Question 2 Why do masters need directions from master of masters? Are they not enough in themselves when they have reached enlightenment? Or are there stages of enlightenment too?

No, there are not stages in fact, but when a Master is in the body, and when the Master leaves the body and becomes bodiless, there is a difference — not exactly stages. It is just like you are standing by the side of the road under a tree: you can see a patch of the road; beyond that patch you cannot see. Then you climb up the tree. You remain the same; nothing is happening to you or your consciousness. But you climb up the tree, and from the tree now you can look miles to this side and miles to that.

Then you fly in an airplane. Nothing has happened to you; your consciousness remains the same. But now you can see for thousands of miles. In the body you are on the road — by the side of the road — encased in the body. The body is the lowest point in existence because it means committed to the matter still, being with the matter still. Matter is the lowest point and God is the highest point.

When a Master attains to enlightenment in the body, the body has to fulfill its karmas, the past samskaras, the past conditionings. Every account has to be closed; only then can the body be left. It is like this: your airplane has arrived, but you have many businesses to finish. All the creditors are there, and they are asking to close the account before you leave. And there are many credits, because many lives you have been promising, doing things, acting, behaving, sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes a sinner, sometimes a saint. You have accumulated much Before you leave, the whole existence demands you to complete everything.

When you have become enlightened, now you know that you are not the body, but you owe many things to the body and the material world. Time is needed — Buddha lived forty years after his enlightenment, Mahavira also lived near about forty years — to pay, to pay everything that they owe, to complete every circle that they started. No new action, but the old hanging things have to be finished, the old hangover has to be finished. When all the accounts are closed, now you can take your aircraft.

Up to now, with matter, you have been moving horizontally — just like in a bullock cart. Now you can move vertically. Now you can go upwards. Before this, you have always been going forwards or backwards; there was no vertical movement. And the higher you rise — and the God is the highest point, the Master of Masters — from where the perception is total. Your consciousness is the same; nothing has changed: an enlightened man has the same consciousness as the supreme state of consciousness, God — no difference of consciousness. But the perception, the field of perception, is different; now he can look everywhere.

There was a great debate in the times of Buddha and Mahavira. It will be useful to understand it at this point for this question. There was a debate: followers of Mahavira used to say that Mahavira is omnipotent omniscient, omnipresent, sarvagya, all-knowing. In a way they are right, because once you are freed from matter and body you are God. But in a way they were wrong, because you may be freed from the body, but you have yet not left it. The identification is broken; you know that you are not the body. But still you are in it.

It is as if you live in a house; then suddenly you come to know that this house doesn’t belong to you — somebody else’s house and you were living in it. But then too, to leave the house you will have to make arrangements, you will have to remove things. And it will take time. You know this house is not yours, your attitude has changed. Now you are not worried about this house what happens to it. If next day it falls and becomes a ruins, it is nothing to you. If next day you leave and it takes fire, it is nothing to you: it belongs to somebody else. Just a moment before, you were identified with the house; it was your house. If there was fire, if the house fell down, you would have much worried. Now the identification is broken.

Mahavira’s followers are right in a sense, because when you have come to know yourself, you have become all-knowing. But Buddha’s followers used to say that this is not right — a Buddha can know if he wants to know something, but he is not all-knowing. They used to say that if the Buddha wants, he can focus his attention in any direction, and wherever he focuses his attention, he will be able to know. He is capable of omniscience, but not omniscient. The difference is subtle, delicate, but beautiful. Because they said if he knows everything and all things continuously, he will go mad. This body cannot bear that much.

They are also right. A Buddha in the body can know anything if he wants to know. His consciousness, because of the body, is like a torch. You go in the dark with the torch. You can know anything if you focus; light is with you. But a torch is a torch; it is not a flame. A flame will give light in all directions; a torch focuses in a particular direction — wherever you want. The torch has no choice You can look to the north, and then it will reveal the north. You can look to the south, and then it will reveal the south. But all the four directions are not revealed together. If you move the torch to the south, then the north is closed. It is a narrow flow of light.

This was Buddha’s followers’ standpoint. And Mahavira’s followers used to say that he is not like a torch, he is like a lamp; all directions are revealed. But I favor Buddha’s followers’ standpoint. When the body is there, you are narrowed down. Body is a narrowing. You become like a torch — because you cannot see from the hands, you can see only from the eyes. If you can see only from the eyes, you cannot see from your back because you don’t have any eyes there. You have to move your head.

