Chapter 22

[NOTE: This is a typed tape transcript and has not been edited or published, as of August 1992. It is for reference use only. The interviewer's remarks have been omitted where not relevant to Osho's words]

Q: BHAGWAN, WHEN I LISTEN TO YOU I FEEL I AM FLOATING IN THE OCEAN AND I AM FILLED (INAUDIBLE) DIVINE, BUT YOU DO NOT SPEAK ABOUT THE ZERO. IS IT BECAUSE THAT WE ALL COME FROM THE ZERO AND WE WILL VANISH IN THE ZERO?

A: This is one of the most familiar perennial questions man has ever asked. It is immensely significant to understand few implications of it, before I answer the question directly.

First, the way it is presented it is not a question. It is a statement. You are saying, from the zero we all come, and into zero we all dissolve. Where is the question?

You are speaking as if you know. A question comes as an inquiry. This is not an inquiry. You are stating something out of your knowledgeability. Please forgive me if it hurts you. I am helpless, because I can say only what is true. And truth always hurts.

You do not know that you come from the zero, do you? You do not know that you disappear into the zero, do you? You are simply covering your ignorance. It would be better to say that "I don't know from where I come, and I don't know where I go." Anything that you accept without questioning is dangerous, because you start believing in it.

I say to you, you don't come from zero; because out of zero nothing can come.

That is the exact meaning of zero. It is empty, it is nothingness. Out of nothingness, something is not possible. And something cannot dissolve into nothingness again. There is no way. The scientists are aware of the fact that in existence you cannot destroy anything; you can change its forms. Even a small piece of rock, you cannot destroy it. You can crack it into pieces, but the rock is still there, in pieces. You can make it into powder, but the rock is still there. You can throw it into the ocean, it may disappear from your eyes, but it is still there you know. Nothing that exists can go into non-existence. And vice versa. That is non-existence cannot come into existence.

From where you got the idea that we come from zero? You don't know anything from before your birth, where you were. You don't know when a person dies where he goes. Your ignorance you are covering in a word, zero. Don't be satisfied so soon.

I would like you to cut a seed and look into it. You will not find any flowers, you will not find any fragrance, you will not find any leaves, branches. But they are all there; just you don't have the eyes to see. They are potentially there, and you can see only the actual. The potential eludes you. Sow the seed in the garden, and one day suddenly you see green sprouts coming out of nothingness. You know they were not in the seed. From where they are coming? And then a great foliage, a whole bush, and hundreds of flowers, and that beautiful perfume. It was not in the seed. You had looked into it. But I say to you, it was in the seed.

Otherwise it cannot come. From where it can come? It was potentially in the seed, and we don't have the eyes to see the potential; we can see only the actual.

In Soviet Russia there is a scientist and a great photographer, Kirlian. He has developed a special kind of camera, very sensitive lenses, very sensitive films.

And he takes the film of a rosebud, and when he shows you the picture you are simply amazed. The rosebud is not in the picture, but a fully grown up flower.

After seven days the rose becomes the flower and the strangest thing is, it is exactly as the picture was. Kirlian has developed a more sensitive eye than we have. In can take the pictures of the potential. Now Kirlian is working on diseases. You bring a perfectly healthy person to him. He takes the picture and says that "Within six months this man is going to have tuberculosis," because it shows in his picture. And within six months that healthy person falls sick, has tuberculosis. It was in the seed, in the potential. Our eyes are very limited.

So I would like to remind you, you don't come from a seed. You come from a fullness of existence, from perfection; from a fulfilled existence. You were in the seed, and perhaps one day you will go back into that silence of the organic whole.

But don't call it zero. It is not empty, it is full. It is full of everything that you see in the universe. It is full of all the stars, all the suns, all the planets, all the people, all the flowers; and much more. Because every day, new stars are being born.

There is no zero anywhere. It is only an abstract concept in mathematics. It is non-existential. In reality, there is no zero. Have you met zero in reality anywhere? In reality you always meet something, never nothing. Nothing is only a concept, and don't be deluded by the concept.

