or digest the same, yet at the same time some

animals live on nothing else but thorny plants. Does it mean animals do not have a

sense of appreciation of beauty? Of course they do, the difference is only marginal.

Animals do not ‘consume’ beauty, but man will not bat an eyelid to ravage it.

‘Breaking the key of ‘home’’ aptly reminds us that what we call ‘home’ is actually the

selfish pursuit of the ‘I’, the key of which has to be broken to achieve salvation. Our

‘homes’ as we know and use it, are territorial entities, which we have designed to keep

predators off our perimeters – and the predator is not animal but ironically man. A‘Mind’ that lives in such a ‘home’ is a mind cursed to no salvation, no mercy of the

Maker, for his mind is not set to accept anything that does not satiate the ‘I’.

For the Baul the state of mind that can reach the highest level of consciousness is one

removed from mundane routines, to moving to a state of being in constant contact with

the element, with nature in all its bliss and vagaries.



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Katar ghaye ongyo ray tor / jai jodi jar jar

If thorns ravage your body/ into shreds

Thakish na are boshay boshay / pother darey

Don’t waste your time / on the wayside

No Man on the planet is one devoid of worries or hardship. Material gains do notguarantee salvation of the Soul, for what is tormented more than the body is the Mind,

and there are no artificial balms available to cure a sick mind. Whenever a soul is

ravaged it is an individual, not a collective experience. When it ‘breaks’, nobody is

around to pick up the pieces.

The above couplet signifies the optimism that Bauls wishes to inculcate as a creed in

Man. Pessimism has no standing in the Baul pantheons, for it is a form of negativity that

only comes with doubts. Doubts brews from suspicion, from mistrust – and in the final

equation, an element of TRUST (preferably on the Maker if not Man) is desirable for the

Soul to find its anchor inside Mans turbulence.

Murshid-er ii naam ti dhoro / Nijer Iman ojon Koro

Recant the name of your Murshid/ and weigh the options of you Soul

Bismillah kay chapa rakhoy / hripinder bhitoray

Preserve the name of Allah / deep in your conscience

The above couplet once again reminds us that a remembrance of the Maker and

weighing the option of our belief be the fundamental in the quest for Bauliana.

If it is the name of Allah for a Muslim that gives him peace, or be it the only name of the

Maker he knows, he is urged to keep it suppressed ‘deep’ in his ‘conscience’. In otherwords this is a prerogative of a Muslim, which other ‘religionist’ may or may not attest

to. Bauliana as opposed to other forms of monotheism is a purely private and individual

pursuit of the Maker, devoid of symbolism, rituals or acceptability. Notice the great

sensitivity attached to practicing agnosticism, for the name of Allah used irresponsibly

would only create situations of friction, especially when the Bedounist extremists as

much as the Brahmins had decreed that Bauls were revisionist to their respective ‘faith’,

and were atheists in disguise.



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CONCLUDING ESSAY: ‘ESSENCE MAN’ AN UNPHILOSOPHICAL ENQUIRY

For millions of year man lived like beasts - then something important happened - he

started to talk, and instantly his imagination, both individual and collective wastriggered, that led on to what we have inherited today, a communicative world. A world

where man, even the deaf and the dumb have a mean of communication with his fellow

man, a world where a blind, though not witnessing the events around him can still have

a clear perception as to his environment. The exact year when man learnt to talk is not

known, however as he talked, he also made great strides that led on to civilizations,

society, philosophies, culture, commerce - indeed all that we hold dearest to our heart

at the close of this century, are all products of mans collective imagination.

The ability to talk or power of speech, offered its own strength and opportunities in

mans development, much as it also had weaknesses and threats. Improper

communication of thoughts, philosophies created misunderstanding and tensions that

perhaps led on to the first human conflict and wars. Nothing more mysterious, more

unexplained remained in man, than his mind - and once the mind started acting - i.e.

thinking, man grew conscious as to his immediate needs. What came first - man or his

mind is as debatable as the hen or egg! Survival perhaps figured most prominently in

mans first list of priorities. Man learnt to survive natural extremities - wild beast that

preyed on man for food, illness, hunger and whatever else you want to add to that list.

Survival meant fighting all odds so man learnt how to survive without a teacher, without

a guideline. The survival instinct came naturally to man. Nature was his greatest

teacher, his greatest friend and philosopher. He probably learnt how to fight from

beasts as he did not consider himself any different than beasts, other than his ability totalk. He took lessons and passed it on to his fellow man, a simple process that over years

created experts with skills. Expertise led on to collective replication, duplication and

improvisations. Improvisation led to many ideas being condemned of being obsolete

and discarded. New ideas evolved - man discovered competition. Man moved on.