With the body everything is focused and narrow. The consciousness is unfocused and flowing in all directions, but the vehicle, the body, is not in all directions — it always focused, so your consciousness also becomes narrowed down to it. But when the body is no more there, and a Buddha has left the body, then there is no problem. All directions are revealed together.

That’s the point to be understood. That’s why even an enlightened person can be guided, because an enlightened person is still tethered to the body, anchored in the body, in the narrow body, and a god is unanchored, floating in the highest sky. From there he can see all directions. From there he can see the past, the future, the present. From there his view is unclouded. That’s why he can help.

Your view, even if you become enlightened in the body, is clouded. The body is there all around you. The status of consciousness is the same, the innermost reality of the consciousness is the same, the quality of the light is the same. But one light is tethered to the body and has become narrow; one light is not tethered to anything at all — just a floating light. In the highest of skies, guidance is possible.

WHY DO MASTERS NEED DIRECTIONS FROM A MASTER OF MASTERS?

That’s the reason.

ARE THEY NOT ENOUGH IN THEMSELVES WHEN THEY HAVE REACHED ENLIGHTENMENT OR ARE THERE STAGES OF ENLIGHTENMENT TOO?

They are enough. They are enough to guide disciples; they are enough to help disciples. Nothing is needed. But still they are tethered, and one who is untethered is always a good help. You cannot look in all directions; he can look.

You can also move and look, but that has to be done. This is what I am doing: having no instructor above, nobody to guide me, I have to be continuously on move — looking from this direction and that, watching from this direction and that, looking at you through many standpoints so that your totality can be looked. I can look through, but I have to be moving around you. Just a glance will not help because a glance will be narrowed through the body. I am having a torch and moving all around you, looking from every standpoint possible.

In a way it is difficult because I have to work more. In a way it is very beautiful because I have to work more and I have to look from every standpoint possible. I come to know many things which ready-made instructions cannot do. And when the Master of Masters in Patanjali’s ideology — a god — gives instructions, he gives no explanations; he gives simply instructions. He simply says, “Do this; don’t do that.”

Those who follow these instructions, they will also look like ready-made. It is bound to be so because they will say, “Do this.” They will not have the explanation. And very coded instructions are given. Explanations are very difficult — and there is no need also for them, because when it is given from a higher standpoint it is okay. Just one has to be obedient.

The Master is obedient to the Master of Masters, and you have to be obedient to the Master. An obedience follows. It is just like a military hierarchy; not much freedom. Much is not allowed Order is order If you ask for explanation, you are rebellious. And this is the problem, one of the greatest problems humanity has to face now: now man cannot be obedient as in the past. You cannot simply say, “Don’t do this”; explanation is needed. And not any ordinary explanation will do. A very authentic explanation is needed because the very mind of humanity is no more obedient. Now rebelliousness is built in; a child is born rebellious now.

It was totally different in the days of Buddha and Mahavira. Everybody is taught to be individual, to stand on his own, to believe in himself. Trust has become difficult. Obedience is not possible. If somebody follows without asking, you think he is a blind follower. He is condemned. Now only a Master can help you who has all the explanations — more than you require, who can exhaust you completely. You go on asking; he can go on answering you. A moment comes when you are tired of asking, and you say, “Okay, I will follow.”

Never before this it was so. It was simple: when Mahavira says, “Do this,” you do this. But this is not possible, simply because man is so different. The modern mind is a rebellious mind, and you cannot change it. This is how evolution has brought it to be, and nothing is wrong in it. That is why old Masters are falling off the road; nobody listens to them. You go to them. They have instructions, beautiful instructions, but they don’t provide any explanation, and now the first thing is explanation. The instruction should follow as a syllogism. All explanations should be given first, and then the Master should say, “Therefore, do this.”

It is a lengthy process, but it’s how it is. Nothing can be done. And in a sense it is a beautiful growth, because when you simply trust, your trust has no salt in it, no tension in it. Your trust has no sharpness in it. It is a hodge-podge thing — shapeless: no tonality in it, no color in it. It is just grey. But when you can doubt, you can argue, you can reason and a Master can satisfy all your reasons and arguments and doubts, then arises a trust which has a beauty of its own because against the background of doubt it has been achieved.

Against all doubts it has been achieved, against all challenges it has been achieved. It has been a fight. It was not simple and cheap: it has been costly. And when you achieve something after a long fight, it has a meaning of its own. If you simply get it on the road it just Lying there and take it home, it has no beauty. If Kohinoors are there all over the earth, who will bother to take them home? If a Kohinoor is just an ordinary pebble Lying anywhere, then who will bother?