I am reminded of a beautiful story. A small girl, Alexis, has reached into the land of the fairies. She is presented to the king, and the king asks little Alexis, "Have you met any postman coming towards me?" He was waiting for some urgent message, and it was getting late.

Alexis said, "Nobody, sir." And the king misunderstood the word nobody. He thought "nobody" is "somebody".

So he said, "But if you had met nobody on the way towards me, nobody must have reached before you. Where is he?"

Alexis was puzzled. She simply said, "Sir, nobody is nobody."

But the king said, "I know nobody is nobody, but where he is?"

Zero is only a mathematical concept, man-made, it has no existential status. We come from a divine fullness, and we are carrying that fullness within us, with each beat of our heart, our life belongs to that divine fullness.

Even in death; you don't disappear into a zero. Only the body, your house, which has become old and dilapidated, disappears into its elementary forces. But you, as a consciousness, as a being, go on moving into new forms, until that ultimate moment when you realize your divineness, when you realize that you are not just a man, but something more; that you are not just a part of time, but part of eternity. After that realization, you don't go into another form. You have come to the end of a long pilgrimage, you have come to the goal, you have reached home.

You enter into the divine fullness consciously.

You have come out of divine fullness unconsciously. That's why you don't know from where you are coming. But when you enter consciously, with full awareness, you know that the circle is complete. That's why we have called the world samsara. `Samsara' simply means the circle. Whenever the circle is complete, you consciously enter into the same space, into the same blissfulness, from where you had come, but unconsciously. And the world is nothing but a school, to change your unconsciousness into consciousness.

Please don't use negative words like zero. They are dangerous. If you put two zeros on both the extremes of your life your birth is out of zero, your death is into a zero, between these two zeros what you can be, except a zero? Between two zeros, what meaning you can have? What fullness you can experience? Your life will be just a desert. A long series of empty moments with no significance.

Avoid negative words! Use positive words; because existence is positive. There is nothing negative in existence, and if you become accustomed to negative words, you lose contact with existence.

It will be a great blessing to you if you can drop that word zero, and start thinking of a divine, overflowing energy that has created you. Just a small word can change your whole flavor of life. It can give you a new song and a new dance, because on both the sides there is a divine fullness. Your life is no more empty. You can see yourself as part of a vast organic unity that this universe is.

And to me this is what religiousness means -- to be positive, to approach life positively. Learn to say "Yes," and drop to say "No." And you will be surprised, that what a revolution comes by a simple change.

Q: BHAGWAN, WHAT ARE YOUR SUGGESTIONS TO IMPROVE THE EXISTING LAW AND LEGAL SYSTEMS IN THE WORLD, SO AS TO MAKE IT MORE EFFECTIVE AND ABIDING?

A: I would like to start from a small story. It happened twenty five centuries before in China. There was a wise man, Lao Tzu. The emperor of China appointed him as supreme-most judge of the whole empire. And Lao Tzu tried to persuade the emperor that he will repent: "Don't do this; I am not going to fit with your legal systems, because it is basically wrong. It does not need reformation; it needs revolution."

But the king was stubborn, and he insisted that "You become my supreme judge."

The first case appeared before him in the court -- a thief has stolen from the richest man of the capital almost half of his treasures. It was a great crime. The legal system that was prevailing in the country would have given him death. But Lao Tzu called the rich man also to the court and said that "Both these people are criminals. And they both should be sentenced to jail for six months."

The rich man said, "What kind of justice is this? I have been robbed. My half treasure has been stolen by this man, and you are punishing me; for what?"

Lao Tzu said, "Because you have accumulated so much money that it is bound to create thieves in the country. You are a criminal first. This man comes in a secondary category."

The rich man rushed to the king and said that "What kind of man you have chosen to be your supreme judge? He is dangerous. Today I am going to jail, tomorrow you will go to jail!"

