Haidar Ali, when he had mastered the repetitions and the exercises, when he knew the recitals and the bodily postures of the Sufi schools, was taken by his father into the presence of the Emperor.

"Mighty Mahmud," said Iskandar, "I have had this youth, my eldest and most intelligent son, specially trained in the ways of the Sufis, so that he might obtain a worthy position at your Majesty's court, knowing that you are the patron of learning of our epoch."

Mahmud did not look up, but he merely said, "Bring him back in a year."

When he brought the youth back to the court, he said, "Peacock of the Age! My son has carried out long and difficult journeys, and at the same time to his knowledge of exercises he has added a complete familiarity with the classics of the People of the Path. Pray have him examined, so that it may be shown that he could be an adornment of your Majesty's court."

"Let him," said Mahmud immediately, "return after another year."

During the next twelve months, Haidar Ali crossed the Oxus and visited Bokhara and Samarkand, Qasr-i-Arfin and Tashqand, Dushambe and the turbats of the Sufi saints

When he returned to the court, Mahmud of Ghazna took one look at him and said, "He may care to come back after a further year."

Haidar Ali made the pilgrimage to Mecca in that year.

He travelled to India; and in Persia he consulted rare books and never missed an opportunity of seeking out and paying his respects to the great dervishes of the time.

When he returned to Ghazna, Mahmud said to him, "Now select a teacher, if he will have you, and come back in a year."

When that year was over and Iskandar Khan prepared to take his son to the court, Haidar Ali showed no interest at all in going there. He simply sat at the feet of his teacher in Herat, and nothing that his father could say would move him.

"I have wasted my time, and my money, and this young man has failed the tests imposed by Mahmud the King," he lamented, and he abandoned the whole affair.

Meanwhile, the day when the youth was due to present himself came and went, and then Mahmud said to his courtiers, "Prepare yourselves for a visit to Herat; there is someone there whom I have to see."

As the Emperor's cavalcade was entering Herat to the flourish of trumpets, Haidar Ali's teacher took him by the hand, led him to the gate of the tekkia, and there they waited:

Shortly afterwards, Mahmud and his courtier Ayaz, taking off their shoes, presented themselves at the sanctuary.

"Here, Mahmud," said the Sufi sheikh, "is the man who was nothing while he was a visitor of kings, but who is now one who is visited by kings. Take him as your Sufi counsellor: for he is ready."

This is the story of the studies of Hiravi, Haidar Ali Jan, the Sage of Herat.

RELIGION IS A RISK, A REBELLION, AND A REBIRTH, RELIGION is not a consolation, it is not conformity, it is not convention. Religion is not part of the world—it is something of the beyond.

Religion cannot be learnt: it can only be imbibed. There is no study which is going to help you to become religious. All studies lead astray.

Religion is not a kind of learning. On the contrary, it is unlearning. Not that you have to know more, but that you have to come to a point where all knowing disappears, and you become innocent, and you are a child again. And again the wonder is fresh and the mystery of life is revealed to you.

The knower lives in his mind. And the mind goes on pretending that it knows. And because the mind pretends that it knows, it demystifies existence. Knowledge is the most irreligious phenomenon there is in the world—because without the experience of the mysterious there is no possibility of being in contact with God. The mystery is the door.

Knowledge has to be dropped so that you can open your eyes again like a child—fresh, young, full of wonder, knowing nothing, or, only knowing that you know nothing.

These few things have to be understood before we can enter into this beautiful story.

Why do I call religion a risk? and not only a risk but the greatest? Why? Because you have to lose yourself. There are other risks in life, but they are small risks. You have to lose your money, or you have to lose your prestige, or you have to lose your wife... or this or that. But in religion, nothing less than your totality is required—you have to lose yourself. Naturally, one shrinks back, one is frightened. It is a jump out of the ego and into the egoless abyss. It is a discontinuity with the past, with all that you have thought you are. It is a breakthrough.

You lose your identity—it is a great crisis in identity. You have known yourself as this or that—a name, a form, a society, a nation—religion requires that you lose all your identity. A religious person is neither an Indian nor a Chinese, neither a Hindu nor a Mohammedan. A religious person is neither black nor. white. All these things are stupidities.