In the old days, faith was like pebbles all over the earth. Now it has to be a Kohinoor. Now it has to be a precious achievement. Instructions won’t help. A Master has to be so deep in his explanations that he exhausts you. I never say to you don’t ask. In fact, just otherwise is the case. I say to you ask, and you don’t find questions.

I will bring all the questions possible from your unconscious to the surface, and I will solve them. Nobody can say to you that you are a blind follower. And I will not give you a single instruction without totally satisfying your reason — no, because that is not going to help you in any way.

Instructions are given from the Masters of Masters, but they are just quoted words — sutras; “Do this; don’t do that.” In the new age, that won’t help. Man is so rational now that even if you are teaching irrationality you have to reason it about. That’s what I am doing: teaching you the absurdity, the irrational, teaching you the mysterious — and through reason. Your reason has to be so much used that you yourself become aware that this is futile — throw it. You have to be so much talked about your reason that you get fed up with it; you drop it on your own, not through instruction.

Because instruction can be given, but you will cling. That won’t help. I’m not going to say to you, “Just trust me.” I’m creating the whole situation in which you cannot do otherwise. You will have to trust. It will take a time — a little longer — than simple obedience. But it is worth.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 2

Chapter 6 – The Beginning of a New Path (6 January 1975 am in Buddha Hall)

Question 1 Do you receive instructions from any master of masters?

I AM NOT ON ANY ANCIENT path, so few things have to be understood. I am not like Mahavira who was the end of a long series of teerthankaras, twenty-four — he was the twenty-fourth. In the past twenty-three had become Master of Masters, gods, on the same path, the same method, the same way of life, the same technique.

The first was Rishabh and the last was Mahavira. Rishabh had nobody in the past to look to. I am not like Mahavira, but like Rishabh. I am a beginning of a tradition, not the end. Many more will be coming on the same path. So I cannot look for instructions to anybody; that’s not possible. A tradition is born and then a tradition dies, just as persons are born and persons die. I am the beginning, not the end. When somebody is in the middle of the series or at the end, he gets instructions from the Master of Masters.

The reason why I am not any path? I have worked with many Masters, but I have never been a disciple. I was a wanderer, wandering through many lives, criss-crossing many traditions, being with many groups, schools, methods, but never belonging to anybody. I was received with love, but I was never a part — a guest at the most, an overnight stay. That’s why I learned so much. You cannot learn on one path so much; that’s impossible.

If you move on one path, you know everything about it but nothing about anything else. Your whole being is absorbed in it. That has not been my way. I have been like a bee from one flower to another, gathering many fragrances. That’s why I can be at ease with Zen, can be at ease with Jesus, can be at ease with Jews, can be at ease with Mohammedans, can be at ease with Patanjali — diverse ways, sometimes diametrically opposite.

But, to me, a hidden harmony exists. That’s why people who follow one path are unable to understand me. They are simply baffled, bewildered. They know a particular logic, a particular pattern. If the thing fits into their pattern, it is right. If it doesn’t fit, it is wrong. They have a very limited criterion. To me, no criterions exist. Because I have been with so many patterns, I can be at ease anywhere. Nobody is alien to me and I am not a stranger to anybody. But this creates a problem. I am not a stranger to anybody, but everybody becomes a stranger to me — has to be so.

If you belong not to a particular sect, then everybody thinks you as if you are the enemy. Hindus will be against me, Christians will be against me, Jews will be against me, Jains will be against me, and I am against nobody. Because they cannot find their pattern in me, they will be against me.

And I am talking about not pattern, but a deeper pattern which holds all the patterns. There is a pattern, another pattern, another pattern, millions of patterns. Then all the patterns are held by something underground which is the pattern of patterns — the hidden harmony. They cannot look at it, but they are not at fault also. When you live with a certain tradition, a certain philosophy, a certain way of looking at things, you become attuned to it.

In a way, I was never attuned to anybody — not that much so that I could have become a part of them. In a sense it is a misfortune, but in another sense it proved a blessing. Many who worked with me achieved liberation before me. It was a misfortune to me. I lagged and lagged behind because never working totally with anything, moving from one to another.

