Kabir said that all the world is gambling in worldly ways: some lose, some gain; and that goes on again and again all through life. He said, “Oh dear friends, who are gambling in the world, I would like to show you by my example that I am also gambling.” And how? Gambling goes on between two men, is it not so? If you lose, you have to give away everything; if you gain, you have to take everything away from the other one. He said, “Look here. I am also playing at gambling – not with the world, but with God.” And what will happen? He said, “If I lose, I will become His; and if I gain, He will become mine.” Do you see? Both ways, he is the gainer.

So we play with the world. Why not play with God? It is great common sense: if you lose you will become His, is it not so? And if you gain, then He will become yours: either way, you are one with Him. One who comes to that realization and is lost in the very utterance of the words, “O my Lord, I am thine” forgets everything – his mind, body, everything. It is true devotion, true love. And love always gives – knows giving, not taking.

Once it happened in the time of the tenth Guru of the Sikhs, Guru Gobind Singh (these are God-intoxicated people, mind that), that he sat down and was praying to God: “O Lord, all of this, everything is Your emanation; it is Yours; You are immanent in every form; everything is Thine; You are all this that we see; it is all Thine, whether it is the earth or the sky or the stars or the rivers or the mountains, it is all Thou, Yourself, Thou, Thyself.” Then, in that intoxication, he said, “It is You, it is You, everything is You personified.” Then he began repeating: “It is all You, it is all You, it is all You,” and in that intoxication he sat for three days – lost.

This becomes the fate – how very rare – of those who devote everything to Him. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was a Saint in Bengal, in India. Every saint has his own saying that reminds him of God. Everywhere he went, he said, “Speak of God! Glorify God! Glorify God!” Once it happened that he went to a place where washermen were washing clothes. (Today there are machines for washing clothes. In the olden days in India, a regular place was set aside for groups of washermen who used to wash clothes.) He went there and stood beside one man who was washing clothes and said, “Glorify God! say ‘God!’ ” – in his own language, of course: Hari bole. (Hari bole means: “Glorify God, think of God, glorify God.” ) He said it once, twice, thrice. The washerman thought perhaps some beggar had come and wanted money, so he kept quiet. Again, when Chaitanya insisted, “Say ‘Glorify God!’ Why don’t you glorify God?” the washerman thought, “He will not let me go. I will repeat what He says so that he will leave me alone.” No sooner had he repeated the very words, when he became intoxicated. The charging was there. He also began saying, “Glorify God!” The result was that all the washermen working there began to glorify God. Do you see? This is the intoxication for which we go to God-intoxicated people. It cannot be had by reading scriptures. Prayers and rites and rituals are meant to lead us to that state.

Shamas Tabrez tells us, “If you glorify God in that way and become intoxicated, everything will become intoxication. Whoever you see will become intoxicated. He is in every form; He is immanent in every form.” Then he said, “Dear friend, I have so much intoxication within myself, within my soul, that if I leave the body and my body is cut into pieces and put into a field as manure, the man who bakes the bread with the corn growing out of that land and the man who serves it (he did not even speak of the man who eats the bread made from that corn), will become intoxicated.”

After all, there is something which we do not know about so far. If we have a little drop of that intoxication, we will forget the world. For that purpose – for radiation – we go to the Masters. For those who are receptive, it works wonders. Just seeing such persons makes them intoxicated like, Maulana Rumi, said, “a drunkard, who only by seeing wine sparkling in a glass, begins to dance up and down.” Similarly, when those who are intoxicated with the love of God look into the Master, they see that God scintillating within him. They become intoxicated; they look into his eyes, they see Him, and they dance up and down.

So these are the things which are the gifts you can get from a God-intoxicated man. It cannot be had by reading scriptures or performing outer rituals: those are steps to it, of course. Say prayers – be lost. When Ramakrishna Paramahansa said prayers, he was like that – gone. This is what is called the love of God.

So that is why it is said, “Love knows no law.” ‘This is a gift; it cannot be had by books or by scriptures. Naturally, when you come across such an environment, you will feel radiation. The more receptive you are, the more you will become prolific. We used to have incidents like these in the time of our Master (Baba Sawan Singh). Sometimes a person came up and stood by him and forgot everything. He stood with his eyes open and didn’t know where he was. That was intoxication.

So that is why it is said, “Spirituality cannot be taught but caught!” – by radiation. Generally, what we call love is truly no love. It is misfit love, misdirected love. That love that starts with the body and ends in the body is no love; that is lust. If it starts in the body and dissolves in the soul, that is love. There is a very great difference between the two: the first blinds your vision; the second love opens your eyes – you are in a transport.

If we just once have a. little experience of that, then the world is nothing. When you fly in a plane 30,000 – 40,000 feet high, everything on the ground below appears to be very insignificant. Even the very mountains appear to be little mounds. Now, all the worldly things and possessions appear to us to be very important, very great; we have ambitions to have them. But as you rise above, they lose all their attraction. These are the wings of love on which one can fly to heaven.