When the Disciple is Ready

The Master appears only when the disciple is ready. Never otherwise. In no other way. At no other point in life's journey. The disciple has to be ready and ripe; only at that moment does the Master become visible. The disciple has to earn eyes, to earn ears, to create a heart, to feel. How can the sun appear if you are blind? The sun may appear but you will go on missing it.

Unless you have eyes, there is no beauty in the world. The vowers will bloom, but not for you. And stars will fill the sky with immense beauty, but not for you. Unless you have eyes, there is no beauty in the world.

If you don't have love in the heart, you will not find the belo ed. The basic requirement has to be fulfilled. Only love finds the beloved. Eyes find beauty. end the ears find music and melodies.

But there are people, and they are many - the majority consists of those - who go on searching and seeking something out there without creating a corresponding receptivity in themselves. I have come across many seekers who are searching or a Master - not at all aware that the disciple is completely absent. The disciple is not there at all. How can you find a Master?

The Master is not just an objective phenomenon THERE. First he has to be something interior in you. That's what disciple hood is: a preparation, a thirst, a passionate desire, a great passion for truth. That is lacking. And then people go ON searching. And if they don't find, it is not surprising.

They are not going to find! They may come across MANY Masters, but they will go on missing.

How can you see the Master if you are not vulnerable to him? How can you see the Master if you don't know even what it is to be a disciple? The beginning of the finding of a Master starts by being a disciple. The real seeker does not worry about the Master, where he is. His whole concern is how to create the disciple in himself, how to be a learner, open to reality; how to function from innocence, and how not to function from the state of knowledge.

If you function from the state of knowledge, you will find many teachers but never a Master. If you already know something, and you think that you know, then you will find other knowers, claimers, who are ahead of you. You will meet only the people whom YOU CAN MEET. You will meet people like you. A person who functions from the state of knowing that he has gathered will find many teachers and will learn many things - but will never find a Master.

To find a Master you have to be a child. To find a Master you have to be utterly innocent, not knowing anything, the mind empty - full of passion for truth, but without any conclusions about it. This is the state of real learning. And then you need not even go anywhere: the Master will come to you.

There are many sannyasins here who have not come to me because of their search but because I have found them. They have come because of me, not because of themselves. That is the REAL coming. When you come because of yourself, you don't come at all. You remain there, stubbornly, too much of you, full of you - there is no space for me to enter into you.

This is one of the basic requirements for a seeker: that he should be a learner. What I mean by 'learning' is that one should always function from the state of innocence. One should not carry conclusions inside oneself - because those conclusions won't allow you to Learn. If something goes against them, you are bound to reject it. And if something does not go against them, then you are not learning anything - only your old prejudice is strengthened more.

If something agrees with you, there is no learning. It has simply strengthened the old mind. And the Master cannot do it - he has to destroy the old for the new to be; he has to take away ALL that you have been carrying all along. He has to create space in you. If you cling to conclusions, prejudices, ideas, philosophies, you will not be able to meet a Master - because his whole work consists in destroying all kinds of philosophies. He is interested it the real thing. He is not interested in speculation about things.

Just the other day I was reading a statement of Burke:

Most people will grant that potatoes are important. Discourse about potatoes, however, does not enjoy the same popularity do potatoes. When the chips are down, talk about potatoes is just no substitute for the original thing. So it is with religion.

I like the statement. The Master is interested in the REAL potatoes - not philosophies about the potatoes. And if you come with conclusions, you can't come. Those conclusions stand like great barriers between you and the Master. One has to come open, available. One has to come not knowing. This should be obvious: if you know already, then you are not available. Your very knowledge obstructs the way.

Become a disciple. Don't be worried about the Master. When you are ready, the Master appears.

The Master appears in strange ways sometimes, but it always happens. Whenever someone is ripe, God starts coming in many forms to him. The Master is the last form of God that comes to the disciple. After the Master there is formlessness. He is the LAST experience of form; Beyond him there is formlessness - then there is God with no form.

The Master is the last who looks like you, who lives like you, whom you can touch, with whom you can have a dialogue, who speaks like you. Beyond the Master is silence - utter, absolute, virgin.

Beyond the Master is bodilessness. The Master is just exactly in between the world and God.

If you are really tired of the world and the rut and the routine of it, don't start searching for a Master - rather, search how to become a disciple. Start unburdening yourself from prejudices, dogmas.

Forget all that you know....

Ramana Maharshi used to say to hug disciples: If you want to be with me you will have to unlearn.

If you don't unlearn, then I have nothing to give you. You are already too full.

You know the famous Zen story?

A professor of philosophy went to see a great Master, and he asked about God, and he asked about karma, and he asked about the theory of reincarnation, and he asked many things... questions and questions and questions. And the Master said, "You are tired, the journey has been long, and I can see you are perspiring, coming uphill on such a hot summer afternoon. It must have been tiring.

You wait; there is no hurry. These questions can wait a little. Let me prepare a cup of tea for you.

And who knows? - while drinking the tea you may get the answer."

Now the professor was a little puzzled and became a little suspicious whether it was right to come to this madman. "How can the questions be answered just by drinking tea?" But now there was no way of going; he had to rest a little. "And the tea is not going to hurt in any way, so why not drink it and then escape from here?"

The Master brought the tea, started pouring from his kettle into the cup, and went on pouring. The cup was full, and the tea started overflowing into the saucer, and the saucer was full. Then the professor said, "Stop! What are you doing? The tea will start overflowing on the floor. Now the cup has not even space for a single drop more. Are you mad or something?"