Many achieved who started with me. Even few who started after me achieved before me. This was a misfortune, but in another sense this has been a blessing because I know every home. I may not belong to any home, but I am at home everywhere. That is why I have got no Master of Masters — I was never a disciple. To be directed by a Master of Masters, you have to be a disciple to a certain Master. Then you car; be directed. Then you know the language. So I am not directed by anybody but helped by many. The difference has to be understood: not directed, I don’t receive any orders, “Do this or don’t do that”, but helped by many.

Jains may not feel that I belong to them, but Mahavira feels, because at least he can see the pattern of patterns. Followers of Jesus may not be able to understand me, but Jesus can. So I am helped by many. That’s why many people are coming to me from different sources. You cannot find such a gathering anywhere on the earth at this time. Jews are there, Christians are there, Mohammedans are there, Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, from all over the world. And more, many more, will be coming soon.

That’s a help from many Masters. They know I can be helpful to their disciples; they will be sending many more — but no instructions, because I never received instructions from any Master as a disciple. Now there is no need also. Just a help, and that is better — I feel more at freedom. Nobody can be so free as I am.

Because if you receive directions from Mahavira, you cannot be as free as I am. A Jain has to remain Jain. He has to go on talking against Buddhism, against Hinduism. He has to because it is a fight of many patterns and traditions. And traditions have to fight if they want to survive. And for the sake of disciples they have to be argumentative; they have to say, “That is wrong,” because only then the disciple can feel that “This is right.” Against wrong, the disciple feels what is right.

With me you will be at a loss. If you are just here with your intellect, you will be confused. You will go crazy because this moment I say something and next moment I contradict it: because this moment I was talking about one tradition, another moment I am talking about another. And sometimes I am not talking about any tradition; I am talking about me. Then you cannot find it anywhere in any scripture.

But I am helped, and the help is beautiful because I am not supposed to follow it. I am not forced to follow it. It is up to me. Help is given unconditionally. If I feel like doing it, I will do; if I don’t feel, I will not do it. I have no obligation to anybody.

But if you become some day enlightened, then you can receive. If I am not in the body, then you can receive instructions from me. This always happens to the first person, when a tradition starts. It is a beginning, a birth, and you are near a birth process. And it is most beautiful when something is born, because it is most alive. By and by, as a child grows, the child is coming nearer and nearer to death. A tradition is freshest when it is born. It has a beauty of its own — incomparable, unique.

The people who listened to Rishabh, the first Jain teerthankara, had a different quality. When they listened to Mahavira, it was thousands of years old. It was just on the verge of dying. With Mahavira, it died.

When in a tradition no more Masters are born, it is dead. It means the tradition is no more growing. Jains closed it. With the twenty-fourth they said, “Now, no more Masters, no more teerthankaras.” To be with Nanak was beautiful because something new was coming out of the womb — the womb of the universe. Just as you watch a child being born — a mystery — an unknown penetrating the known, the bodiless becoming the embodied. It is fresh like dewdrops. Soon everything will be covered with dust. Soon, as time passes, things will become old.

But by the time of the tenth guru of the Sikhs, the tenth Master, things became dead. Then they closed the line and they said, “Now no more Masters. Now the scripture itself will be the Master.” That’s why they called their scripture “Guru-granth” — the Master scripture. Now no more persons will be there; just a dead scripture will be the Master now. And when a scripture is dead it is futile — not only futile; it is poisonous. Don’t allow anything dead in your body. It will create poison; it will destroy your whole system.

Here, something new is born, a beginning. It is fresh, but that’s why it is very difficult also to see it. Because if I you go to the Ganges, the source of the Ganges, it is so tiny there — fresh, of course: never again it will be so fresh, because when it moves it gathers many things, accumulates, becomes more and more dirty. At Kashi it is the dirtiest, but then you call it “Holy Ganges” because now it is so vast. It has accumulated so much, now even a blind man can see it. At the Gangotri — at the beginning, at the source — you need to be very perceptive. Only then you can see; otherwise it is just a trickling of the drops. You cannot even believe that this trickling of the drops is going to become Ganges — unbelievable.

It is difficult right now to see what is happening because it is a very, very tiny stream, just like a child. People missed with Rishabh, the first Jain Teerthankara, but they could recognize Mahavira — see? Jains don’t think much of the first — Rishabh. In fact, they pay their whole homage to Mahavira. In fact, in the western mind, Mahavira is the originator of Jainism. Because they pay so much respect to Mahavira in India, that how others can feel that somebody else was the originator? Rishabh has become legendary, forgotten; may have been, may not have been, he doesn’t seem to be historical — hoary past — and you don’t know much about him. Mahavira is historical, and he is the Ganges, near Benares, Kashi — so vast.