Creativity charged mans imagination and led on to inventions to make life a lot simpler

and easier. Man became conscious that he is condemned to a life of hard labour -

whether physical or mental. He wanted to change his environment, to make labour

more easily, more pleasurable. The pursuit of pleasure has always been mans greatest

vice. Man has never enjoyed a monopoly on virtues!

As man moved, he also learnt the skills of oppression - the continuation of that meant

annihilation of other man - for material or other gains to himself and for others who

relied on him or his imagination. Leaders were born - superior man who propelled

themselves into position of power and authority. Weaknesses in one leader created

other leaders. This was mans check on another beast: man! This was his way of

restricting another mans aspirations. War came naturally to man - as a survival instinct.

War ensured trophies and bounties. The vanquished wealth and women became



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immediate possessions if a war was won. Man made his fellow man slaves and bound

him in chain and shackles. The human mind also derived grotesque and perverted

pleasure to see his once powerful enemy at his mercy - his slave. To see ones enemy

capitulate was a great accomplishment, so man took it another step further. He played

God, slaughtering his fellow man. The process of decapitating and torturing an enemy

sometimes continued for days on end till he died. By watching misery an enemyendured at his death throes, man discovered a new trait in his imagination: cruelty. He

also learnt about the power of human endurance, and learnt the differences between,

painful and painless deaths. Inexplicably as a continuation of cruelty he also learnt

collective carnage: genocide. Man also became the ultimate survivor against his fellow

mans ignominy and insensitivity. The vanquished also had a voice and resurrected

themselves over time. Man moved on.

On the flip side, man learnt about death without dying, so that it meant killing his fellow

man to take that once step further to: knowledge. He ate his flesh and dissected his

body to learn the intricacies of his bones, nerves and veins. The experience he thus

gained taught him how pain was to be dealt with. He discovered among others a

remedy to end human misery: medicine. Planet earth was and still is a biological

laboratory and man will keep paying the ultimate price - himself - to ensure that his

species does not go extinct. Man still had not learnt how to dissect the human

imagination. It remains the most mysterious and potent unknown in his existence. Man

aspired for peace, for freedom from the shackles of oppression. War was always a

double-edged sword; it created opportunity for peace by annihilation for those that did

not share one mans imagination, his thought process, his concept of right or wrong. It

also created for those that survived a war - the victorious, a semblance of peace with all

the bounty Mother Nature has to offer. For those that lost wars, man discovered

humiliation that led on to tolerance. Tolerance is a trait for those that have suffered andlost most in life.

It was perhaps at this juncture that the third thought process evolved - the free thinkers.

The free thinkers believed that mans greatest enemy was his mind, a mind that only saw

two colours - black and white. He represented the grey segment of the natural canvas.

He believed that only a combination of black and white would ensure that the human

species did not go extinct. The first free thinker, were also the first liberals and had to

pay a price, with their lives. The greatest tragedy of man has been that its free thinkers

were discovered posthumously. What they had left behind for his fellow men were

however gems. Genetic time capsules that faithfully encoded the basic human trait:goodness. Man among his many natural attributes has arguably goodness in the highest

dosage. Yet given circumstances, man can commit evil more naturally than he would

goodness. What makes him commit evil will forever remain mans investigation: for now

there is no answer.

Man argued that peace couldn't be found if war is considered a solution - but that

argument never ended wars. He therefore fine-tuned his thinking and communicative



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skill to invent a compromise philosophy to replace a subordinate philosophy - so that

man can continue to live and let live. More colours were painted into the natural

canvas. Nothing much happened. Man continued to argue that peace is not the absence

of war, but the absence of the conditions that leads man to war. The foremost of those

conditions were and still remain for man his greatest vice: suspicion. The proverbial

'keep the guard up' - is mans natural trait. Man is mans enemy, and there is no man onplanet earth that does not have an individual, common or collective enemy.

Man cannot remain defensive without weapons. Tragically weapons of defense in mans

history has more often been used, as weapons of offense - because man has believed

that 'offense is the best defense'! So man continues to imperil the world by his basic

instinct for survival. Mans greatest industry has been war industries, his military

industrial complexes - which have traditionally supplied armament for mans war.