The Master had a hearty laugh, and he said, "So, you ARE intelligent! You can understand. If there is no space in the cup then we cannot pour any more tea into it. Is there space in your head? I would like to pour all that I am, but is there space in your head? Is it not overfull, too much stuffed?

"This is my answer," the Master said. "Come again. First empty your head. Come in a state of not knowing. You are too knowledgeable. I can hear all the noise that is going on inside you. Come a little more in silence. And you have not come to learn - you have come to argue."

Knowledge always hankers to argue. It is not interested in learning. In learning it feels humiliated.

That's why it becomes more and more difficult: the more grown up you are, the less is the possibility of your learning anything. Children can learn because they don't have any ego, and they learn fast, and they learn very easily. If you have to learn the same thing when you are thirty-five or forty or fifty, it is very difficult, almost impossible sometimes. What happens to your intelligence?

After fifty years of experience your intelligence should be more than it was before, but it is not. You have gathered much junk on the way. The functioning of the intellect is no longer free; it is too much burdened - and burdened with crap! And you feel humiliated in learning anything. You cam lot bow down. You cannot say, "I do not know." And the disciple is no who can say, "I do not know - teach me. I am ready to learn. I have not come with any conclusions to you. I have not brought any knowledge. I come empty! Fill me!"

The REAL search is how to become a disciple, how to empty the cup of your being, so when you come across a being who is overflowing with God you can be filled - filled to your heart's content.

But people search for a Master; they don't search for disciple hood - that's where they go on missing.

Then you will come across many many people, and you will always feel unsatisfied. And the reason for dissatisfaction is not outside you: it comes from your own inner mind. You have brought con- clusions with you.

I was reading the other day about a very beautiful Hassid mystic, Levi-Yitzhak. He was so full of God and the song of God and the dance of God that when he worshipped or prayed he would go wild. It is said about him that he simply radiated the divine dance in its total wildness. He worshipped with such abandon that the frightened faithful instinctively moved away. If he was worship ping in the temple, people would escape to their homes, because his worship was very wild. He gesticulated, howled and danced, jumping from one corner to the other, pushing and overturning whatever was in his way. People ceased to exist for him. When he prayed, he himself ceased to exist.

Now, if you have come with some conclusions already about how a Master should be, you will think his a madman. If you think a Master should be just sitting like a Buddha under a Bo Tree, and this madman, turning things upside down and running all over the place, and he has scared the worshippers, they have all run out because nobody knows what he is going to do... But this man was a Perfect Master.

God descends in many forms - sometimes as Buddha and sometimes as Krishna and sometimes as Mahavir and sometimes as Mohammed. And God comes always in slew forms, and your conclusions are always from the old. If you are born in a Buddhist family, how can you think that this mad Hassid mystic can be a Buddha? Impossible!

If you go with a conclusion, you will be in difficulty. If - and there were many disciples of this mad Hassid - if they come across Buddha they will deny, they will not be satisfied with Buddha. They will say, "Where is his dance? Why is he not howling? Just sitting silently under the Bodhi Tree - what kind of Master is he?" But we go on carrying deep-rooted prejudices in us.

And remember: those prejudices may look very rational to you. Just the other day, Adi asked a question: "Osho, now I cannot trust you any more."What has happened to Adi? Why can't he trust me any more? A simple thing. I said that the same tree exists in Bodh Gaya under which Buddha became enlightened, and the same tree still vibrates with something of the quality of the Buddha, of that beautiful morning when Buddha disappeared and God appeared in him. Now he quotes a history book and says it is written in the history books that the tree was cut and destroyed by a Hindu king, and the temple was converted into a Hindu shrine. So how can the same tree exist? If the history books are right, I am wrong. And how can Adi trust me when I go against the history books?

Don't be so short of trust, and don't be in such a hurry. If I say something, wait, search, and you will find the way. Just reading a history book and your trust is destroyed! I still say it is the same tree, and the history books are right. The shrine WAS converted into a Hindu shrine and the tree WAS destroyed... but before the tree was destroyed, Ashoka sent a part of the tree, a branch of the tree, to Ceylon to be planted there. So the tree continued in Ceylon. Then when the shrine was converted again into a Buddhist temple, a branch of the tree from Ceylon was brought back and replanted.

It is the same continuum. It is the same tree. And according to Buddha, even the same tree is never the same for two consecutive moments - it changes. It is continuously changing. Your body changes continuously. In seven years' time, your body is completely new; the old disappears and the new has taken place. Not even a single cell remains of the old. But it is a continuity: the same in the sense of the continuity. It is the same tree in the Buddhist, in the scientific sense.

But don't he in a hurry. If you lose trust so fast and so soon and so easily, it is not worth much. It is not trust really. You go on keeping your prejudices in the background, and you go on watching for when you can find something that you can mistrust. You are more interested in mistrust than in trust. You are trusting in spite of yourself. Your natural tendency is to mistrust and doubt. You will feel very good if you can doubt. If you cannot find anything to doubt, you may start feeling suffocated - because with the doubt your ego is bask on the throne. With trust, the ego has to commit suicide.

THIS IS A BEAUTIFUL PARABLE, and Sufis are past masters in parables. Sufis know how to say in parables things which cannot be said. They have erected the best parables in the world. Go slowly into this parable. It is small but of immense significance.