Remember that the beginning is small, but never again the mystery will be so deep as in the beginning. The beginning is life and the end is death. With Mahavira, death enters into Jain tradition. With Rishabh, life entered, came down from the above Himalayas, to the earth.

I have got nobody to be responsible to, nobody to get instructions from, but much help is available. And if you take it in its totality, then it is more than any single Master can instruct. When I am talking about Patanjali, Patanjali is helpful. I can talk exactly as if he was talking here. I am not talking, in fact; these are not commentaries. It is he himself using me as a vehicle. When I am talking about Heraclitus, he is there — but as a help. This you have to understand, and become more perceptive so that you can see the beginning.

To move into a tradition when it has become a great force does not take much perceptivity, much sensitivity. To come when things are beginning, just in the morning, is difficult. By the evening many come, but then they come because the thing has become so vast and powerful. In the morning only those few chosen come who have the sensitivity to feel that something great is being born. You cannot prove it right now. Time will prove it. It will take thousands of years to prove what was being born, but you are fortunate to be here. And don’t miss the opportunity, because this is the freshest point and the most mysterious.

If you can feel it, if you can allow it to go deep into || you, many things will become possible in a very short period of time. It is yet not respectable to be with me — it is not a prestige. In fact, only gamblers can be with me who do not bother and worry about what others say. People who are respectable cannot come. After a few years, when the tradition becomes by and by dead, it becomes respectable. Then people will come, but those will be dead people. They will come only when something becomes respectable. They will come because of the ego.

You are here not because of the ego, because with me there is nothing to gain for the ego at least. You will lose. With Rishabh, only people who were alive and courageous and daring, adventurous, they moved; with Mahavira, dead businessmen — not gamblers. That is why Jains have become a business community. The whole community is business community; they don’t do anything except business. Business is the least courageous thing in the world. That’s why businessmen become cowards. In the first place they were cowards; that’s why they became businessmen.

A farmer is more courageous because he lives with the unknown, does not know what is going to happen, whether rains will be there or not — nobody knows. And how can you believe in the clouds? You can believe in the banks, but you cannot believe in the clouds. No — nobody knows what is going to happen; he hangs with the unknown. But he lives a more courageous life — a warrior.

Mahavira himself was a warrior; all the twenty-four teerthankaras of the Jains were warriors. Then what misfortune happened? What happened that the whole followers became businessmen? They became businessmen with Mahavira because they came only with Mahavira — when the tradition was glorious, had a legendary past, become already a myth and was respectable to be with.

Dead people come only when something becomes dead; alive people come only when something is alive. Younger people will be coming to me more. Even if somebody old comes to me, he is bound to be younger in the heart. Old people look for prestige, respect. They will go to dead churches and temples where nothing is except emptiness and a past. What is past? — an emptiness. Anything alive is herenow, and anything alive has a future, because future grows out of it. The moment you start looking at the past, there can be no growth.

DO YOU RECEIVE INSTRUCTIONS FROM ANY MASTER OF MASTERS? No. But I receive help which is more beautiful. And I have been a loner, a vagabond with no home, passing, learning, moving, never staying anywhere. So I have nobody to look up to. If I had to find something, I had to find it myself. Much help available, but I had to work it out. And in a way that is going to be a great help because then I don’t depend on any code. I watch the disciple. There is nobody as a Master to me to look to. I have to look at the disciple more deeply to find the clue. What will help you, I have to look into you. That’s why my teaching, my methods, differ with each disciple. I have no universal formula, cannot have; no fixed rules, I have to respond. I have not a discipline already — ready-made. Rather, a growing phenomenon. Every disciple adds to it. When I start working with a new disciple, I have to look into him, seek, find what will help him, how he can grow. And each time, with each disciple, a new code is born.

You are going really in a mess when I am gone — because there will be so many stories from each disciple, and you will not be able to make any end, head or tail of it — because I am talking to each individual as individual. The system is growing through him, and it is growing in many, many directions. It is a vast tree, many branches, many sub-branches, going in all directions.

I don’t receive any instructions from the Masters. I receive instructions from you. When I look into you, in your unconscious, in your depth, I receive instructions from there and I work it out for you. It is always a new response.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 2

Chapter 6 – The Beginning of a New Path (6 January 1975 am in Buddha Hall)