How To Understand Masters

THE CRITERIA:

The First CRITERION : Become a Disciple :

The word "discipline" is beautiful. It comes from the same root from where the word "disciple" comes. "Discipline" means the capacity to learn, the capacity to know. But you cannot know, you cannot learn, unless you have attained the capacity to be. A disciple means one who is centered, humble, receptive, open, ready, alert, waiting, prayerful. A disciple is a great achievement. Only through discipline you will become a disciple.

A disciple means a seeker who is not a crowd, who is trying to be centered and crystallized, at least trying, making efforts, sincere efforts to become individual, to feel his being. All discipline is an effort to make you a master of yourself.

If your mind has come to realize that whatsoever you have been doing up to now was just senseless, it was a nightmare at the worst or a beautiful dream at the best then the path of discipline opens before you. Only then you can become a DISCIPLE.

The Second CRITERION: Total Surrender and TRUST.

First, nobody is searching truth. Even if a master passes you by, you will remain completely oblivious of his existence. That’s how it happened when Buddha passed. Millions of people remained oblivious. When Jesus passed, people had not even heard his name. He was an unknown figure. When Mahavir was here, very rare souls came in contact with him.

It is very difficult to become a disciple. It is easy to become a student, because a student has no personal relationship with Masters. He comes to know things. You go to the university, you are a student. If you come to a Master as a student, you will miss the Master, because then you hear only what the Masters say, and you will collect it as information; you will become more knowledgeable. But if you really want to understand what the Master says, you have to come to the Master  as a disciple.

A disciple is one who says, ‘I don’t know anything. I surrender totally, utterly. I will be just receptive. I trust. I am ready to annihilate myself.

A disciple means one who is ready to trust somebody… very difficult… ready to drop himself, ready to go with somebody into the unknown, uncharted world. Only a very courageous soul becomes a disciple. To learn, one needs to be humble. To learn, one needs to be totally empty, receptive, sensitive, meditative.

Between a student and a teacher, doubt is the method. The teacher is there to help your doubts disappear, he is there to answer your questions; he is there to inform you, make you more knowledgeable. The student is there with all his questions, curiosities, doubts. In fact, the more intelligent he is, the more doubtful he will be. The best student is full of doubts, and the best teacher is one who helps the student with new answers, new knowledge, so that his doubts can be disposed of. That’s the fundamental method of inquiry.

In the world of religion just the opposite is the case: trust is the method, not doubt; love is the method, not logic; surrender is the method, not conquest of knowledge. The student, when he comes from the university, comes with great ego because he has accumulated much knowledge, he has learned much. But the disciple, when he comes from the master, comes as a nobody, egoless. He no longer exists as a separate entity from existence. He has not learned anything; on the contrary, he has unlearned whatsoever he used to know before.

The Third Criterion : A Transformation and Your Totality.

Science says: Don’t believe, doubt as much as you can. But also, don’t disbelieve, because disbelief is again a sort of belief. You can believe in God, you can believe in the concept of no-God. You can say God is, with a fanatic attitude; you can say the quite reverse, that God is not with the same fanaticism. Atheists, theists, are all believers, and belief is not the realm for science. Science means experience something, that which is; no belief is needed. So the second thing to remember: Religion is existential, experiential, experimental. No belief is required, no faith is needed – only courage to experience. And that’s what’s lacking. You can believe easily because in belief you are not going to be transformed. Belief is something added to you, something superficial. Your being is not changed; you are not passing through some mutation.

To understand philosophy is easy because only your intellect is required. If you can understand language, if you can understand concept, you can understand philosophy. You need not change; you require no transformation. As you are, you can understand philosophy – but not truth. You will need a change... rather, a mutation. Unless YOU are different it cannot be understood, because it is not an intellectual proposition, it is an experience. Unless you are receptive, ready, vulnerable to the experience, it is not going to come to you.

Just like science says experiment, religion says experience. Experiment and experience are both the same, their directions are different. Experiment means something you can do outside; experience means something you can do inside. Experience is an inside experiment.

Truth needs you totally. Even ninety-nine percent won't do: exactly hundred percent of you is needed, and head is only one percent.

Belief is easy because you are not required really to do anything – just a superficial dressing, a decoration, something which you can put aside any moment you like. Religion is not belief. That’s why it is difficult, arduous, and sometimes it seems impossible. It is an existential approach. You will come to the truth, but not through belief, but through your own experience, through your own realization.

That means you will have to be totally changed. Your viewpoints, your way of life, your mind, your psyche has to be shattered completely as it is. Something new has to be created. Only with that new will you come in contact with the reality and can understand what the masters  say.