A parable is a way of saying things in an indirect way. Truth cannot be asserted directly. That is too violent, too aggressive, too male. Truth can only be said in a very indirect way. It can be hinted at, indicated. You cannot be convinced of the truth: you can only be persuaded.

And thy Master is one who is not going to convince you of the truth but who is going to seduce you into truth. Parables are very seductive. Even those who were not searching for any truth may be suddenly struck by a parable: something may become suddenly available to them.

And people like stories. And the stories have a tendency to hang around your consciousness. It is difficult to forget them; it is very easy to remember them. They have a way of reaching to the deepest core of your being. Hence, Sufis have been using parables. It is a totally different world from Zen, Tao, Yoga, Tantra.

I welcome you into the world of Sufis today.... It is more artistic, more poetic, more aesthetic, and its ways are very subtle.

A CERTAIN MAN DECIDED THAT HE WOULD SEEK THE PERFECT MASTER.

Now, to decide is wrong, because the decision will come out of your past experiences. One cannot decide to seek a perfect Master. One can only become available in a passive way. Seeking, decision, are active ways. One has to be more feminine; one should not be in such a hurry. One should be more watchful, more alert about what one is trying to do.

Have you known any Master before? Have you any experience of a Master? Whatsoever you have heard is borrowed. You are not certain, you cannot be certain of its truth. How are you going to decide? And how will you seek a Master? What will be the criterion of judgment? How will you weigh that this is really the Perfect Master? Are you capable of weighing, judging a Perfect Master?

Then you are higher, you are already higher than the Perfect Master. You are sitting int he seat of a judge. You are not a humble, passive disciple. And the Master happens only in your passivity, in your humbleness, in your simplicity.

A CERTAIN MAN DECIDED THAT HE WOULD SEEK THE PERFECT MASTER.

And why the Perfect Master? The ego always seeks perfection. If you are after money, the ego wants you to be the richest man in the world, the most perfect man in the world. If you are after morality, you want to become the most perfect saint. The ego has a very very deep desire to be perfect. All egoists are perfectionists, and all perfectionists are neurotic. The idea of perfection drives people mad.

A humble person know imperfections, and a humble person accepts his imperfections. And a humble person does not ask for the impossible. It is the ego that always asks for the impossible and fails.

And feels frustrated, betrayed, cheated. But again it starts asking the same thing.

Why do you need a Perfect Master? You have taken one thing for granted: that you are such a great man that less than that will not be worth your while, will not be satisfying; less than that will be below you. You are such a perfect man, you need a Perfect Master. Ordinary Masters won't do - something extraordinary it has to be. You can only be interested in the extraordinary.

And the paradox is that the extraordinary exists in a very ordinary way. The extraordinary never exists as the extraordinary, because all those pretensions of being extraordinary are foolish and stupid.

A real man, an authentic man, has no idea of being superior in any way to anybody else. He lives in a world where comparison does not exist. Now, the very idea of seeking a Perfect Master is based in comparison.

A CERTAIN MAN DECIDED THAT HE WOULD SEEK THE PERFECT MASTER.

HE READ MANY BOOKS...

But how can you find a Master by reading many books? You will become more and more stuffed with knowledge, and that will be the barrier. But that's what happens. Somebody starts thinking of God, or truth, or beauty - he starts reading books. He thinks that is a way to find it.

I am reminded of a great Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore. He was continuously thinking about beauty, what it is. A poet, naturally, is interested in beauty. His mind was meditating on what beauty is. One full-moon night, he was in his boat and the night was just majestic: the full moon in the sky and the silence of the river and the forest around. And he was alone in the boat. Just once in a while a bird might call - that was all - and then the silence would become deeper than before.

But Tagore was pondering over the question: What is beauty? And he was looking into an ancient scripture. He had only a small candle burning in the cabin. Tired, in the middle of the night, frustrated, because even in that old scripture he could not find something real about beauty, just words and words and words... he blew the candle out and he could not believe his eyes.

Suddenly, as he blew the candle out, from the windows, from the door, the moonlight immediately came in. He was transplanted into another world! He rushed out. He looked at the moon, at the silence of the night, and the moon reflected in the river, and the whole river silvery, and the deep dense forest on the bank... and THIS WAS BEAUTY!

But he had been looking into the book - and beauty was waiting for him, just waiting by the door.

But that small yellow candle-light was preventing the splendor of the night. And he had become so much engaged and occupied with the thoughts of the scripture that he had forgotten completely that this was a full moon night.

He threw the scripture into the river, and that was the last day he ever thought about beauty. He said: Thinking won't help. Beauty is there - we have to be available to it. He said: We have to blow out the candle, the small candle of the ego, then God comes in in many ways, and the beauty penetrates you.

But that's what happens. If you start thinking of finding a Perfect Master, you will go into books to know who is a Perfect Master. Now, books will confuse you, because every book will tell a different story. If you read a Jain book, it simply describes Mahavir, and says these are the characteristics of a Perfect Master. They are not! They are the characteristics of a particular Perfect Master, Mahavir.

If you read a Buddhist book, they also describe the characteristics of a Perfect Master - they are not either, but only those of one manifestation of the Perfect Master, Buddha. And so on and so forth.

