When the disciple is ready

Question 1:

Maneesha, even enlightenment is not enough to express the gratitude the disciple has for the master.

There is simply no way.

The gratitude of the disciple remains unexpressed. It is one of those mysteries which can be experienced but cannot be explained. It will look strange to you when I say that the closer the disciple comes to enlightenment, the more difficult it becomes for him to express the gratitude - because now he is coming to a point which he had never known before. He has been grateful all the way along, but enlightenment, the experience of one's own unfolding, is just too much. You can simply shed tears, or dance - but everything is ineffectual; it shows your intention only, but not the gratitude.

The depth and the greatness of gratitude is such that no word can express it, no experience can express it. But in a way, becoming enlightened comes closest to showing gratitude to the master - you have fulfilled his effort, his effortless effort. His presence has not been wasted on you, you have proved your mettle. It is better to say you have not been ungrateful, you have not betrayed. Through all the ups and downs, through many dark nights of the soul, you continued having trust, love, never wavering for a moment - your enlightenment indicates that.

But there is no need to express gratitude. What is needed is to become gratitude. And then it is not a question of being grateful to the master. When you become gratitude, you are simply a gratefulness towards the whole existence.

The master was only a door to the open sky, to all the stars beyond.

It is beautiful to think of gratefulness, but there are things where you are dumb. You want to say but you cannot - just the words fail, actions fail. And I am telling you, even experiences fail. It makes you transformed. Rather than just being grateful, it brings a mutation in you, a tremendous revolution - you become gratitude itself. That's the only way.

But it has nothing to do with the master as such. When you pass the door, you don't thank the door.

The master is simply an opening. You will remain always grateful, but your gratefulness will remain unexpressed.

This is one of those things which, the moment you express them in any way they are dead. They remain alive only unexpressed.

Question 2:

It is both.

As far as the master is concerned, it is absolutely a conscious choice.

As far as the disciple is concerned, it is bound to be accidental. He is not conscious yet.

The Egyptian mystics have a saying.... And Egypt had a few of the most ancient mystery schools.

They were connected with those mystery schools which existed on the continent of Atlantis and Lemuria. Those continents are drowned, under water. But Egypt, for a time - till the fanatic Mohammedans destroyed those mystery schools - continued the beautiful methodologies for finding oneself.

The Egyptian mystics say: When the disciple is ready, the master appears.

For the master, it is something absolutely conscious. A Sufi story will help you to understand it.

A young man, with a great desire to know the truth renounced his family, his world, and went in search of a master. And as he was leaving the town he saw an old man - he must have been nearabout sixty - sitting under a tree, so silent, so blissful, so attractive, so magnetic that he was pulled. Unknowingly, accidentally, he went to the old man and told him that he was in search of a master. "You are an old man, and I can feel the flavor of your wisdom. I can feel a certain radiance around you. Perhaps you will be able to tell me where I should go, and what are the criteria - how am I going to decide that this is my master? There are masters and masters, but who is the master who is going to lead me to the ultimate?"

The old man said, "It is very simple," and he described exactly what kind of a man he would be, what kind of an atmosphere he would have around him, how old he would be - even under what kind of tree he would be sitting.

The young man thanked the old man. The old man said, "The time to thank me has not come yet; I will wait for it." The young man could not understand: "What does he mean, he will wait for it?"

For thirty years he was searching for the master in the deserts, in the mountains... but he could not find all the criteria fulfilled. Tired, utterly frustrated, he went back home. He was no longer young.

When he left he must have been thirty, now he was almost sixty.

But as he was entering his home, he saw the old man still sitting under the tree. He could not believe his eyes. He said, "My God. This is the man he described - he even said he would be ninety years old... and this is the tree! I must have been so absolutely unconscious that I did not look at the tree under which he was sitting. And the fragrance that he described - the radiance, the presence, the aliveness around him...."

He fell at his feet and he said, "But what kind of joke is this? Thirty years I have been wandering in the deserts, in the mountains. And you knew it."

The old man said, "My knowing does not matter. The question is whether you can know it. I had described it perfectly, but you had to go through all this wandering around for thirty years. Only after this struggle of thirty years, would you have a little alertness. That day you wanted to thank me, and I told you the time had not come yet; one day the time would come.