Of course, immediately Lao Tzu was removed.

You are asking me what improvements, what changes, are needed in the legal system. As I see it, it is basically wrong. It needs nothing less than a revolution; because down the centuries you have been increasing your courts, judges, legal experts, and laws have become everyday more and more complicated. And the criminals are growing tremendously. By all this legal system on one hand increasing, on the other hand the crime goes on increasing, ten times more than your legal system. You have not been able to cope with it. There is something very fundamentally wrong.

As I see it, first the whole legal system is based on social revenge, not on social compassion. Sometimes it goes to stupid extremes; for example, suicide is a crime, and if a man is caught committing suicide, he has not yet committed. He has been simply caught making an effort to commit. Then your legal system, sentencing him to death, is strange. That's what he was going to do. So why all this fuss? Years of arguments, courts, judges, wastage of time and money, and finally you sentence the man to death. And that's what he was going to do, on his own, without your support.

Your whole legal system is a revenge system. The society punishes a person because he was disobedient, because he did not follow the crowd, because he was not part of the mob. He tried to be an individual on his own. He was playing his game according to his own rules. Revenge is not going to help, because you are doing the same crime that the criminal has committed. Of course, you have the support of the whole society; so nobody calls your punishment a crime. But any unprejudiced mind can see what you are doing.

A man commits rape. A man commits robbery. A man commits murder.

Certainly something has to be done. But not punishment. Because the man who commits rape simply means he is sexually unsatisfied. And your society has not given him a chance to be sexually satisfied.

Mohammedans are allowed to marry four wives. In the world there is an equal proportion of men and women. Now if men are going to marry four wives, then what about those three men who will remain without wives? And if they start committing rape, is it a crime? Nizam of Hyderabad just forty years before had five hundred wives. And you want to prevent rape? Maharaja Patyallah(*), he was a beautiful man; in Patyallah(*) any beautiful woman was in danger. She was going to be taken sooner or later, once the Maharaja looks at her, the next day she will disappear. He must have been a really courageous man. He could not manage to take away the daughter of the Viceroy of India. So he raped.

Now, this man seems to be psychologically sick. He had hundreds of wives, concubines, and still he rapes. He does not need punishment. He needs treatment. He should be sent to a psychiatric hospital where his mind can be put right. Something is wrong with his mind. The punishment cannot change him, because the punishment has nothing to do with psychology. In fact, once a person goes to jail, jail becomes his home. He goes again and again. Jail is a kind of university, because there are master criminals. When you send somebody for the first time in jail, he is an amateur. In the jail he finds great masters of crime, experts. He learns the art, he learns that it is not the crime that has brought him to the jail. It is being caught that has brought him to the jail.

You can go on committing as many crimes as you want. Just don't be caught.

Because crime is not punished; being caught is punished. This is a strange situation. Those who are caught are in jail. Those who are not caught may be very respectable citizens, powerful people in the society.

(Tape side B) I am against all kinds of punishment. The whole idea of punishment is inhuman.

Anybody committing a crime simply shows that he needs psychiatric help.

Instead of jails, we need psychiatric hospitals, where the person can be taken care of respectfully, with dignity, because once a person's dignity is destroyed you have reduced him into a permanent criminal.

In a psychiatric hospital, he should be respected, he should be treated just like any patient. You will be surprised to know that in the past many patients were punished for the simple reason because they were not thought to be patients. For example, somebody was mad. He was punished, he was sent to a jail. Now we can see the stupidity of it all. A madman, you are sending him to jail? It is very difficult to decide whether you are mad or he is mad. What the jail can do to a madman? He needs a dignified respectful treatment. And that's what we are doing now.

About other crimes, the same is the situation. Crime does not happen out of nowhere; it is something in your mind. Something is wrong, which can be put right. And we have enough development of psychological sciences that the mind can be changed completely. One thing is certain, that the criminal has a very powerful personality. His personality, his power, if diverted towards creativity, may bring great blessings to the society. Right now they become a burden on the society. Thousands of people in jail are living on your labor, on your taxes, on your work. And when they will come out of the jail, they will come more with great expertise, and you will not be able to catch hold of them so easily.

