The Master's art: expressing the inexpressible

Question 1:

There is an ancient Tibetan parable. It says, "When one hundred people try to reach the goal only ten ever start the journey; and out of the ten only one reaches the goal." And those few people who reach the goal are not capable of being masters. They are all mystics. They have known, they have seen, they have realized, but they cannot help anybody else towards the truth. They cannot explain their experience.

The mystic and the master are in the same state of being, but the master is articulate. He finds ways and means, devices, to indicate towards that which cannot be brought into words.

The mystic is dumb. He has tasted the sweet; it is not that he does not know that it is sweet. He is full of the sweetness, but he cannot say anything about it, he is simply dumb.

The master is articulate.

And it is the greatest art in the world.

The painter brings something of beauty on the canvas, the sculptor brings something of beauty in his works of art. The poet sings songs of the beyond.

But the master tries to create a science to help people move into the unknown way, towards the unknowable, without falling, without going astray. It is difficult - because he has to use words, and words are very small; and what he is going to express through them is so vast, it cannot be contained in them. He is trying to contain oceans in dewdrops. But the miracle is that the masters have succeeded in something in which success seems to almost impossible.

The mystic lives in his celebration, in his joy, in his inner music, but he is an island.

The master is a continent.

Gautam Buddha used to say to his disciples from the very first day, "Whatever you experience, however small, try to express it. Find out a way to convey it. Even if you fail, that is not important; what is important is that you tried - and go on trying. By the time you become enlightened, you will have learned some secrets which make the difference between the mystic and the master."

The mystic is great, but is of no use to the universe. He is fulfilled. As far as he is concerned he has arrived home, he has dissolved his ego, he has become part of the universe, but the beauty that he has seen, the blissfulness that he has experienced, the benediction that has showered over him remains unshared.

And remember one thing: there are things, if they remain unshared they remain imperfect. Only in sharing do they become perfect; only in giving do you start getting more.

The mystic is closed. He has no doors, no windows. He blossoms, but his fragrance is not released to the winds.

Actually the same experience happens to the master - before being a master he is a mystic - but he is articulate. At the right moment when the flower is blossoming, he opens the windows and the doors and allows the fragrance to reach others. At the very moment when he is full of light, he gathers around himself people who are thirsty. At the right moment he is never alone; he is always surrounded by the seekers.

Every master has a caravan of his own - his own people who have tasted something of his being, who have drunk the wine of his joy, who are no longer related in the ordinary ways of the world... some invisible, mysterious connections are developing. Something is transpiring between the master and the disciple which will finally dissolve the duality of both and there will remain only oneness, a tremendous silence, a profound peace, a great insight.

The master is rare, very rare.

The mystic also is rare, but not that very rare.

Many times you may come across a mystic and you will not understand anything about him. Your heart will not beat faster, you will not feel that something superhuman is close by because the mystic is closed. He has a treasure, but between the treasure and you there is a thick wall.

The whole art of mastery is to make windows, doors, and to become a temple.

People can enter into the master. He allows people to enter into him. All his effort is somehow to bring you closer - this is only the beginning. And if you come closer to the master and enter into the temple of the master, it becomes very easy for the master to enter your temple. And only when the master and the disciple are capable of entering into each other's being does the real religion happen.

The real religion is not where you think it is.

The real religion is only in the master-disciple relationship.

The mystic has it, but he cannot give it; not that he does not want to give it, he does not know how to give it. The master comes to experience that the more he gives, the more he has it - it is a new economics. In the ordinary economics, the more you give the less you have.

A man stopped his beautiful car by the side of a beggar - had to stop, because he could not believe.... The face, the body, the posture, the way the beggar was standing was not that of a beggar, it was that of a king. Even the clothes, although now they had faded away, still they carried the old memories; they were not the clothes of a beggar. And he was begging. The man in the car thought, "Bad times..." and he took a one-hundred rupee note and gave it to the beggar.