Because wars never ended, the armaments industry only flourished. As the world got

bigger and was divided over and over again, nations, countries, continents, sub

continents, regions surfaced - and what he has inherited today is the collective result of

that original human instinct: mans quest for freedom.

Guarantee of freedom for man however, comes at gunpoint, so mans war industry got

more focused and organized in its singular obsession - the killing of fellow man.

Weapons to kill millions at a time remains mans most sacred and secret possessions

today, its bargaining chip, its symbol of freedom.

The problem with freedom is it cannot be had, if man does not have peace. The problem

with peace is, man has not yet figured out how to make money out of it! If the military

industrial complexes are dismantled today - if wars end, the next war will be fought by

the unemployed millions from these very same industrial complexes? The fear of unemployment makes man desperate. Man demobilized from war, have found

employment in other wars: mercenaries are mans oldest professional warmongers.

Man has thrived on chaos. Peace and chaos has never walked hand in hand. It has

always been a tilted balance because of mans propensity for chaos is supreme, as he has

not overcome his basic insecurity - translated to mean man made fear or fear of man.

Fear again is the driving force behind mans energetic discoveries. Man has well realized

that a peaceful planet earth would be, well quite boring. His imagination forces him to

spend most of his money and energy in pursuit of real or imagined enemies within his

own kind and outside. Man has set foot on the moon and has sent robots to Mars -many more planets are targeted for mans discovery.

Question: What is man trying to discover? Rocks and landscapes? The answer is man is

looking for life, and when man says 'life' his intention is to discover - something

resembling man. If by accident, life is discovered on any other planet, man with all its

inclination for peace will actually be discovering a life form that he will construe to be

his enemy. Do not expect man to go and shake hand with a green Martian and say 'Hi



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old chap - do you know we have been waiting to meet you guys for couple of million

years?' - rather it would be natural for man, to shoot or capture such a creature, and

find out what his chemistry is all about in a laboratory back home! The fear of the

unknown propels man on.

When we say 'extra terrestrials' (ET) - mans mind conjures images of creatures withsuperior intelligence. Man has rarely accepted a superior man for far too long, its history

being filled with stories of pickup and dumps - and therefore it would be a travesty to

expect man to fall in love with the first ET it meets. If life is discovered on another planet

- bad news for man. Man will mobilize all resources at its disposal to make war. If

Hollywood movies are any indicator of mans collective visual imagination - I am sure

readers will not miss the point. But is there any other intelligent life form in our solar

system other than man? Many believe that there are, but feel they will be discovered

millions of years later. The truth is no one knows. However mans imagination will create

one, even if there is none, and man will drive himself into frenzy trying to kill or subdue

the monsters. There are zillions of crackpots in the world that believe in ET's and

perhaps billions more who believe in UFO's. Man has the capacity to live unto its beliefs,

to the extent of creating a belief system - even if there may be no rationale. Man will of

course question and doubt, for that is also natural for man!

Modern man is as superstitious as his ancestors that walked planet earth millions of

years ago. Superstition arose because of his basic survival instinct - when he failed to

find logical answers to his question, he invented answers to suit his immediate needs.

Myths were born to create and reinforce those superstitions and together with changing

times man thought he found answers to many of his questions. Man discovered many

more colors in his natural canvas from his first black, white and grey. His natural canvas

looked more like a kaleidoscope. Mans imagination searched for answers to newquestions. For man living on planet earth, it is a back and forth process. As he looked

forward he also made painful enquiries into the past to find a clue as to his existence.

He looked back at traditions - knowing fully well that tradition is something man has

always left behind if not discarded. He looked back and picked up what he thought can

lead him forward. He realized that his ancestors have left behind a value system, which

has endured times because it was 'correct' and was destined to protect his, other basic

instinct: goodness. Survival meant choosing the worst possible opportunities that the

future - the unexplained future required him to choose. Man also learnt how to side

step to dodge and weave - he learnt how to live with his enemy.

Mans experiment with death was also a back and forth process. He probably wanted to

know life after death - for his survival instinct convinced him that even if his physical

body died, his mind did not. He found proof of this in his sleep. As he woke each

morning, he tried to investigate where his mind disappeared as he slept? Each waking

morning was an invigorating experience, for his sleep took him somewhere he did not

know nor did he have a clue. So he argued that when physical death occurs his mind will

still be resurrected, somewhere down a vacant hollow - a tunnel at best. He believed in



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reincarnation and this belief led him on to search for God. The search for God perhaps

became more intense when man took a step backward to find out 'where he has come

from'? Man is sufficiently convinced of where he is going after death - but where he was

before his birth, still remains a huge void in his imagination. Anthropologists have

tracked back man to apes with scientific evidence - but exactly when man as we know

him today first evolved is still unknown. There is a great 'missing link' between man andhis ape ancestors!