And once you get caught into some conclusions from the books, you start searching, but your search is doomed to fail from the very beginning. You already have an A PRIORI prejudice. Now you are looking for Buddha and Buddha is never repeated. Now you are looking for Zarathustra and Zarathustra is only once and never again. Now you are looking for Lao Tzu, and Lao Tzu never comes again. Once is all. Nothing is ever repeated. God's creativity is infinite. He is not repetitive.

And if you read a Buddhist, a Confucian, a Taoist, then you will be more confused - because they describe different things. And you may be a very clever person, an intelligent person, intellectual, and you may join ALL those characteristics together. Now you will never find the Perfect Master.

Now you have an idea which is absolutely absurd. It is like taking one part from the bullock cart, taking another part from a Rolls Royce, and putting them together - and parts from cycles and parts from engines.... You will have something strange and it won't work. Even a bullock cart is better than that, howsoever slow, but you can go along, you can reach somewhere, you can use it. This will be utterly useless, this monster that you have created. And that's what happens.

People who read many scriptures and many books, they slowly slowly create an idea of who the Perfect Master is. And this idea is just a combination of many characteristics taken, collected, from different sources. It is not possible. Such a man has never existed, and such a man is never going to exist. Now you are searching for a mirage - you will never find it. And you may come across many Masters! but because of your idea you will go on rejecting them, because something or other will be lacking in him. It is because of your idea that you are missing, not that Masters are not there - they are always.

The world is full of Masters always, and God is not a miser, remember. Jews say that there are only thirty-six Masters in the world at a time - just thirty-six? Is God such a miser? And why thirty-six?

But still Jews are generous if you think of other reli-gions. Joins say that there are only twenty-four Perfect Masters in the whole of creation, from the beginning to the end. One creation, from the beginning to the end, that means millions and millions of ages... only twenty-four? So for millions of years there is not a single Master available.

Hindus are even a little more miserly: they say only ten. Christians even more: they say God has only one son, Jesus Christ. Only Jesus Christ is the Perfect Master, nobody else. Then how can you find a Perfect Master?

I say to you: God is generous. There is no limitation, there is no fixed number. Masters go on happening. Just people are blind, people are deaf. This hurts! To know that you are blind and deaf, this hurts. That's why these theories have appeal. Twenty four only, ten only, one only: that is a great consolation to you, remember. That means if you have not found the Perfect Master, what can you do? It is not your responsibility. Only once in a while the Perfect Master happens, and this time he is not here. It is not your fault that you have not found him. If anybody is at fault it is God, not you. You are relieved.

I say to you: Perfect Masters are always available - just as roses are always available and lotuses are always available. And the sun rises EVERY morning, and there are millions of stars ALWAYS available. You just have to open your eyes, you have not to be blind.

But our situation is really in bad shape. I was reading a story - this is the story of you:

A woman had just had a child but had not yet seen it. She asked the doctor that it be brought to her, but he did not comply:

"I am afraid it would not be a good idea for you to see him right now."

But as she insisted passionately, he began to justify his refusal:

"You see, Madam, through a most unfortunate accident of fate, your child was born abnormally, and I feel it would be good for you to recover fully from the delivery before seeing your child."

"TELL me doctor!! I must know what has happened!!! I must see my child."

The doctor, wishing to spare her the sight of her child, ventured to explain to her the nature of the deformity: "I will be blunt, Madam. Your child has no legs!"

She gasped, but recovering from the blow, she composed herself and asked to see the child.

"Madam, wishing to spare you the naked truth, I have omitted to tell you the whole situation... your child has neither legs nor arms."

"Doctor," she cried, "bring me my child. He will have my legs and my arms. I MUST see him."

"I see," he replied, "I must be even more cruel - your child has no torso either."

"No legs! no arms! no torso!! " she sobbed. "Bring him to me. He needs me all the more."

The doctor finally conceded and brought her the baby. She started as she saw IT. Wrapped in a towel was a foot long ear.

She took the ear and rocked it comfortingly: "It will be all right, dear, we will make it somehow.... "

The doctor interrupted her: "Madam, you are wasting your breath. The child is deaf."

That's the situation man is in. You are blind, you are deaf, you have no heart... but to see it hurts.

It is painful to realize it, to recognize it. So we go on finding explanations to avoid the truth about ourselves.

The disciple is not ready - that's why he cannot see the Master. But he goes on saying there is no Master.

I was a student in a university, and it was Buddha's enlightenment day - it was celebrated in the university. And the vice chancellor said, with great passion and with great emotion, "If I had been in Buddha's time, I would have renounced the world, sat at his feet, followed him like a shadow."

And I knew the man! I could not conceive of him ever following a Buddha. I had to stand up. And I said, "You please take your words back, because I know you perfectly well: you are the last man who would have followed Buddha. And do you think Buddhas are not available now? Did you ever go to Ramana Maharshi?"

He had to say, "No."

I said, "But he was alive. Just a few years ago he was alive. He was your contemporary."

This incident happened somewhere near 1955, and Ramana died in '51, just four years before. And the vice chancellor was an old man of seventy. I said, "He was your contemporary. Arunachel is not very far away. In Buddha's time it may have taken you years to journey to Buddha - it was only one hour's flight. Did you go there? Have you been to J. Krishnamurti ever? He is still alive. And you are talking with such emotion and passion. Whom are you trying to be fool?"

But he was a good man. He understood the point. Tears cam to his eyes; he took his words back.

Later on he called me and he said, "Listen, if you have to say something to me you can come in private."