The beggar looked at the note and said to the man, "Please think twice."

The man said, "Why? Why should I think twice? I have enough."

The beggar said, "Soon you will be standing here where I am standing. I also had enough, but this is the way.... What you are doing, I did; I went on giving. One day all that I had disappeared. I still say, think twice."

The ordinary economics is if you want more don't give - collect, hoard.

The master comes to know a new economics: that the more you give the more you have. Suddenly all the laws are functioning in a totally different way. He enjoys sharing; he wants to bless the whole world.

The mystic also wants to share but is incapable; he has no means.

The master has means.

So mastery is a totally different phenomenon.

In the mystery schools it was part of the basic teaching that a few disciples who were capable of expression were trained. Before they became self-realized, they had to have become articulate enough. Nobody, after becoming a mystic, can learn the art of expression; that is impossible, it has not happened yet. It cannot happen because the man who has known and seen all that is worth knowing and all that is worth seeing, has gone beyond. Now to drag him back to learn the art of expression is impossible.

In the mystery schools it was a basic rule: the master had to go on watching for those disciples who showed the tendency, the talent, the genius for expression. Even if their enlightenment had to be delayed, let it be delayed. First they should be made articulate enough - because once they became enlightened then there would be no way to teach them the art of expression.

And it has been so. There are instances. One of the disciples of Mahavira was immensely capable of expressing things which are very difficult to express. His name was Goshalak. He was so articulate that even in the commune of Mahavira, many had become his disciples. He spoke so beautifully, so poetically, so authoritatively, that the idea was bound to happen to his ego: he asked Mahavira, "You declare me as your successor; otherwise, I am going to leave the commune with my disciples."

And he was not only a disciple.... Mahavira loved him, and was training him so that one day he could become a mystic and a master at the same time. But the crowd, and disciples - who were basically disciples of Mahavira - were choosing Goshalak as their master. His ego got inflated.

Mahavira said to him, "You were going to be something more than you are asking. A successor is not necessarily a mystic or a master. And I cannot promise anything - it is your own growth that will be decisive, not my promise. This is not a business, that I can promise you that you will inherit. It is not something that can be inherited."

Because he was refused his ego was hurt; he left the commune with five hundred of Mahavira's disciples who thought that Goshalak was far more advanced than Mahavira himself. Mahavira was very mathematical in his expression, aphoristic - he would speak in maxims which you had to elaborate by your own experience - while Goshalak had no experience but was a perfect imitator.

Even though he left with five hundred disciples, it is remarkable how Mahavira responded to this.

Mahavira said, "In the coming creation...."

In the Jaina mythology creation is a circle. Just like day and night, one creation is followed by another creation, and this goes on. Jaina mythology is far more scientific than any other religion's. It has no creator, because there is no creation. It is simply an autonomous process: existence goes on creating itself again and again. And because everything moves in circles, each circle has twenty-four tirthankaras, great masters.

Although Goshalak betrayed him, his response was that "Goshalak is going to be the first tirthankara of the coming creation - at the next creation he is going to be the first tirthankara, because he has become articulate enough. It is just that he is a little foolish. He does not understand that what he is saying, he does not know anything about. He has heard, he has not experienced.

"But he is a man capable of it. The day he becomes realized there will be a great master, not just a mystic. Right now he is just making a laughingstock of himself and of those who are following him. He knows nothing. He talks too much. He talks well, he argues profoundly, but there is no experienced content in it. But it is only a question of time. One thing is certain: that whenever he realizes he will become a master.

"And I am happy that he has left, because this will give him more chances to be articulate, to express.

Because under a big tree, small trees cannot grow - and I am a big tree." Mahavira had ten thousand disciples always following him, and millions of other disciples.

He said, "It is good that he has left me. This will give him a chance to be more sharp, more expressive. And I hope that one day he also realizes that what he is talking is just talk; inside he is empty."