And you are bothering too much about your thirty years' wanderings. What about me? "I have been sitting here for thirty years, waiting for you. My own work was finished long ago, my boat has come and is waiting for me. And I have been postponing and postponing for you, idiot, and you took thirty years! And I even described the tree, I described every feature of mine - my beard, my nose, my eyes. In detail, I said everything, and you rushed in search of me!

"But it is still not too late. I was worried that if I died, my word, my promise would not be fulfilled - 'That idiot is bound to come sooner or later, but if I am not here then my description, my indication to him, will not be valid, will prove false.' Just to be authentic, I am sitting under this tree for thirty years! You could have chosen me that very day. But you could not help it, you did not have the eyes.

You heard my words, but you could not understand the meaning. I was in front of you, describing myself, and you were thinking to find me somewhere else."

The disciple finds the master only accidentally; he just goes on moving, stumbling, falling, getting up again, being cheated by one, exploited by another, befooled by someone else. Slowly slowly, a little alertness comes to him. And it is just by accident that he meets the master.

As far as the master is concerned, he is consciously waiting for certain people. He is making every effort to reach those people, but the problem is that those people are all unconscious.

Even if Gautam Buddha comes and knocks on your doors, are you going to receive him or just make a laughingstock of him?

Dostoevsky, one of the greatest novelists the world has known, in one of his novels, THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, brings Jesus Christ back after eighteen hundred years. Jesus thinks, "Now almost half the world is Christian. The first time was not the right time for me to go there, because not a single person was a Christian, nobody belonged to me."

Eighteen hundred years before, he had come into a world of strangers. Naturally and logically he decided that now is the time - "When half the world is Christian, millions of churches singing my songs - this is the right moment. Now I have my people."

Naturally, he appears in Jerusalem on a Sunday morning. The people from the great church are just getting out. He stands under a tree. Out of curiosity people start gathering around him, and they are all laughing and joking. And they say, "The man is really clever. What an actor! He looks just like Jesus Christ."

And Jesus is saying to them, "I am not an actor, and I am not trying to be Jesus Christ. I am Jesus Christ."

And they all laugh. They say, "Don't try to befool us. We are Christians, and it will be good for you that you immediately disappear from here before the archbishop comes out; otherwise, you are going to be in trouble."

But Jesus says, "This is strange. You are my followers."

And they says, "Forget all this nonsense. We are followers of Jesus Christ, who was crucified eighteen hundred years ago. You seem to be either a film actor or working in a circus - but we certainly accept that you are doing your act perfectly."

Jesus tries in thousands of ways: "Listen, I am the same man who was crucified!"

And the archbishop comes and the crowd immediately gives way respectfully. The archbishop is a great religious man. And the archbishop, with authority, says to Jesus, "Come down from that platform, and follow me inside the church. These are simple people, and you should not destroy their faith by such stupid acts."

"But," Jesus says, "you are my representative."

The archbishop says, "Shut up! You are going beyond your limits. Just come inside with me." And he tells a few people, "Hold this man. Tie him inside in a cell, and later on I will see about it, when I have time."

Jesus says, "This is strange. This is what happened before. But they were not my people; at least there was a consolation that they didn't understand me. I asked God at the last moment, 'Father, forgive these people, because they don't know what they are doing. They don't know that they are mistreating the only begotten son of God.' But now even that consolation is not there. These are my people, and it seems I am going to be crucified again - by Christians!"

He is tied down to a pole in a dark cell. In the middle of the night the archbishop comes with a candle in his hand and falls at the feet of Jesus. He says, "I recognized you, but I cannot accept you in public. You are a great disturbance, a nuisance. In eighteen hundred years somehow we have managed the whole business of Christianity in a perfectly smooth way. Now everything is going well.

You are not needed.

"Remain with your father, serve your father, and we are here to serve you. But you are not needed here, because you will immediately start disturbing things. The rabbis who crucified you - now we can understand that they had also recognized you; it was really their recognition that 'This man has the truth' which led them to crucify you. And if you don't disappear, forgive us: we will have to do the same - to crucify you again. So be a little intelligent, don't create trouble."

The unconscious man will not recognize even a Gautam Buddha or a Jesus Christ or a Moses. It is not his fault. The archbishop is a little alert; he recognizes, but his whole business is at stake.