The whole idea of punishment is barbarious. The legal system should change its foundations. Every crime should be treated as a mental disease. And then things will be totally different; then society is showing compassion, not revenge. And you are helping people to become more human, more integrated. And while they are being treated, you can teach them, you can allow them to learn some skill, some craft, so when they come out of the psychiatric hospital they are not dependent on the society. They can create their living by their own effort, and you have given them so much respect, so much dignity, that it will be impossible for them to commit again a crime.

I am reminded of a mystic who had only one blanket. In the day he used to cover his body with the blanket. In the night he used to cover itself to protect him from the cold. One cold night, a full moon night, a thief by accident entered his cottage. I say by accident, because otherwise who goes to a mystic's hut to steal what you can get there? In fact, the mystic was awake. He went behind the thief.

The thief was shocked, embarrassed. The mystic said, "Don't be worried. I have just come because I have been living in this place for thirty or more years, I have not found anything. Perhaps you can find. We can divide it. I will join in the search!"

The thief could not believe this man. He said, "I am a thief."

The mystic said, "Forget all about these adjectives. Who is not a thief? Everybody is stealing something or other. People are stealing knowledge through books, people are stealing every kind of thing; so don't be worried. And I am a holy man, and I am joining with you. It is a search. I have been here for thirty years looking for something. There is nothing in this house. Perhaps it is not in my fate; maybe you have a better fate. Something may be found. And I don't ask much.

Just half of the share."

The thief was very much puzzled. He had never come across such a man. He said, "Thirty years you have been here and you have not found anything. There is no possibility. Just let me go. It is so cold, but seeing you I am perspiring. You have made me so nervous, and it is just by accident that I have entered. Just forgive me."

The mystic said, "Only on one condition, that you will have to take this blanket; because this is the only thing I have got. And you have honored me so much.

Because thieves enter into kings' palaces; who comes to a poor man's hut. You have honored me. For a moment I feel like a king. So just don't refuse. Take this blanket."

The thief could not say anything, but when he saw that the mystic was naked, he had only the blanket, he felt really sorry that he has done for the first time something wrong. In his whole life he has never felt that he has done anything wrong. But to face this man was so difficult, to refuse this man was so difficult, he escaped with the blanket out of the door.

The man shouted, "Stop!"

And the thief stopped and looked back and he said, "Have I done anything wrong?"

He said, "Yes, at least close the doors. And you have forgotten to give me at least just a thank you. It may help you in the future some time. So say thank you, close the door. And then you can go away wherever you want."

He said, "Thank you," closed the door and ran away.

Naked, the saint was sitting near the window, looking at the full moon. And he heard a song. The meaning of the song is, "I am so poor, I could not give him anything more. He must be in desperate need. Otherwise who comes five miles out of the city to a lonely isolated hut of a mystic. If it was in my power, I would have given him the full moon. Not less than that. But I am a poor man. I cannot do anything else than give my blanket."

Later on the thief in another case was caught by the police, brought to the court, was asked "Do you know anybody who can identify you?" He said, I don't know anybody, except a mystic who lives outside the city. Perhaps he can recognize me."

The saint was called to the court, he recognized the thief, but he said to the magistrate that "Don't punish this poor man. I had given him my blanket, he has not stolen. And he is a very graceful gentleman. He has not only not stolen my blanket, he said `Thank you, sir,' and when I said to him, `Close the doors' he is so obedient. He closed the doors. He is a very humble man. Forgive him.

The mystic was very much respected in the surroundings. The magistrate himself was a follower of the mystic. When he said, forgive him, he forgave him.

As the mystic was leaving the court he found the thief following him. He said, "Why you are following me?"