So it is possible: A mystic is full inside but he cannot talk; and a pundit, a scholar, a pope, a shankaracharya, an Ayatollah Khomeini - these kinds of people who go on talking about God, about soul, about religion - have no experience at all.

It was just in Bombay twenty-five years ago; I had come for the first time to this city. The man who invited me was a very rare man, rare in the sense that there was not a single important person in India who was not respectful towards that old man. And the reason was that that old man... his name was Chiranjilal Badjate and he was the manager for Jamnalal Bajaj. Jamnalal Bajaj had invited Mahatma Gandhi from Sabarmati, Gujarat to his own place in Wardha, and had made a beautiful ashram for him there.

He gave Gandhi a blank check; whatever he wanted to spend, whatever he wanted to do with the money, he could do. He never asked, "Where does the money go? What happens to it?" And because Mahatma Gandhi was in Wardha, all the great freedom fighters in India, writers, poets, were going to see Gandhi, to meet Gandhi. And for them Jamnalal Bajaj had made a special guest house for five hundred people to stay together at one time. Chiranjilal was his manager, so he was the link between Mahatma Gandhi and Jamnalal Bajaj, Jawaharlal Nehru, Motilal Nehru, Madan Mohan Malaviya. All these people were respectful towards the old man.

He was the man who invited me to Bombay.

I had spoken at a Jaina conference, and as I came down from the stage - it was a cold night, he was covering himself with a blanket - he threw the blanket on the ground, took hold of me and asked me to sit down, just to sit down for five minutes with him.

But I said, "Your blanket will become dirty."

He said, "Forget about the blanket - you just sit down - because I don't have anything else." And I had no idea who this man was. He introduced himself; then too I had no idea, just his name.

He said, "I am inviting you to Bombay for a conference, and you cannot say no." Tears were in his eyes; he said, "In my whole I have heard life all the great orators of this country, but I have never felt such deep harmony as I have felt with you, although what you were saying was against my conditioning. I am Mahatma Gandhi's follower. I am the manager for Jamnalal, and I have lived my whole life according to Mahatma Gandhi's principles - and you were speaking against them. But still somehow I felt you are right and I have been wrong."

And he must have been seventy years old, but with great courage to say, "My seventy years were wrong"; and he had listened to me only for ten minutes. "And you cannot say no. This conference is absolutely important because I want you to be introduced to my friends in Bombay and then to my friends all over India."

So I said, "I will come."

I knew nobody in Bombay, and somehow.... Because he was an old man with thick glasses, in the night perhaps he could not see me perfectly well. He described me to the organizers of the conference here, but somehow he told them that I used a Gandhi cap. Just seventy years continuously seeing Gandhi caps, Gandhi caps - he had not seen anybody else without a Gandhi cap - so it must have been somehow completely fixed in his mind.

I was standing at the door; all the passengers had left. At least twenty-five people were running from this side to that side. They would look at me from up and down, from down and up, and just as they saw my head they would rush on. I said, "What is wrong with my head? Up to the head they look as if things are going right, and the moment they see my head they are simply gone!" But finally, I was the only passenger left, and those were the only people left who had come to receive anybody.

One of them came to me and asked, "Have you not put on your Gandhi cap today?"

I said, "Now I understand what the problem is. But who told you that I have ever used a Gandhi cap?"

And Chiranjilal had got caught somewhere in the traffic. He was coming running! - a seventy year-old man. He said, "Yes! This is the man, but where is the cap?"

I said, "You created this whole trouble. I am standing here for half an hour these people are running all over the platform looking for the Gandhi cap. If you had told me I would have put on a Gandhi cap! You never mentioned it."

He said, "My God, just old age, and I must be getting senile - just seeing these Gandhi caps day and night... even in dreams I see people with Gandhi caps! Even in my dreams I don't see people without Gandhi caps, so just forgive me."