"Why private? You made the statement in public: I had to refute it in public. And never make such a statement again, because I will still be here for two, three years. Think it over. You were in Buddha's time too," I told him.

He was startled. He said, "How do you know?"

I said, "I know! You just look into my eyes: you were in Buddha's time too, but you never went. And now you are talking with such emotion. You are deceiving others, but that is not the big thing: you are deceiving yourself."

People go on thinking that Masters used to happen only in the past, now they don't happen, now they are no more there. And the same was the case in Buddha's time. There are stories: people would come and ask Buddha, "Are you the Perfect Master?" There were people who would go to Jesus and would ask, "Are you the Messiah we were waiting for?"

The Messiah is THERE standing in front of their eyes, in front of them, and they are asking, "Are you the Messiah?" If he says no, they will be happy. If he says yes, they will be offended.

Jesus said yes, that's why they were offended. "So this pretender thinks he is the Messiah? This son of a carpenter, Joseph? And we know him from his childhood. He has been playing in the streets of the town, and now suddenly he has become the Messiah?"

They have always been asking. In Buddha's time they were saying, "In the past there used to be Perfect Masters, in the days of the Upanishads, in the days of the Vedas, there used to be Perfect Masters. But now, in these ugly days, they have all disappeared."

And they go on saying the same thing now! And they will go on saying the same thing for ever. They really don't want to see.

A CERTAIN MAN DECIDED THAT HE WOULD SEEK THE PERFECT MASTER.

HE READ MANY BOOKS, VISITED SAGE AFTER SAGE, LISTENED, DISCUSSED, PRACTISED, BUT HE ALWAYS FOUND HIMSELF DOUBTING OR UNSURE.

YOU CAN READ, YOU CAN ARGUE, you can become very logical about it, but nothing is going to help, the doubt WILL persist - unless you experience. Only experience kills doubt. But how to experience a Master? You have to be a disciple first; you have to fulfill that requirement. And what is the requirement of a disciple? Prayerfulness is the requirement of disciple hood . Capacity to wait.

Capacity to be empty. Capacity to surrender. Capacity to be available. That's what prayer is! And if you know how to pray, you will know all that is needed to know. Not only will you come across a Perfect Master - you are going to come across God himself.

Meditate over these words of Rainer Maria Rilke:

"Pray: to whom? I cannot tell you. Prayer is a radiation of our beings suddenly set afire; it is an infinite and purposeless direction, a brutal accompaniment of our hopes, which travel the universe without reaching any destination. Oh, but I knew this morning how far I am from those greedy ones who, before praying, ask whether God exists. If he no longer or does not yet exist, what difference does it make? My prayer, that will bring him into being, for it is entirely a creative thing as it lifts towards the heavens. And if the God that it projects out of itself does not persist at all, so much the better: we will do it over and it will be less shabby in eternity."

Prayer creates God. Prayer creates the Perfect Master. Prayer is creative. Prayer reveals - it is revelatory. It prepares you for the revelation.

One should not go in search of a Master: one should learn how to pray... and the Master comes. And the Master comes of his own accord. OR he calls you forth wherever you are, but then the journey is totally different - when you are called forth. The quality is different, the intensity is different. YOU don't feel you are going: you feel you are being called. You KNOW that there is no possibility to resist it. It is irresistible. You are pulled! as if a great magnet is pulling you. You are helpless, but you are thrilled because you have been chosen. You come dancing. You are fortunate you have been chosen.

Just prepare wherever you are. Don't ask: If there is no Perfect Master, what is the point of preparing for disciple hood? Don't be worried. The Masters always exist. That is the meaning of these beautiful words of Rilke:

"Prayer is a radiation of our bangs suddenly set afire; it is an infinite and purposeless direction..."

In the beginning you don't know where your prayer is going; it cannot have any address, it cannot have any direction.

How can you pray to God? You don't know God - that's why you are praying. You would like to know what God is, but you don't know. That's why you are pouring your heart out. It is waiting for the unknown to take possession of you. This is faith, this is trust.

The skeptical mind wants first to be certain whether there is a God: "Then I will pray." Rilke is right:

"Oh, but I knew this mowing how far I am from those greedy ones who, before praying, ask whether God exists."

"We will pray only if God exists" - then you will never pray, because you will never know without praying that God exists. You have made an impossible condition for praying. It is not to be fulfilled.

You have to pray. Don't ask the question whether God exists or not. God is irrelevant at this point.

At this point, make prayer possible.

Prayer is a song of the heart addressed to the unknown. Maybe he is, maybe he is not, but that is not the point. One is joyous in pouring one's heart out. It is a joy unto itself. Whether God exists or not is secondary. Prayer is primary. And when prayer is primary, it reveals God, it opens your eyes. It CREATES God. Suddenly the world becomes afire when you are afire. When your heart IS aflame, suddenly you see the whole world aflame with the divine, with the unknown, with the mysterious.

"If he no longer or does not yet exist, what difference does it make?"

This is beautiful. This is how a really religious person thinks.

"My prayer, that will bring him into being..."

Prayer will become the womb. I will give birth to God through my prayer. This is the Sufi approach.

Rile is almost reflecting the very heart of Sufism. But this is how lovers have always felt, and the poets and the mystics.

"If he no longer or does not yet exist, what difference does it make? My prayer, that will bring him into being, for it is entirely a creative thing as it lifts towards the heavens. And if the God that it projects out of itself does not persist at all, so much the better: we will do it over and it will be less shabby in eternity."