He said, "Now I am going to be with you forever. I have never come a man who has ever respected me as a human being. You have given me dignity. Others have treated me like a dog, a thief; and the more they have mistreated me, the more I have done the same things, out of revenge. You are the only man who has not bothered about my actions. But you have looked directly into my eyes, and into my being. I am not going to leave you." The thief became a saint in his own way. He became the successor of the old saint.

The whole legal system needs to drop revengefulness. It has to become compassionate; it has to treat human beings with respect. Actions don't count.

What counts is the whole personality, which is a vast thing. An action is a small thing. Don't make it too big. And we are making it too big. Somebody does something wrong -- and remember it is human to err; everybody commits mistakes. But the mistakes should not be taken as equivalent to his life. It is only a small fragment in a long series. Don't give it too much importance. Don't make it the focus of light. Don't throw that man into a jail, undignified, unhonored, all his humanity taken away. Don't behave with that man as if he is an animal.

Society needs to be more compassionate. Law needs to be more compassionate.

Remember, man is not for law; law is for man. And if law is not helping man, then it has to be changed. It has not helped. There is no doubt about it. And I am not saying that "Withdraw all laws, and dissolve all courts." I am saying that your courts and your laws and your legal experts should make the whole phenomenon based on compassion, not on revenge.

And compassion is the essence of all religions. And if we cannot create our legal system based on the essential, fundamental religious experience of the ages, then future will condemn us; then future will think about us as barbarious, then future is not going to accept as civilized people, cultured. I am reminded of H. G.

Wells.

One man said to him, "What do you think about civilization?"

And H G Wells said, "It is a good idea, but it has yet to happen."

Civilization has not happened? And a man of the calibre and intelligence like H G Wells thinks so. It has not happened yet. We are still living in a barbarious age.

Perhaps we have better clothes, better houses, polite nice manners; beautiful masks to hide our faces; but deep down, there is the animal who hankers for revenge.

It is strange to see that still there are countries where death sentence is legal. If a man has murdered someone, and you think it is a crime; certainly it is a crime.

Nobody has the right to destroy somebody else' life. But what you are doing?

You destroy that man's life. And I don't see the logic, because if this man's murder, crucifixion, was going to revive the other man, then too there was some logic in it. Instead of one man dead, now there will be two men dead. And you think law is satisfied, the society is satisfied; but this satisfaction is ugly.

So I will not go into the details of law, because that is not my function. My function is to change the foundation. Then details will change automatically. Up to now revenge has been the foundation; let compassion be the foundation in the future.

It is a very strange experience. I have been visiting jails, teaching prisoners meditation, and I was surprised that they are more innocent than your magistrates, than your advocates, than your law makers. They are more innocent people. I have been in jail in America for twelve days, and that gave me a great experience, from the inside. I have been to jails before, but I was an outsider. This time I was an insider, and inmate. And I was surprised to know, utterly surprised, that the people you have condemned as criminals, condemned for their whole life to live in darkness and dismal cells, which is worse than death, are far more innocent, loving, understanding.

In twelve days I was in five jails, because they were afraid to keep me in one jail.

It was surrounded by news media, by sannyasins, by people who love me; and they were afraid that something may go wrong. So they went on changing me from one jail to another. It was good for me, because I came to know thousands of criminals -- and not a single person in those five jails, and each jail had five hundred, six hundred, seven hundred people -- not a single criminal was against me. They were all in favor of me, because they were looking on the television continuously, my statements; and when I passed through the cells, every criminal was showing me the sign of victory. And they were shouting in different languages that "Bhagwan, don't be worried. Final victory is yours!"

I will ask the jail authorities for small things -- a toothbrush, toothpaste, a soap, a towel, a comb, and it will take twelve hours for the toothbrush to appear, but the toothpaste is not there! And if toothpaste will appear, then toothbrush is not there. If the soap will appear, the towel is not there. I cannot take a shower. But I was amazed that these criminals will go on throwing things into my cell; and they will say, "Bhagwan, this is absolutely new, we have not used it. This toothbrush, you can see it is still sealed, we have been keeping it, we had never known that this will be our blessing, to give it to you."