This man, a simple man, a loving man who had known all the great thinkers of this century in India, leaders in different professions, but he could feel immediately some synchronicity, as if the parts of a jigsaw-puzzle had all fallen together in one piece and the puzzle had disappeared. He had lived with Mahatma Gandhi for twenty, thirty years and it had not happened.

There are people who can speak beautifully about the unknown, but if you are a little alert you can see that their words are empty and they don't touch your heart, they don't stir your being.

And there are mystics who are complete, whose journey has come to an end. If you are very silent, very peaceful, perhaps the inability of the mystic may not deter you; you may be able to feel the presence of something superhuman - but that will depend on you.

The master does not depend on you. He tries in a thousand and one ways; that's how all the methodologies around the world have been developed. All those methods that have been tried are just an approach to stir your heart, to make you feel something - the fire of the master's eyes, the grace of his gestures, the wordless silence surrounding his words.

The mystics are beautiful beings, but they have not helped the human consciousness to evolve.

The whole credit goes to the masters.

Question 2:

The phenomenon of weeping is mysterious.

It does not mean that you are sad, not necessarily. It is not necessarily against celebrating, against cheerfulness, against laughing; no.

The tears have a very strange function: whenever something in your heart is so much that it cannot be expressed by normal means, tears are an emergency method. So they may mean anything.

You may be very happy, so happy that laughing will look stupid but tears will look perfectly right. Your tears will show that your happiness is not an ordinary happiness - it is so deep that only tears can express it; it is so extraordinarily deep that an emergency method is used.

Two friends meeting after many days, many years, may not feel like talking; talking may look too profane. They may like just to hug each other and weep on each other's shoulders. They are saying many many things... many many memories, many many questions; unresolved moments of experience, of love. Tears will help to unburden them.

In India, particularly in villages, mothers don't allow their children to laugh too much. They have a saying that if you laugh too much then you will have to weep.

In my childhood, when I heard this I said, "This seems to be strange. If I laugh too much why should I have to weep? There seems to be no connection." But soon I had to find the connection, because when you laugh too much there comes a point when laughter starts flowing above laughter. There is more than laughter can carry... then tears, and it is a very weird experience that you are laughing and your tears are coming. That makes you laugh more, because these tears!... and that makes you bring more tears, because is this the time to laugh? The situation becomes a vicious circle.

Your question is that you start weeping easily....

Celebration is not so easy. Laughter is not so easy, because your surroundings have given you the idea that you have to be serious. Laughing brings down your seriousness.

Have you seen any saint laughing? Have you seen Jesus Christ laughing? It would be really a scene, a real miracle - on the cross, if Jesus Christ had laughed, it would have been a far bigger miracle than resurrection. He missed the real point when the miracle had to happen.

You have been taught to be serious: even if you have to laugh, smile, don't laugh. Laughter seems to be rustic; you are a cultured being. At the most just a little smile shows that you are a graduate from Oxford, a serious man.

In any profession... if you are a doctor and you laugh too much, patients won't take you seriously.

You have to be serious. The patient may not have anything, just an ordinary cold - which is not a disease, because it goes away in seven days if you don't take any medicine; if you take medicine it goes in a week. What kind of disease is this? But the doctor has to be so serious that you start feeling as if you have cancer.

Seriousness will bring a bigger fee. He writes the prescription in Greek and Latin, because if he writes in a language that you can understand then you are not going to give him even one rupee.

But you are going to give him ten rupees and it is nothing; just the rubbish that you can purchase for four annas anywhere - not in Greek and Latin - it will just be available in the market!

The doctor has to be serious. The teacher, the professor has to be serious, because if he is not serious then the students are going to take advantage of it. The father has to be serious in front of the children; he is a father. The mother has to be serious.

Everywhere laughter is denied.

Naturally you learn all this stupid behavior, so when times come for celebrating you start crying and weeping. Your normal ways of celebration are closed, clogged. They have to be opened; you have to clean all your passages, you have to learn how to laugh heartily - not just a smile. Why be so miserly? It costs nothing to have a good laugh.