We will go on doing it, we will go on creating God. In fact, it is not creation: it is revelation. But for the person who prays, and for whom God is revealed for the first time, it LOOKS like creation - as if the prayer has created it. It reveals. It takes a thick layer of darkness from your eyes. Your heart starts pulsating as it should. You fall in rhythm with the whole. Suddenly God is there.

But before God appears, appears the Master. The Master is a link between you and the God. First the prayer reveals the Master. That is one step, and half the journey. And the second step and the journey is complete.

Prayer is naive: it is waiting for someone who never comes... asking for something or someone who is not there, not at Least now. "If there be a God who loves man, let him speak. NOW."

This is what the poet Seneca says in his tragedy THYESTES. The prayerful heart is saying, "I am speaking to you, I am provoking you - are you there? Just give me a little hint, a small word, a gesture, and that will do. Are you there?" And a thousand and one times you shout to the skies and there is no response. Your prayer disappears into nothingness. But even though the prayer disappears into nothingness, and there is no response from the other side, from the other shore, still the prayer goes on changing you.

The effects are very visible. It may not change the reality outside you, but it goes on changing you.

You become softer and softer, more feminine and more feminine, and one day when you have really melted, when you are no more hard and solid, when you are a flow, the response comes - and NOT from the other shore but from the innermost core of your being. Really, that is the other shore.

But before that happens, you will come to the link between this shore and the other, between this and that - that link is the Master. And in fact to ask for a Perfect Master is foolish, because to be a Master is to be perfect; it is a repetition of words. There are not such categories: imperfect masters and Perfect Masters. A Master is perfect! If he does not look perfect to you, then you have a certain idea of perfection that he is not fulfilling. He never fulfills anybody's idea. He lives his own life, but he lives in perfection.

Remember, when I use the word 'perfection' I always use it in the sense of completion. I never use it in the sense you use it. This is a constant problem. When I say 'perfection', you start thinking that "He will be like this, he will be like that... that he will never be angry." But there have been Masters who have been angry, and when they are angry they are perfectly angry.

Even Ramana Maharshi, such a silent sage, used to become angry sometimes. And then he was REALLY angry. He was anger, pure anger. One day it happened: a scholar came and started asking stupid questions. Ramana listened I His questions were very long and he quoted scriptures to support his question. And Ramana said again and again, "You please meditate. The only thing for you to do is to ask the question:Who am l? No other question is relevant."

But the man wouldn't listen, and he went on and on and on. Suddenly, the disciples could not believe it, Ramana took his staff rushed after the man and the man became so afraid that he escaped outside the room, and Ramana followed him to the very boundary of the ashram. And then he came back laughing. The disciples could not believe it, and they said, "But you, and angry?"

And he said, "Look at the perfection of it."

If you have the idea that a Master is never angry, should not be angry, then there will be difficulties.

If you have the idea that a Master should not look worried, you will have difficulties. Krishnamurti sometimes looks very worried. He has no worry of his own, but he becomes worried about you. He goes on saying one thing and people don't understand, and they go on persisting in their ignorance and he becomes very very angry, almost on the verge of beating himself.

One man came to me and he said, "I used to think that Krishnamurti must be like a Buddha, but today I saw him in his discourse - he became so angry. And for no reason at all!"

I said, "You just tell me the whole story."

He said, "He was talking about the fact that no method is needed, no meditation is needed. You have to drop all methods, all meditations, all paths. And then an old woman, a very old woman stood up and asked, 'How to do it?' And he became very angry."

I said. "I know that old woman, because she comes to me too. And I can understand; I feel all sympathy with Krishnamurti. And that woman has been listening to Krishnamurti for almost fifty years. She is one of the CONSTANT audience, and she is always sitting in that corner, for fifty years. Whenever Krishnamurti comes to Bombay, she is there. Krishnamurti must be getting tired of her also. And she always asks the 'how?' And he is telling continuously that there is no 'how' - a method means how. When we say that there is no method, we are saying there is no how. Either be enlightened RIGHT NOW, or remain unenlightened - that is your decision - but there is no how.

Decide to be or not to be, but don't ask how. There is no how! Either open your eyes and see, otherwise keep your eyes closed and dream, but don't ask how.

"And for fifty years he has been saying the same thing, and the woman persists. And she always stands and asks, 'How? How to do it?' It is natural. He is not really angry in the sense you become angry: it is his response, it is his compassion really. It has a different quality. He is compassionate!

He loves! He wants to help! But when he sees you go on and on in the same rut, to shake YOU UP he becomes absolute anger.

"The idea, of perfection in your mind is that he should be like this, he should be Fe that, he should be like.... He is not like ;anybody else. He is just like himself. Only one dying is true, that he is always total. Whatsoever he is doing he is total in it. He is never partial, never fragmentary. If he is angry, then he is TOTALLY angry. If he is loving, he is totally loving. That totalness is the only quality. That's what I mean by 'perfection'."

All Masters are perfect, so there is no question of searching for a Perfect Master. Become more and more of a disciple. That is where you have to start the journey.

HE READ MANY BOOKS, VISITED SAGE AFTER SAGE, LISTENED, DISCUSSED AND PRACTICED, BUT HE ALWAYS FOUND HIMSELF DOUBTING OR UNSURE.