I will ask for milk and the answer was, no. And some criminal will bring his own milk, and he said that "These people are simply harassing you." Every criminal is getting milk, and to you they say there is no milk, no fruits, knowing perfectly well that I am vegetarian, and I will not be eating anything else than fruits and vegetables, milk. You will be surprised that in twelve days whatsoever I have eaten has been given to me by the criminals, not by the jail authorities. Out of their own -- because they used to get one apple every day, and if I was in a cell where there were six people, they all bring their apples. I had six apples. I will say, "I cannot eat six apples. And it is, you know, you are all Christians, just one apple Adam and Eve had eaten, and humanity is suffering still. And you are giving me six! Do you want me to get out of jail or not?"

I came to see that we are not doing justice to these people. Their small act, maybe in a fit of anger, they did something. And it has become their whole life. You have not given them a chance to change. You have finished them. You have put a full stop. Just a small fit of anger, and the man may have done something. What he needs is, to be taught how anger can be dispersed, how one can come above anger; but this you are not doing. By forcing him into jails, you are making him more angry. You are creating more criminals.

Your whole legal system is a criminal system.

Q: I AM A LAWYER. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO MEDITATE, AND WHEN, WHEN I AM OCCUPIED ALL OF THE TIME. SO PLEASE SUGGEST.(*) A: It is important to understand because all the teachers of meditation in the world have been telling you that you have to keep a separate time for meditation. Mohammedans have to meditate five times in the day. Five times they have to close their shops, their businesses if they are real Mohammedans.

But this is absolutely impractical. If the man is driving a railway train, or flying an aeroplane, and he has to stop five times, this is not going to be meditation, this is going to be a massacre!

My approach about meditation is totally different. I do not say to you that you have to have a separate time for meditation. Meditation has to be just like breathing -- you don't have a separate time for it, that in the morning you breathe and then you go to your business and forget breathing. You go on doing your things, and breathing continues.

Meditation has to be something like that, that it runs like an undercurrent in your all activities of the day. I will suggest you a very simple meditation.

Whatever you are doing -- you may be digging a hole in the earth, planting new rosebushes in your garden, working in your shop, or fighting a case in the court - - it does not matter what you are doing. Do it consciously, do it with full awareness.

I will tell you what I mean by it. Once Buddha was passing in Shrivasti with his dearest disciple, Ananda. A fly came and sat on his forehead. Just as we will do, he simply waved his hand and the fly was gone. Then he stopped, and took his hand very carefully, very consciously. The fly was no more there, and he waved his hand with great grace. Ananda could not understand what is happening. He said, "You have the fly few minutes before, and it is gone. Now what are you doing?"

And Buddha said, "That time I did it wrong. I did it without awareness. I continued to talk to you, and mechanically I simply waved my hand without being conscious of what I am doing. Now I am doing it as I should have done in the first place, to remind me that it does not happen again." Any action done with awareness becomes meditation.

(Tape side C) In the beginning it will be difficult, you will go on forgetting again and again.

But don't be discouraged. Even if in twenty four hours you can manage for twenty four seconds, that is more than enough. Because the secret is the same. If you can manage it for one second, you know the key. You know the knack. Then it is only a question of time. Slowly, slowly, you will be having bigger gaps when you are aware. The action continues; not only it continues, it becomes better than ever before; because now you are doing with such consciousness. Its quality changes, because you are conscious, you are totally there. Your intensity changes, your insight, your understanding; and the action that you are doing starts having a grace of its own.

Meditation should be slowly spread all over your life. Even while going to sleep, lying down on your bed, it will take few minutes for you to go to sleep. Those few minutes be alert, of the silence, of the darkness, of the relaxed body. Remain alert as sleep starts descending on you, till you are completely overwhelmed by the sleep, and you will be surprised that if you had continued to the very last moment when sleep took over you, in the morning the first thought will be again of awareness; because whatever is the last thought before you go to sleep is always the first thought in the morning when you wake up. Because it continues as an undercurrent in your sleep.