The concept of a monotheistic God, as is mans belief system is modern. God as we know

him today is approximately two thousand years old. Mans discovery of God has not

been by chance or an invention. He found God when he knew that at some point he had

to surrender. Man realized that his imagination was limited, and while his quest for

knowledge is unending, physically man cannot survive long enough to have answers to

all questions in his life. He for instance could predict the days and the nights, the winds

and the fire, the volcanoes and the earthquakes, the storms and the tidal surges - but

much as he tried he could not duplicate these phenomenons on his own. Man or his

imagination could not re -create nature - and it is not as if man has not tried hard

enough? As he looked up at the stars at night he did not find answers to what all the

darkness represents much as he did not find answers to where the blue dome ended -

or who was the ultimate artist that painted the horizon with all colours known to man,

in a consistently different exhibition each evening as the sun went down. Man learnt to

be romantic.

Man looked at different sizes of things in his body, and this convinced him that his brain,

the powerhouse of his imagination is not designed to fuel his constant yearning. Man

has many more questions, and actually fewer answers. As he procreated and created

other man - his children, he learnt to calculate the months of pregnancy. The possibledate and time of birth still remained outside his control, as also the possible time or

death of man. Nature does not provide a definite answer - that has been nature’s

nature.

Because mans imagination is so fertile, he has doubted the proof of his own existence.

Though man believes that contradiction between existence and non existence is the

greatest of all existence - yet he has wanted to know if this life, the one he has at any

given moment, is not just another big spurt of the imagination - that this very existence

is one big dream, and that he may wake up one morning to find himself in quite a

different sphere of existence! The imagination of man has also the ability to twist hisimagination.

Man burns out, man is born to die - death defies the imagination and as much as it gives

food for thought, man has not been able to know much more about his ancestors than

what they have left behind in records - written or otherwise. A complete and absolute

record of what can be considered 'mans complete imagination' is however not available.

Knowledge is the cumulative product of mans imagination - what we value as



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knowledge today will be rendered obsolete by our fellow man and this will happen

much earlier than the time man has taken to discard the knowledge left behind by his

ancestors.

Man has always questioned the accomplishment of his ancestors, whenever he has

wanted clear proof, however many of the achievements in 'recent times' have left himbaffled specially when he reasoned with civilization like the Mayans and the Incas -

proof that modern man is never as superior as he wishes to be.

Science a man made invention provided some, if not all the answer to mans quest for

rationale. Man discovered science to explain the law of nature - yet what is defined is

also the hard work of mans imagination. The ultimate creator of nature has truly not

been identified and man remains as baffled and frustrated than the ones that walked

planet earth millions of years ago. Science's contribution has been one endless saga of

good and evil for man. Science has dared man to experiment and seek new adventures,

new discoveries. It has made communication a staying force - and like his ancestors,

science has allowed man to mis- ommunicate. Mans basic nature and imagination has

not gone through great changes. Although the backgrounds maybe different suspicion,

fear and oppression are the mainstay of mans quest today. His basic survival instinct

makes him commit the same evil as his ancestors and there is certainly nothing humane

in man than what he thinks immediately as a necessary method of survival. Man takes

great pride in differentiating himself from beasts - but his beastly nature is manifest in

his interaction with his fellow man.

That ultimately leads us to the most important question: Will man become extinct?

If the social processes and philosophies that has guided man since his unknown

inception continues, as it must, than mans future is suspect. The doomsday philosophy

expounded by many religions is an early warning system invented by man to check that

that one suicidal human instinct: fear. The progresses of science have made fear all the

more realistic - when we consider that mans armament industry has weapons of mass

destruction with powers to completely alter the natural process. What a meteor did to

change the earth's atmosphere and environment and led the dinosaurs to go extinct -

man has now more power at its disposal with its stockpiling of nuclear and biological

weapons. In the event of a nuclear war - man, will not have a winner? The complete

History of The Dinosaurs has been written. Sadly, the complete History of Man willnever be written simply because no man will be around to write or read it.

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Documents

bAULIANA Agnostic Monontheist Belief System of the Bauls in Bangladesh