They shower great light on your being. They are like a searchlight; they focus their being on your being. You have lived in darkness for centuries, for millions of lives. Suddenly a master’s searchlight starts revealing a few forgotten territories in you. They are within you. The master is not bringing them. He is simply bringing his light. He is focusing himself on you. And the master can focus only when the disciple is open, when the disciple is surrendered, when the disciple is ready to learn, not to argue; when the disciple has come not to accumulate knowledge but to know truth; when the disciple is not only curious but is a seeker and is ready to risk all. Even if life has to be risked and sacrificed the disciple is ready. In fact, when you risk your sleepy life, you sacrifice your sleepy life. You attain a totally different quality of life: the life of light, of love, the life which is beyond death, beyond time, beyond change.
They illuminate and confirm realization. First, the master illuminates the way, the truth that is within you. Second, when you realize it, when you recognize it… It is very difficult for you to believe that you have attained it. The most unbelievable thing is when realization of truth happens to you, because you were told that it is very difficult, almost impossible; that it takes millions of lives to arrive at it. You were told it is somewhere else, maybe in heaven. And when you recognize it within yourself, how can you believe it?
The master confirms it. He says, “Yes, this is it!” His confirmation is as much needed as his illumination. He begins by illuminating and ends by confirming. The masters are evidence of truth, not its proof.
Meditate over the subtle difference between evidence and proof. The master is evidence, he is a witness. He has seen, he has known, he has become. You can feel it. The evidence can be felt. You can come closer and closer. You can allow the fragrance of the master to penetrate to the innermost core of your being. The master is only evidence, he is not proof. If you want any proof… There is no proof.
God can neither be proved nor disproved. It is not an argument. God is not a hypothesis, it is not a theory: it is experience. The master is living evidence. To see it you will need a different approach than that to which you are accustomed.
You know how to approach a teacher, how to approach a professor, how to approach a priest. They don’t require much because they simply impart information, which can be done even by a tape recorder, or by a computer, or by a gramophone record or a book.
I was a student in a university. I never attended the classes of my professors. Naturally, they were offended. And one day the head of the department called me and he asked, “Why have you joined the university? We never see you, you never attend any classes. And remember, when the examination time comes don’t ask for an attendance record, because seventy-five percent attendance is a must to enter the examination.”
I took hold of the hand of that old man and I replied, “Come with me. I will show you where I am and why I have entered the university.”
He was a little afraid of where I was taking him and why. It was a well-known fact that I was a little eccentric! He asked, “But where are you taking me?”
I replied, “I will show you that you have to give me one hundred percent attendance. Come with me.” I took him to the library and I told the librarian, “Tell this old man, has there ever been a single day when I have not been in the library?”
The librarian said, “Even on holidays he is here. If the library is not open then this student goes on sitting in the garden of the library, but he comes. And every day we have to tell him, ‘Now please leave, because it is closing time.’”
I told the professor, “I find the books far clearer than your so-called professors. And, moreover, they simply repeat what is already written in the books, so what is the point of going on listening to them secondhand? I can look in the books directly!” I told him, “If you can prove that your teachers are teaching something which is not in the books, then I am ready to come to the classes. If you cannot prove it, then keep in mind that you must give me one hundred percent attendance – otherwise I will create trouble!”
I never went to ask him. He gave me one hundred percent attendance. He followed the point; it was so simple. He said, “You are right. Why listen to secondhand knowledge? You can go directly to the books. I know those professors. I myself am just a gramophone record. The truth is,” he said to me, “that for thirty years I have not read anything. I just go on using my old notes.”
For thirty years he has been teaching the same thing, again and again and again; and in thirty years, millions of books have been published.
You know how to approach a teacher, you know how to approach a book, you know how to approach dead information. But you don’t know how to approach a master. It is a totally different way of communing. It is not communication; it is communion because the master is not proof but evidence. He is not an argument for godliness, he is a witness. He does not possess great knowledge about godliness, he knows. He is not knowledgeable, he simply knows.
Remember, to know about is worthless: the word about means around. To know about something means to go on moving in circles, around and around. The word about is beautiful. Whenever you read about, read around. When somebody says, “I know about God,” read he knows around God. He goes in a circle. And real knowing is never about, never around. It is direct, it is a straight line.
Jesus says: “Straight is the path…” It does not go in circles. It is a jump from the periphery to the center. The master is an evidence of that jump, that quantum leap, that transformation.
You have to approach the master with great love, with great trust, with an open heart. You are not aware of who you are. He is aware of who he is, and he is aware of who you are. The caterpillar might be said to be unaware that it may become a butterfly. You are caterpillars – bodhisattvas. All caterpillars are bodhisattvas and all bodhisattvas are caterpillars. A bodhisattva means one who can become a butterfly, who can become a buddha, who is a buddha in the seed, in essence. But how can the caterpillar be aware that he can become a butterfly? The only way is to commune with butterflies, to see butterflies moving in the wind, in the sun. Seeing them soaring high, seeing them moving from one flower to another flower, seeing their beauty, their color, maybe a deep desire, a longing arises in the caterpillar, “Can I also be the same?” In that very moment the caterpillar has started awakening, a process has been triggered.
The master–disciple relationship is the relationship between a caterpillar and a butterfly, a friendship between a caterpillar and a butterfly. The butterfly cannot prove that the caterpillar can become a butterfly; there is no logical way. But the butterfly can provoke a longing in the caterpillar; that is possible.
The master helps you to reach your own experience. He does not give you the Vedas, the Koran, the Bible; he throws you to yourself. He makes you aware of your inner sources. He makes you aware of your own juice, of your own godliness. He liberates you from the scriptures. He liberates you from the interpretations of others. He liberates you from all belief. He liberates you from all speculation, from all guesswork. He liberates you from philosophy and from religion and from theology. He liberates you, in short, from the world of words – because the word is the problem.
You become so obsessed with the word love that you forget that love is an experience, not a word. You become so obsessed with the word God that you forget that God is an experience, not a word. The word God is not God, and the word fire is not fire, and the word love is not love either.
The master liberates you from words. He liberates you from all kinds of imaginative philosophies. He brings you to a state of wordless silence. The failure of religion and philosophy is that they all become substitutes for real experience. Beware of it!
Marlene and Florence, two Denver secretaries, were chatting over lunch. “I was raped last night by a scholar,” whispered Marlene.
“Really?” said Florence. “How did you know he was a scholar?”
“I had to help him.”
Scholars