You cannot find time, nobody has time. The day is so full. But six or eight hours in the night can be transformed into meditation. Even a Buddha will feel jealous of you. Even he cannot meditate eight hours. It is simply an intelligent effort to transform your sleep. You are taking a shower. Why not take it with awareness.

Why take it mechanically? Just doing like a robot, because you have been doing it every day, so you go on doing it and it becomes mechanical. Do everything non-mechanically, and slowly, slowly meditation will not be a question that it needs separate time. It becomes spread all over your day, twenty four hours.

Then only you are on the right track.

The people who meditate ten minutes in the morning, are not going to gain much. Because ten minutes of meditation, and twenty four hours against it, how you are going to win? You have to put twenty four hours of meditation against twenty four hours of ordinary life. Then there is absolute guarantee that success is going to be yours.

Q: BHAGWAN, WHY ONE NEEDS A MASTER?

A: Nobody needs a master.

But then, the journey will be very long. It may take many lives for you to discover the truth. So this is the first thing to remember, that the master is not an absolute need. You can go on your own alone, because truth is nobody's monopoly. You can seek and search and find it. The only thing is, how long it will take for you, because there are thousands of ways which lead nowhere. And there is only one way that leads to truth.

How you are going to find that one way amongst thousands of ways? The only logical method will be, move on every way and find out that this is not the right way. Eliminate it. Move on another way, and find out this is not the right way; eliminate it. Elimination is the only way for the person who has no master.

But how long it will take for you to eliminate thousands of ways? Perhaps thousands of lives. And who knows, you may get discouraged. Most probably you will get discouraged. You may start thinking, perhaps there is no road, no way. Just to console yourself you may start thinking, there is no truth. I am simply wasting my time, my energy, my life. So remember it. As far as I am concerned, the master is not an absolute need. But, without a master it is almost impossible to find the right path, and the most shortest path that leads to the ultimate truth.

The master cannot give you the truth. But the master can show you that you need not go on wrong paths. He can eliminate those paths. Without him, you will have to go through those paths and eliminate yourself. The master can eliminate them for you. He cannot show you the right path. Let me insist it. He cannot show you the right path, he cannot show you the truth. But he can show you what is false, what is wrong. And if you know what is false, what is wrong, then you can discover the truth more easily.

The master's function is to eliminate the false and leave you alone with the truth and the right path. Ordinarily people think that the master gives you the path.

No, he does not give you the path. He simply takes away all wrong paths. Then whatever is left is for you to travel. It is up to you. If you choose a long journey, which will be spread over many lives, you are free to do it. But if you want, if truth is a thirst and an urgency, then the master is the greatest friend in this world. And remember, I don't want to call the master the master. Because that gives an impression as if you are a slave. And that's what your so-called masters have been doing. They are masters, and you are spiritual slaves.

The real master is only a friend, nothing more, nothing less. He can share his experience with you, he can show you how he has been failing, how he has been going on wrong ways, how he has faltered, fallen, how many lives he has been searching. And help you to avoid all that.

If you understand the master as a great friend, you will not unnecessarily waste your life searching for truth. What is the harm, to give your hand in the hand of a friend? Why are you so afraid? I can see, the fear is because your so-called masters have created slaves around themselves. The real master does not create slaves. He creates independent people, individuals. And he takes your hand only to the point where wrong paths are eliminated, and only the right one is left.

That is the moment he will pull his hand away from you; in spite of you; even if you want, the master will say, "You have to go alone from here. Nobody can accompany you to the ultimate shrine of truth. Everybody has to go alone, totally alone. Up to here it was okay. I was eliminating the false, but now you are standing facing the right path, so I have to say goodbye to you." A friend knows when to help and when not to help. A friend knows when to hold your hand and when to leave you alone.

Find a master who can be a friend, and does not enslave you. He can be of tremendous help.

Okay.