Neither are you allowed to cry: if you are a man then it is 'feminine' to cry. And it is a plain fact that women, because they are not prevented from crying, are psychologically healthier than men.

Men commit suicide more than women, the number is double - although women talk a thousand times more about committing suicide. They also take sleeping pills, but you will always find them the next day, again committing suicide. They never take too many sleeping pills, either.

Women go mad less; men go mad three times more than women. Strange... why this difference?

It is because men are repressing everything. The woman is allowed a little because she is not considered equal to men. She can be allowed to cry - she is after all a woman, not equal to men.

She can have a tantrum, she can throw things, but you will always see, that she throws things which are worthless, in fact which need to be thrown. She tries to hit you but never hits you; she always makes it a point to miss you.

You are not supposed to do such things; you are a man, a serious man: a doctor, a professor, an engineer, a scientist, a bishop, a cardinal. It doesn't look right for a cardinal to throw a tantrum. But a woman is a woman - crying, throwing things, weeping - she throws out her insanity in installments.

You go on collecting wholesale; then one day it erupts like a volcano, then it is beyond your control.

To me, it is absolutely beautiful to cry, beautiful to laugh, beautiful to enjoy, dance, sing.

The poor sannyasin who sings here... somebody met him yesterday and they told him, "Unless we kill you, you are this man he is going to sing every day." They followed him. He was very much afraid.

He has not done anything to them but they are against singing, it seems, and they wanted him to stop singing.

There are people who are against singing. There is a whole religion, Mohammedanism - millions of people who are against singing. Strange - singing is sin! If singing is sin, then what can be virtue?

If dancing is sin, then what can be art?

But we have made a world on almost insane principles.

Just a simple sanity is needed and humanity will start flowering in all ways, in all directions, in all dimensions.

It is beautiful to see somebody laughing, or to see tears come into somebody's eyes. Even though they are of sadness, still they have a beauty of their own because they have a silence; but they can be of joy....

All the religions of the world have been against life, so anything that makes life more alive, they have been trying to cut its roots.

I am all for life.

Everything in life should be accepted - not tolerated, but accepted joyously - and only then will we have a man who is psychologically sane.

Question 3:

It is so simple. Just avoid your parents! What business do these fellows have in your marriage?

It is strange in the first place that you allow them to stand between you and the girl, and to decide.

They bring the girl to show to you - do you belong to this century or to some ancient, golden age?

Then it was right, because children were married. Now a six year old boy cannot go by himself to find a girl. He has to be brought forcibly, because he wants to go somewhere else! He has so many other things to do - what nonsense this marriage is to a six year old boy.

My mother has said to me that she was seven years old when she was married. Now the whole house and the whole village was receiving the marriage party outside, and she was tied to a pillar inside the house. Because she was insisting: she could not understand that everybody was allowed to see the show, only she was not allowed. This is strange! And moreover, they all said, "This is your marriage." "If this is my marriage, then I must be there. Everybody else is there, only I am tied to this pole!"

You should be contemporary. Just tell your parents, "What are you doing? You have never loved; you don't know what love is. How are you going to choose a girl who is going to be my beloved? What criteria have you got? You were married by your parents, they were married by their parents...."

Love has not existed in the East at all.

We have destroyed love and replaced it with a false, plastic thing - marriage. But it is time.

And you are not a small boy, a small girl, that the parents have to decide. So in the first place, put your parents right: "You do your job: fight with mom. And I am going to Chowpati to find a girl."

What nonsense are you talking about? - "Am I going to live without a woman in my life." Search for your girl yourself. This is the beginning of seeking! Unfortunately, you are going to find, so don't be worried. It is very rare, very fortunate people like me who manage not to succeed, who go on failing.

But you will not fail.