AFTER TWENTY YEARS HE MET A MAN WHOSE EVERY WORD AND ACTION CORRESPONDED WITH HIS IDEA OF THE TOTALLY REALIZED MAN.

NOW HE WAS CARRYING A CERTAIN IDEA FOR TWENTY YEARS.

He was looking for a carbon copy. He had already decided what a Perfect Master is; now all that was needed was some-body to fit with HIS idea. And remember, it is HIS idea that some-body else has to fit. This is ego, pure ego. This is not humbleness. This is not the way of a disciple. This is not the way of a humble man. This is not the way of a real seeker.

He is functioning through a conclusion. He has already decided that his conclusion is right. How can your conclusions be right? If your conclusions are right, you YOURSELF are a Perfect Master and there is no need for any Master.

AFTER TWENTY YEARS HE MET A MAN WHOSE EVERY WORD AND ACTION CORRESPONDED WITH HIS IDEA OF THE TOTALLY REALIZED MAN.

Must have been a coincidence.

THE TRAVELER LOST NO TIME. "YOU," HE SAID, "SEEM TO ME TO BE THE PERFECT MASTER. IF YOU ARE, MY JOURNEY IS AT AN END."

But see, still the 'if' persists. Because he has a certain conclusion already arrived at in his ignorance, how can he trust it? If he cannot find somebody to correspond with his idea, he is not a Master. If he finds somebody who corresponds, just by coincidence, now the great doubt arises: maybe his idea is right, maybe his idea is wrong. Hence the 'if'. So he says:

" YOU SEEM TO ME TO BE THE PERFECT MASTER. IF YOU ARE, MY JOURNEY IS AT AN END."

"I AM, INDEED, DESCRIBED BY THAT NAME," SAID THE MASTER.

Because for a Master all these are just names. Call him a Buddha, call him an enlightened person, a Christ, a Messiah, a Perfect Master - these are just names. They don't describe his reality. These are just labels. Maybe people need them, but the Master does not need them. He has come home, where all words have become meaningless. He has come to that silence where words don't exist, to that wordless silence.

So the Master says:

"I AM, INDEED, DESCRIBED BY THAT NAME."

He does not say "I am" or "I am not." He simply says, "Yes, people describe me by that name."

"THEN, I BEG OF YOU, ACCEPT ME AS A DISCIPLE."

But this man has not prepared himself as a disciple at all. And now suddenly he wants to be accepted.

" THAT," SAID THE MASTER, "I CANNOT DO; FOR WHILE YOU MAY DESIRE THE PERFECT MASTER, HE, IN TURN, REQUIRES ONLY THE PERFECT PUPIL."

Twenty years' search wasted. Twenty years' search gone down the drain. And the Master is right.

He says, "What do you think? If you want a Perfect Master, then the Perfect Master wants a Perfect Disciple. Go, become perfect! Go, become a disciple first!"

People think disciple hood is nothing to be attained. It needs great discipline to become a disciple.

Both words, 'discipline' and 'disciple', mean the same. The original root means the capacity to learn.

This man is incapable of learning. Twenty years he has been moving with his set conclusions. He has not learnt a thing. In twenty years he has come across many sages, but he has valued his own ideas more than those sages. He has not looked at the reality of those beings that he has come across. He has remained tethered to his ego.

And now he says, "Because you correspond to my ideas, I think you are the Perfect Master. Not that you are the Perfect Master, but only because you correspond to my ideas." Now, who are you?

and how can your ideas decide? How can they be decisive? From where have you gathered? from books? from discussions? from arguments? They are all borrowed. And in your ignorance you have gathered all kinds of nonsense.

In fact, when you read a book, you don't understand what is written there - you understand only that which your ignorance can understand. How can you understand the Koran? To understand the Koran you will need the heart of a Mohammed. How can you understand the Geeta? To understand the Geeta you will need Krishna-consciousness.

Listen to a few stories:

"Mummy," said little Jimmy, "I want to live with Carol next door."

"But you're both only six years old," smiled his mother. "Where will you live?"

"In her bedroom."

"What will you live off? You don't have any money - and what will you do if babies come along?"

"Well," said Jimmy seriously, "we've been all right so far... and if she lays any eggs then I'll tread on them!"

The man in ignorance is almost like a child, like this child, Jimmy. What ideas can you have of perfection? of a Master? of God? Your ideas will be childish. And you will go on understanding that which you CAN understand. And words are always vague. They don't really carry meaning. The meaning has to by projected by you into the words. The word is just empty. You have to fill it with your meaning.

Two hippies are slipping and sliding through the Louisiana marshlands. As one hippie stepped up onto dry land, the other hippie said, "Hey man, an alligator just bit off my leg."

"Which one?" the first hippie said.

"I don't know, man. I can't tell one alligator from another."

Words don't have calling. It depends on you what meaning you are going to give to them.

A doctor was called to see a lady who led a very gay life. When asked to explain how she felt she remarked, "I haven't slept much lately. Last night we dined at the Carlton after the theater and then had drinks. I really feel that my stomach is out of order."

"I'm quite sure of it," he said. "You'll have to diet."

"Oh, doctor, how lovely!" she said. "What color?"

Or:

An Irishman visiting America remarked about the strange American customs. "You take a glass of ginger ale," he said, "and add whiskey to make it strong and then water to make it weak; lemon to make it sour and sugar to make it sweet. You raise the glass and say, 'Here's to you,' and then you drink it down yourself!"