The priests of any religion would not like their founders to come back again to the earth. They will say the same words to them - "We are doing your work perfectly well. You are not needed, because you are basically a disturber. You will say things which are going to disturb peoples' minds.

Somehow we have managed their morality, their character, their culture, and you will start bringing questions."

No religion would like its own founders to come back. The unconscious minds of people cannot recognize them. The priests perhaps may be able to recognize, but they will be the ones to crucify them. Because the priests can have a business on the crucifixion of Jesus, on the life of Jesus; but if Jesus is alive, then the priest is no longer needed. His whole business is finished. It is simply a question of his livelihood, he is not interested in truth.

No priest is interested in truth. No theologian is interested in God, in searching for the ultimate. His interest is in exploiting the unconscious mind.

So the seeker, the disciple, is bound to stumble with many pretenders. But if his search is genuine...

And what is the symbol of a genuine search? The symbol is if his search is not an ego trip, if it is not that he wants to become holier, higher, spiritual, better than everybody else, more virtuous. If that is his search, then he is going to be a victim of all those charlatans that the world abounds with.

If his search is authentic, that he wants to know himself - he is not interested in becoming holier, not interested in becoming higher, not interested in becoming superior, he simply wants to know his ordinary self - then nobody can exploit him. Then sooner or later he is bound to come to a person who can see his authentic search, who is conscious.

The master chooses consciously, but for the disciple it is bound to be still another experiment. He has been experimenting with others, and failed; now he is experimenting with a new person.

But with a master you cannot fail - it is impossible. His consciousness is going to transform your unconsciousness into consciousness. He is a light, and once you are in contact with the light you cannot remain in darkness.

Unconsciousness is like darkness, and a conscious man is just a great flame of light. To be close to him is to be transformed.

To be close to him does not make you more knowledgeable. To be close to him does not make you a slave. To be close to him does not make you a Mohammedan, a Hindu, a Christian. To be close to him simply makes you a human being, innocent, like a child.

He gives you being, not knowledge. He makes you more, he expands you more - not your knowledge but your being, your very life. He does not go on increasing your information about truth, about yourself, about life. A master is not concerned with anything about. He gives you life, not any information about life.

He gives you a taste, and then you can grow that taste.

He gives you a seed....

And you become a soil, and you can bring that seed to its flowering.

Question 3:

Zareen, I can understand your difficulty. It is as ancient as it can be.

The master is the last attachment.

And because it is the last attachment - all your attachments gone - your whole energy of attachment becomes concentrated on the master. So it is no ordinary attachment. Because in ordinary life you are attached to your wife, you are attached to your children, you are attached to your house, you are attached to this, you are attached to that - there are thousands of attachments. Your power of attachment is divided. But when all other attachments have been dropped, your whole life energy focuses simply on the master.

The old seers of India have been singing that "The master is the mother, the master is the father, the master is the brother." The master is everything.

Yes, there comes a moment when all other attachments are gone, he is all - and now the master wants you to drop that attachment too. It hurts. One is ready to drop the idea of enlightenment easily, because one does not know what it is, one has no experience about it. But the beauty, the joy, the ecstasy of being with the master is now known; it is your experienced fact. Now it is something that you have explored and found so juicy that enlightenment, nirvana, MOKSHA... all look like dry words.

And it is not only true of ordinary people - even with persons like Ramakrishna the same was the problem: the last barrier proves to be the hardest. It will be helpful to understand Ramakrishna's situation.

Ramakrishna was perfectly happy, although his happiness was just a mind game. But he had dropped all attachments, and he had focused his whole life energy on the mother-goddess Kali.

The mother-goddess Kali was his whole world. To others it may be just a stone statue; to him, she was the very source of life. It was all his projection, but he was immensely happy. He would dance and he would sing and he would rejoice. And there was no question about his joy - this has to be remembered: his joy was perfectly real, his ecstasy was real, his blissfulness was real, although it was based on a mental projection. The projection was unreal.

It is something like this: I give you a stone which looks like a diamond, and you are immensely happy - you have got a bigger diamond than that Kohinoor. As far as your happiness is concerned, it is real; as far as the diamond is concerned, it is fake.

Ramakrishna could have died in the same hallucination that he had been creating - and he had created his hallucination with tremendous effort.