Then who is a religious person? He is not a person at all, but only a presence. He drops his personality. He cannot say who he is. He cannot define himself. But in that indefinable state of consciousness, he knows who he is. This is a paradox: those who know who they are don't know; and those who are ready to risk their whole identity and come to a point where they don't know who they are, only they are the people who become capable of knowing. It is a gamble.... Very few people have that much courage.

Religion is not for the cowards. For the cowards is politics. Religion is not for the inferior. For the inferior is politics. The whole political world depends on the inferiority complex. When a man feels himself to be nothing, nobody, he starts projecting himself in the world of ambition—politically he wants to become somebody, a president, a prime minister. Or, moneywise he becomes a millionaire, famous. Or he wants to become a Nobel Laureate, or something...

These are the ways of ambition. And why does ambition arise in the first place at all? It arises out of the inferiority complex. You feel inferior within yourself, you feel nobody. It hurts. It is like an open wound. You want to hide it. You become occupied in ambition. You rush away from yourself as far as you can. You want to forget yourself! You want to get occupied in the world of money, power, prestige.

Religion is for those who are ready to go into this nothingness of their being, who don't think that they have to be somebody. All that they want is to know who they are. They don't want to be somebody. They don't project. They simply want to enter into the innermost shrine of their being and to see what is there. If it is nothingness, then it is nothingness. Then nothingness is beautiful. Then this is our nature. Then there is no problem, it is not a wound. One need not search for any medicine for it; it needs no healing.

The ambitious person runs out, afraid to encounter nothingness. The religious person rushes in to know "What is this nothingness that I am?"

Risk is there. Death is there. But out of this death is resurrection, is rebirth. But if you go to the temples and the churches and the mosques, you will find a totally different kind of person praying there—he is cowardly. His God is out of fear. He is as ambitious as anybody else. He is seeking support of the God so that he can succeed in his ambition. He is not interested in God himself. He wants to exploit God too, in some way or other. He has a motivation. He is cowardly, and out of his cowardliness he has created a great religion, ritual—the priest, the church.

Religion is in the hands of irreligious people. A Mahavir, a Buddha, a Mohammed, a Mansoor, a Rumi, a Kabir, a Nanak— these are not people who are afraid. These are not people who are praying out of fear! They are praying out of love, not out of fear. They are praying out of sheer joy. They are praying out of thankfulness. They are not asking for anything from God—because God has already given all that is needed.

The real religious person needs to be immensely courageous to enter into his nothingness—and inside there is a great nothingness... as vast as the sky, as infinite as the sky.

There is an outer sky and there is an inner sky. The worldly person moves out, the religious person moves in. To move out is very easy, because millions are moving there. You can become part of the crowd; you need not have any individual courage of your own. You can simply ride on the mob psychology. All the people are doing something—you can become part of it. Man is an imitator. If anything proves that man comes from the monkeys it is his tremendous capacity to imitate.

But to go in, you are alone. Absolutely alone. Nobody can be there with you, not even a friend. Great courage is needed for this internal journey—the courage to be alone. But only those who are ready to be alone will be able to know what God is—because God is found in your innermost aloneness. God is the innermost center of your aloneness.

God is not found as an object: God is found not as the sought but as the seeker. God is never found there: God is always found here. Never then: always now. God is not a goal, distant from you: God is your very consciousness, your very being, your very existence.

But for that, this courage is needed—courage to be alone, courage to drop the attachment to the crowd, courage to drop ambitions, projections, courage to be a non-entity. That's why the other day I said: I am a very ordinary person, extraordinarily ordinary. And I would like you also to become extraordinarily ordinary—because in that very ordinariness, God is found. To try to be somebody, to try to be special, is the way of ambition and the way of the ego. And the ego never meets God.

That's why the other day I told you that I am not perfect—or, I am perfectly imperfect. And that's what I would like you to be too. Imperfect—perfectly imperfect. Then you can relax. Then there is no way to go anywhere, and no need. Then there is no ideal to be fulfilled. Then you are not constantly trying to improve upon yourself—you simply relax. You are in a let-go. And when you are in a let-go, a prayer arises from the very ground of your being—which is not done by you. It arises as fragrance arises out of flowers, as light falls from the stars. It naturally arises! And when prayer is natural, it has tremendous beauty, tremendous power. It liberates.