When you see something, you read something, you give meaning to it. It is always your meaning. It can't be otherwise. So you can go on reading as many books as possible and you will gather much rubbish - but the meaning will be yours. You can quote the Bible, but you will simply be quoting yourself.

And that has happened down the ages. When one scripture is translated into another language, MUCH changes in it. It has happened to the Bible, because Jesus spoke in Aramaic, then it was translated into Hebrew, then into Greek, then from Greek into English. It has been translated so many times that its original fragrance is completely lost. It is no more the same. It can't be. So many interpreters, so many translators, stand in between. They have given their own meaning to it.

In John 8: 24 we read: "Except ye believe that I am he, ye shall die in your sins..." But here the word 'he' is not found in the original manuscript at all. The early translators were puzzled by the absence of an object, and thus they simply assumed that a word was missing. They changed the statement:

"Except ye believe that I AM" - this is the original statement - "Except ye believe that I am." They had to change it; it looked incomplete: "Who are you, just saying 'I am'? It looks incomplete." So they made it read: "Except ye believe that I am he - I am God."

Thus the beauty and the immense significance of the original was lost. It is still that way in the Bible:

"I am he." Jesus is simply saying: "I am!" That I-amness is the very quality of existence. He is not saying "I am God" - because if you say "I am God," you have already accepted the duality of 'I' and 'God'. Then the 'am' is only a bridge between the duality.

When Jesus says "I am" he is simply saying that you can call it God or you can call it 1. It is the same thing - two ways of ex-pressing the same thing.

This is far better, far superior to the Upanishadic statement that says: "Thou art that." It has accepted the duality. To deny, it has accepted. It denies; it says "Thou art that," but the duality is accepted.

Jesus is far superior in his statement when he says "I am."

Moses asked God when he met him on the mountain-top, "People will ask me about you. How am I to say anything about you?"

And he said, "Just go and tell them that God says: I am that I am.

Strange words, but of great significance.

When Jesus speaks, he speaks from HIS consciousness; he pours his consciousness into it. But when it reaches you, only the empty word roaches. His spirit is lost on the way. Then you fill that empty word with your ox n spirit, and you say that you have read it in the Bible or you have read it in the Koran or in the Veda, but you are reading only yourself.

ALL scriptures function as mirrors - you see only your face. And remember: if a monkey looks into a mirror, he is not going to find an angel there.

This man read, listened, discussed, practiced, but the doubt remained. Twenty years searching, he came across many sages but could not feel contented with any. He would not have felt contented even if God had been encountered! And maybe, who knows, he may have encountered God too - because God comes in so many sizes and shapes....

There is a story about a great mystic:

The mystic was Mohammedan and he lived in a mosque, but he had a Hindu follower. The Hindu was a Brahmin and the Hindu would cook food for him and would bring it to the mosque, and he used to live five miles away from the mosque. And unless the Master ate, he would sit there and wait - and the Master was a crazy man. Sometimes he would eat in the morning, some-times in the afternoon, sometimes in the evening, sometimes in the night, and the disciple would wait and he would not eat till the Master had eaten. So sometimes he had to remain hungry the whole day.

And by the time he reached home he was so tired that he would think, "Tomorrow, now who wants to prepare food again?" He would fall asleep hungry.

One day the Master said, "Listen, you need not come so far. I can come there myself, so tomorrow you prepare the food and I will come. It is too hot to come, and then sometimes you have to wait the whole day - change it now. You are ready: I will come."

The next day he prepared delicious food for the Master, because he was to come for the first time.

He was thrilled. This was grace: his Master is coming to his home! He decorated the house, he threw flowers on the path... but nobody turned up, only a dog. He chased the dog out because the dog wanted to cat, and he chased and the dog would come back and would try to snatch food. He had seen many dogs, but this dog was strange. He beat the dog but he still came. He really gave him a good beating, then he saw tears coming out of she dog's eyes. And then he disappeared.

Till evening he waited, and then he thought, "This man is crazy - he may have forgotten." So he took the food, went to the mosque - and he saw tears in the eyes of the Master. The SAME kind of tears!

He was puzzled and he said, "Why are you crying?"

And he said, "Why shouldn't I? You have beaten me so much!"

And the disciple said, "What are you talking about? I, and I can beat you? And you never came and you had promised!"

And the Master said, "I came - and not only once. At least twelve times!"

Then the disciple remembered the dog - exactly twelve times the dog had tried to enter.

And the Master said, "You have to be capable of seeing the formless now. Don't be too much attached to the form. Why should I be thought of only in this form, in this body? Why can't you find me in other forms?"

So I say maybe this great seeker had come across God... in fact how can you avoid God?

Whomsoever you come across, you always come across God. But he had great ideas, and even God could not fulfill those ideas. He remained empty, doubtful, untrusting, and the search continued.

And one day when he comes to a man who fulfills his ideas, he creates another problem. Then the Master says:

"THAT I CANNOT DO - I cannot accept you as a disciple - FOR WHILE YOU MAY DESIRE THE PERFECT MASTER, HE, IN TURN, REQUIRES ONLY THE PERFECT PUPIL."

The Master is saying, "Had you prepared yourself these twenty years to be a disciple, you would have found me much earlier. You cam across me many times, but you missed. And this time also you have to miss."

This is the Sufi approach for having contact and communion with a Master: become a disciple. Don't search for the Master: search for disciple hood. And let me repeat: the Master appears when the disciple is ready.