First, he was a unique individual, not an ordinary priest. He was professionally a priest in the temple of Dakshineshwar in Calcutta, but his relationship with the goddess was not that of a professional priest. Sometimes he would dance the whole day till he fell unconscious. Sometimes he would lock the temple and would not open it for a few days.

It was reported to the owner of the temple, Rani Rasmani, that "This is a strange kind of priest.

Sometimes the temple is not opened at all, and sometimes it is not closed even in the night. And this priest does not know how to worship. He brings food for the mother-goddess; first he tastes it, and then he puts it before the mother-goddess. Now, this is absolutely against the scriptures. First, it should be put before the mother and then it should be distributed as prasad, as a gift from the divine. And this fellow eats first and then puts it in front of the mother; this is almost a sin.

"There is no discipline. Sometimes the prayer starts in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon - sometimes it does not happen at all. Sometimes the mother gets the food, sometimes no food. And you cannot argue with the man, the man seems to be mad because he says, 'I am angry today, I am punishing her. For three days I have been dancing, and she has not even shown her face in my dreams. I cannot tolerate it; now let her suffer. In three days without food, she will come to her senses. Then she will know that Ramakrishna is not an ordinary priest.'"

Rasmani called Ramakrishna and told him, "You should follow the scriptures."

Ramakrishna said, "I have never read any scriptures, and I don't intend to read them at all. I am perfectly happy. My relationship with the mother-goddess is going as beautifully as can be. In every relationship once in a while a quarrel happens - sometimes she is angry, sometimes I am angry; sometimes she is nagging, sometimes I am nagging; but this is how every relationship...."

Rasmani said, "You are mad, Ramakrishna. It is not a relationship."

Ramakrishna said, "Then you can find another priest, because to me it is a relationship."

And one day, dancing before Kali - there is always a sword in the hand of Kali - he took the sword from the hand of Kali and he said, "Enough you have had this sword in your hand - today I am going to have it. What do you think? Just because of having the sword you want to terrorize people? I will show you what real terrorism is. I will dance with the sword. And you have to appear, this stone statue won't do. If you don't appear then I will cut off my head. So I give you time: as the sun is setting, make up your mind and appear. Otherwise, you will lose your priest, and you will not find another Ramakrishna, I tell you." And he danced.

As the sun was setting, he was going to cut his neck with the sword, and he saw the transformation - there was no stone statue. Kali was smiling; it was human. The sword fell from his hands. He remained unconscious for six days, and when he came to consciousness the first thing he said was - because everybody was trying to bring him to consciousness; medicines were being given, cold water was being poured on him - he said, "Are you my friends or my enemies? These six days I lived in such bliss. I don't want to become conscious again. Just let me remain in my unconsciousness - because the mother-goddess was present all the time for six days. What am I to do with consciousness? Unconsciousness was far more fruitful."

This man would have died, and would have been worshipped for centuries as enlightened - and it was only a psychological projection. It was a wandering master - perhaps he had gone to Dakshineshwar only for Ramakrishna - who told Ramakrishna, "What you are experiencing is your own creation, and unless you go beyond it you will never know the truth. Just one step more... when you see the mother-goddess in your meditation, take her sword and cut her in two. And as those two parts of mother Kali fall apart, the door will be opened to the beyond."

Ramakrishna said, "Even the idea hurts me. I cannot do it."

But the master said, "You will have to do it." And the man had such a charisma. Ramakrishna had come in contact with many people; for the first time he had found someone who was worthy of being listened to.

The master said, "I am going to stay here for only three days. I have come only for you, because you are living in an illusion and your illusion can be dissolved. I know your illusion is very sweet, it is beautiful; it is the most significant thing that you have known in your life, so it is hard to drop it. But you don't know that by dropping it, you will enter into something which is not a thousandfold more or a millionfold more, no. The difference is not of quantity, the difference is of quality. And once you have known it, then you will see that what you were doing was only a mind-game. You did it well; very few people do it so well and so totally. You succeeded doing it, but now the final step has to be taken."

So Ramakrishna would sit with closed eyes in meditation, and immediately tears would start flowing, his face would become radiant - the mother-goddess was present, and he would forget. When he would come out of his meditation, the master would ask, "What happened?"

He said, "I simply forgot. It was so alluring... I cannot remember what you say, and even if I remember I cannot do it."