Be courageous. And let me repeat: the greatest courage is to be non-ambitious.

Religion is not a formality; it is not a kind of behaviour; it is not a certain etiquette. You can learn the behaviour of the religious people. You can go through the whole act of being religious. You can bow down in the temple, you can pray, you can even manage tears to flow down your cheeks. And deep down you know you are not in it, It is just a put-on act. Maybe you have become very skillful in it. You have done it so long that it looks almost natural, but it is not. Your heart is not in it.

You can say to your wife during the day a hundred times, "I love you." But if your heart is not in it, you know that these words are dead, that these words have no wings. And you know that moment also when you really love, and you say, "I love you. And the difference!" And the difference is immense. The words are the same; there is no way to detect any difference in the words. No phonetic analysis, no analysis of the sound, is going to find any difference. But you know: when you love, those words are no more ordinary—they are radiant, they have a luminosity, they are aflame. Your heart beats in them, they are alive.

And when you are just repeating it because it has to be repeated— because there are books in the world like Dale Carnegie's books and Napoleon Hill's books, which go on saying that even if you don't love, go on repeating—it helps. It lubricates relationship. Maybe they are right, it lubricates, but it is not the true thing. You may live a smooth life, but just to live a smooth life is worthless. One has to live a life of passion and prayer and love—not just a smooth life. One has to live a life of adventure, of exploration. Not just a smooth life! One has to live totally. One's life torch has to burn from both ends—even though it is only for one single moment, but then that single moment is eternity. When you live at the optimum, then you know what life is. And then you know the celebration of it and the benediction of it.

Religion is not a formality. Avoid formalities. If you really want to be religious some day, avoid formalities. The greatest danger with formality is that if you become accustomed to formality you will never become aware that you are missing the real thing. The man who carries false coins and thinks they are real coins will not search for the real. That is going to be his misfortune.

Never be formal about religion. Never be a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan—these are all formalities. Be prayerful, but not in a formal way. Let prayer arise. Wait for it. Long for it! Search for it!

Imitation is borrowed. Formality is borrowed. Others teach you what to do. And religion requires a mature person, not just a person who is like a parrot.

It is not a formality because it is not part of culture, civilization, society. In fact, religion is basically asocial—not anti-social but asocial. It takes you beyond society. You are caught up by the society, you are conditioned by the society. The society is your prison. It does not allow you to move out of its boundaries. It gives you enough rope so that you can have a certain feeling of freedom, but you are not free. No society allows freedom. No society exists for freedom. The name of freedom is being exploited, but no society is free.

To have a free society will mean to have no society at all—then there will be pure individuals. And all that we know as society will be just a formal arrangement: like the post office and the railway department—a formal arrangement. No imposition of any inner structure. No imposition of any obedience, but a help, a nourishing help, so that everybody can become himself. Not that he has to conform to a certain mould.

No society yet exists which is religious, not even the Indian society. Indians like the idea very much, and their so-called gurus go on roaming around the world and declaring to the world that India is religious—it is all nonsense. Formally they are right, but .religion has nothing to do with formality.

Religion is rebellion; it is the spirit of rebellion. Rebellion of the individual. Rebellion of the soul. Search for freedom, and ultimate freedom. Great courage is, of course, needed. Guts are needed. That's why so many people think they are religious, but very few are. Only once in a while do you find a religious person.

AND REMEMBER THAT RELIGION IS NOT SCHOLARSHIP. You can learn the Vedas and the Bible and the Koran, and you can become really efficient, yet you will not be religious. The same work can be done by a computer in a far better way. Only one thing the computer cannot do, and that is: it cannot feel. The computer can think. Now we have machines which can think, but no machine can feel.