And what is the need of bringing my name in when you are looking for a girl? That is certainly dangerous. You can bring my name in when you are married - then it is something great. So whenever you want a good fight you can bring my name in. But as far as the beginning is concerned, even if the girl brings up my name you pretend as if you don't know anything about me; she may bring it up, you simply ignore it. No girl on Chowpati.... Juhu is different: here, if you don't know my name no girl is going to look at you! Just mention my name and that's enough, you have said "I love you," - and then other things will follow.

Just be a little alert about with whom you are talking. If you see it is a girl who looks like a sannyasin...

and no sannyasin can hide.

The Indian government has informed all the embassies that no sannyasins should be given entry into India, so sannyasins are going there without the mala, without orange clothes, but somehow they are caught. Now letters have started reaching me: "What is the matter? Those people immediately start asking questions about you. They say there is something in sannyasins that makes them different - they look more stable, more centered; more integrated, more together; more graceful, unafraid of the world."

So if you see that somebody is a sannyasin you can drop my name and it will be of great help, but if you see that somebody is not a sannyasin then avoid my name. Wait a little. You are a sannyasin; you know what waiting means. First just let the marriage be registered; then, going out of the registry office you can mention my name - and you can tell the whole thing, because from there begins the story of your tragedy.

But you seem to miss it very much, and you must have a taste of it. That is your birthright, and in fact it is absolutely necessary. Unless you go through the tragedy of marriage, you will never understand the freedom of sannyas. So I don't say don't get married. I say get married as quickly as possible.

Finish with that experiment quickly and become a sannyasin.

And with marriage I may be able to make two sannyasins - because both have suffered. It is not only you that has suffered.

First put your parents right, that "It is none of your business. Now I am going to search - first on Chowpati. If I fail on Chowpati I am going to Juhu." Here you will not fail, so before you enter Juhu think twice!

Question 4:

All the methods that lead man to realization are, essentially, awareness. Their non-essential components may be different.

I have spoken on yoga, on tantra, on Hassidism, on Tao, on Zen, on all possible methods that humanity has tried. I wanted you to be aware of all the ways through which man has been searching to reach the truth that liberates - but each method is essentially awareness.

That's why now I am emphasizing only awareness.

So whatever you are doing, whatever method you are practicing, it makes no difference. Those are different names given by different people in different ages, but they were all practicing awareness.

In essence, it is only awareness that leads you to the ultimate goal.

There are not many paths. There are many names for one path, and that one path is awareness.

Question 5:

It is true, Sarjano; but you have disappeared, I don't see you anywhere.

This is a cunning question.

Everybody is present; only Sarjano has disappeared! But I do understand what he means.

The master is the last barrier on the path. The love for the master is difficult to drop. One can drop everything - one can renounce the whole world, one can renounce himself - but unless the last thing also is dropped, that small clinging with the master remains the base for your ego.

Gautam Buddha has said, "If you meet me on the way, immediately cut my head." He is talking metaphorically. Because when you are meditating everything will disappear, but finally, you will see the master is there. When the whole world has disappeared the master is there. That is your last love, and it is so satisfying, so gratifying, that one wants to be in that state forever.

Only the master can say, "This is not the goal. One step more: remove this attachment with the master too, so you are absolutely unattached."

In absolute unattachment the ego disappears.

And the disappearance of the ego is not the disappearance of you. The disappearance of the ego is really the appearance of you for the first time; the false disappears and the true comes to revelation.

Sarjano, you are right; it is difficult, but it has to be made possible. It is not impossible because many have done it. And you are not doing it against the master; you are fulfilling the last message of the master.

Let the ego disappear.

But it will disappear only when there is no attachment.

And the moment there is no ego at all, for the first time you are.

Then you will feel grateful towards the master forever because if he had not been insistent, you would have remained in that beautiful state. But there is something beyond, more; and the master would not like you to be stuck on the path.

The master wants you to be totally liberated, liberated from everything; he is included in that 'everything'.

But Sarjano is clever: he has put the question here and he has escaped to Italy! That won't help - I will haunt him wherever he is. He will have to disappear!