On the third day the master said, "This is my last day here, and your last chance in this life," and he brought a piece of sharp glass.

And he told him, "When I see your tears and your face becoming radiant, I know that you are now seeing mother-goddess Kali: I will cut your forehead with this glass exactly where you have to cut the mother-goddess inside - because it happens exactly on the third eye. Just be courageous, just for one time, because I will be gone tomorrow."

And he cut Ramakrishna's forehead. Blood was flowing all over his face, and Ramakrishna gathered courage and did what the master was saying. The statue of Kali fell in two parts, and the door to the beyond opened. He became utterly quiet and silent, opened his eyes, touched the feet of the master and said, "Your compassion is infinite, that you came just to help this poor man. I had no idea what is beyond, I was just playing with mental toys."

Zareen, I can understand your question, your difficulty. You love to be in my presence. You feel fulfilled, contented. You don't want anything more. But I am not satisfied, because I know there is more. This is only the beginning, and I will not allow you to be stuck at the beginning. But I have my own devices.

What the master, Totapuri, did with Ramakrishna is a very crude thing, a bullock-cart method. I don't belong to those kind of people, I have my own methods. I cannot help you, I will not interfere in your growth. I would like you to grow spontaneously.

But as far as the attachment to me is concerned, it is a different problem. You need not be worried; I can simply disappear myself. You don't have to cut me into pieces, I can simply slip out of you - because it is only your imagination.

And to slip out of your mind is such a small thing, such a simple thing, that I have always wondered why in the past... Even Gautam Buddha had to say, "When you meet me on the path, just cut off my head immediately." Why be so hard on the poor disciple? I don't believe in any kind of cruelty. This is asking for cruelty, and a buddha is asking.

Certainly he knows it is imagination.

But to the disciple it is not imagination. And the question is not of Buddha, the question is of the disciple. To the disciple it is a reality, the most precious reality. And when I can slip myself out of you and leave the door open for the beyond, there is no problem. For my disciples there is no problem.

If you meet me on the way, just remind me, "Hey, what had you said before? Now just move out of the way." No need of swords and cutting of heads - there is no need.

Just nudge me a little - "Move out of the way, let me see what is beyond." And if you want, I can stand by your side and you can see, so you are not afraid of being alone, so you are not losing my presence either. And once you have known the beyond, then there is no question of my presence.

What you are getting in my presence is only a drop, a dewdrop; and once you get the whole ocean you will not cling to the dewdrop.

Zareen, no need to worry. It has never been done, but I am a crazy fellow. I have been doing many things which have never been done. I have tried it - it works. You enjoy my presence as much as you can, you love the presence as much as you can. When all your attachments have disappeared and only I am left, then it is my duty to disappear. You have not to do anything. And you are not going to be a loser; you will be gaining more. You will be gaining the universal.

Question 4:

There is no need to develop a divine discontentment.

It is for those who are contented with mundane things - with money, with power, with prestige - they need to develop a sense of divine discontentment.

But if you have a divine contentment, you are in a totally different category. You need not be sad that you don't have discontent, you should be happy and rejoice.

Medicines are for those who are sick. When you are not sick, don't be sad - "How unfortunate I am that I have to live without medicines." Divine discontent is a medicine for those who are feeling contented with things which are simply rubbish, crap. They have to be drawn out of their so-called contentment, and a discontent for the divine has to be created in them.

But you are feeling a divine contentment, you are feeling health; you don't need the medicine. Now don't be sad; otherwise, soon you will need the medicine. And instead of divine discontentment, there is every possibility that you may fall into a discontentment for material things.

One has to understand the logic of life. There is a certain logic: if you are contented with things, you can be made aware that this contentment is sheer stupidity. Then immediately a discontentment will arise in you for something divine, something that is immortal, that is eternal.

Your situation is just the reverse. You are feeling divine contentment. Now don't disturb it. There is no need to be sad. Sing, dance and rejoice, so that this divine contentment grows, becomes deeper.

That sadness can destroy it.

And if you want discontentment, it cannot be divine for you. You can be discontented because you are not the prime minister, you are not the president, you are not the richest man of the country.

From your position, if you don't go deeper into it you can fall on wrong paths.

You are perfectly right.

Question 5:

A disciple is one who wants to be, who feels that as he is, he is utterly empty, his life is nothing but a futile exercise; who feels that he is living meaninglessly - in one word, who feels himself in despair.

