"And it is good that a few people have always been so mad that we have not lost contact with the roots of existence. It is because of them that we haven't. They could sing and dance and live and love – real people, authentic to the very core.

"So I don't know when they started. They must have started from the very beginning, if there was any beginning. They must have started with the first man, because their whole teaching is about the essential man. In fact, by and by, they have disappeared. They must have been more in the beginning. By and by they have lessened. Their numbers have become less and less and less every day, because the world has become too worldly, and the world has become too cunning and clever – it does not allow the simplicity of the heart to exist. The world has become too competitive and too ambitious. It has forgotten all that is beautiful, it has forgotten all that cannot be manufactured, it has forgotten how to surrender, to allow the eternal to happen in time. It has forgotten the language of ecstasy.

"The more we move back, the more and more Bauls you will find. In the beginning the whole humanity must have been like the Bauls. Even now you can watch it: every child is born as a Baul, then later on he is corrupted. Every child is again born as madly in love with life, but we cultivate him, we prune him, we don't allow him spontaneity of being. We condition him, we give him a certain character.

"The Bauls have no character. They are men of consciousness, but not of character. In fact, a man of consciousness never has a character. Character is a fixity, character is an obsession, character is an armor. You have to do only that which your character allows. Character can never be spontaneous. Character is always imposed by the past on the present. You are not free to be, you are not free to respond – you can only react.

"The Baul believes in the sahaja manush, the spontaneous man. The Baul says the spontaneous man is the way to the essential man."