In one of the existentialist novels a man commits a murder, but the murder is strange - because he kills a man who he has never known. There is no question of friendship or enmity, he has not even seen his face. The man is sitting on the beach - he comes from behind and kills him with a knife.

He does not escape, he stands there. The crowd gathers, the police come. They ask him why he has killed the man. He says, "Don't ask me any why, because I have been asking why - no answer comes. Why am I born? Why are you born? Why do people die? Why do people have to live?

Nobody answers my why - you should not expect me to answer your why. I simply wanted to do something - having nothing to do, I did it."

But they asked, "You don't know the man. You have not even seen his face."

He says, "So what?"

In the court there is great crowd when the hearing begins, because this man seems to be really strange. He is not an ordinary murderer, because there is no reason at all to murder. And when the judge asks why, he says, "I have been asking why, and there seems to be no answer. I also don't have any answer."

Then circumstantial evidence is produced. One man says, "This young man has been eccentric from the very beginning. He is my neighbor - the day his mother died, he said, 'That woman has decided to die on Sunday just to spoil my holiday. There are seven days, but she will not die on any other day.' He was not sorry for the death of the mother, he was complaining: 'That woman tortured me my whole life, gave me work without asking me. And she could have died on Saturday, on Friday, on any day. But I knew from the very beginning that she would die on Sunday - and particularly this Sunday because I have purchased tickets to go to the movie - just to spoil it.'"

Somebody went to the witness box and said, "We cannot understand this man, because the day his mother died he was seen in a disco in the evening this man, dancing with a girlfriend. Now, that is not right. Your mother has died; at least you should not dance in a public place with your girlfriend."

The judge said, "Is it true?"

And the man said, "I want to ask one thing: If my mother dies, have I to dance ever after that or not? What does it matter whether I dance after six hours or six days or six years? - it is always going to be after. So I decided that it is perfectly okay. Why waste time in waiting? And what is the demarcation line - after how many days can you dance, and what is the criterion?"

He was asked, "You killed the man. Ordinarily, anybody murdering would have escaped, but you were just standing there with the knife in your hand. You did not escape."

He said, "To tell you the truth, it is that before my death I wanted to do a decisive act. In my whole life others have been dictating to me, 'Do this, do that, go to this school, study this subject.' I have never been given any chance to decide anything on my own. I had decided to commit suicide, but suicide is criminal, and this society is insane. If you fail in committing suicide and you are caught, then they crucify you. Because you were committing suicide, as a punishment they crucify you. Great logic. I wanted to commit suicide. I said, 'This is the best way - first commit a murder.' At least I can say that I have done one thing in my life fully on my own, a decisive act. And there was no need to escape because now I want you to crucify me."

A disciple comes to a state where he feels that either he has to commit suicide or he has to change his whole life so that there is some significance, some fragrance, some beauty, some individuality, some decisiveness, something that you have done. Your birth you are not responsible for, your death you will not be responsible for - two of the most important things in life are not in your hands - but you can commit suicide; that is a decisive point.

To commit suicide is to accept failure, is to accept that you are defeated. But it is only in such a situation of the mind that a man starts looking - perhaps there are ways of living other than how he has lived up to now, perhaps there are alternative styles of life. This search for an alternative style of life.... Because he can see all around - everybody is miserable, sad, feeling lost. Knowing not what he is doing, why he is doing it, where he is going, why he is going there, everybody is just being pushed by the crowd. And everybody goes on like a sheep - not like a man, not like a lion.

A disciple is one who is in search of an alternative lifestyle.

One lifestyle is that of the sheep and the other lifestyle is that of a lion. The disciple is trying to find his voice, his roar. He is trying to find his authentic being - who he is.

A disciple is in the process of transformation.

The society has failed him, the society has deceived him. The education has not been of any help.

The leaders - political, religious, social - all have been just cheating, and nobody has been of help so that he can be himself.

A disciple is a seeker of truth.

The word 'disciple' comes from the same root as 'discipline'. Now he is going to discipline himself in a totally different way than the society wants, than the religion wants, than the parents want.

He is going to discipline himself with his own signature.

It is a rebellion.

A disciple is a rebellious spirit.

Question 6:

Narendra, there is only one golden rule - that there are no golden rules.