Religion has something to do with the feeling part of your being, not with the thinking part of your being. You can study, you can become very knowledgeable, you can be burdened with great knowledge, but all this burdening slowly slowly will dry the juices of your heart. This knowledge will be like rocks, and your heart will flow no more. Your heart will be too much surrounded by rocks. It needs a little freedom to flow. It is a small stream of love. And only that small stream of love knows how to go to God. No rock can go to the ocean—only that small stream of love knows how to reach the ocean. And it needs no maps, no guidebooks. It simply knows. The knowing is intuitive.

Every man simply knows how to love—there is no need to teach him. What is needed then? All that is needed is a loving atmosphere where the spirit can be imbibed. That's what happens when you go to a Master, when you enter a Sufi tekkia—a Sufi school, or a Buddhafield, or when you enter into the energy world of a Master: you are going into a magnetic field where love is flowing, where many hearts are dancing, where minds have been put aside, where feeling has become supreme. Just all that you need is a climate.

The Master is a climate, an atmosphere, in which you suddenly become aware of your own potential. Not that the Master gives you something—there is no need! All that is needed has always been given to you by God. But in the presence of the Master, some chord in your heart starts responding, as if somebody is playing music and the very hearing of it and a dance arises in you. Your whole body wants to dance. You are in the grip of the music; it has touched and moved your heart. You are connected, bridged.

A Master is a musician. He sings a song. He lives a song. He vibrates, pulsates a certain melody. And those who are intimate with him, those who allow themselves to be close to him, those who can be in a kind of let-go with him, those who relax with him... this is what satsang is: relaxing with a Master, dropping your tensions. There is a pool of energy; if you drop your tensions, suddenly you will become aware of your own pool too.

A very famous ancient story:

It happened, a small group of sheep was passing through a valley. A lioness jumped from one side to the other side, from one hillock to another hillock. And just while she was jumping, she gave birth to a child. The child fell into that small group of sheep.

The child was brought up by the sheep. Naturally, the child knew from the very beginning that he was a sheep. He never became aware of his being a lion—although he was a lion! Just by forgetting, your nature does not change. He became very big, but the growth came so slowly, so slowly, that the sheep also accepted him—he was a freak child, it appeared. Something strange, eccentric, a little bit off the track, outlandish, but in every other way he was a sheep. Absolutely vegetarian he was, and walked like sheep, and lived with sheep, and talked like sheep.

One day this miracle was seen by another lion. An old lion passing by looked at this miracle—he could not believe his eyes. It was impossible! The young lion was walking with the sheep and the sheep were not afraid. They were going so together, in such great friendship—he could not believe his eyes! He had never heard of such a thing.

He rushed to catch hold of the lion. "What has gone... has he gone mad or something?" And the sheep escaped, and the sheep-lion also escaped, naturally—so much afraid, trembling. But the old lion became very curious, and somehow he got hold of him, took him to the river. And he was not willing to go. He was shrinking back and holding back, and he was saying, "Just leave me, please. Leave me alone! Let me go with my people."

I know this story, because this is what I go on doing to you every day, and you say, "Leave me alone. Let me be a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian—let me go to my people! Where are you taking me? I am just a sheep, and I am perfectly happy. Don't disturb me!"

But the old lion persisted He forced the young lion to the river, and there they both looked into the river, the silent river, no ripples. It was like a mirror. And the old lion said, "Look, you are not a sheep. Look in the river!"

Just the look... and do you know what happened? A great lion's roar, suddenly! This is what Zen people call 'sudden enlightenment'. It was not a gradual process. Not that he said, "Okay, I will think about it." Not that "First I will have to go to school and study how to be a lion." Not that "Sir, I am very grateful to you—let me become your disciple. And, slowly slowly, one day, in this life or in some other life, I will attain to this enlightenment. I am grateful that you have showed me the path."

Nothing of this sort.

Just seeing his face and seeing the old lion's face similar, a roar exploded. In a single moment! In fact, in no time, with no interval of time. Timelessly. Instantly. Immediately... the sheep disappeared and there was a young lion.

This is the meaning of being with a Master.

You are not what you think you are. You have been taught you are this and that. You are not these small identities, these small egos. You are vast. You are infinite. You are eternal. Tat-tvam-asi: Thou art That! Not less than that. You are gods and goddesses. But you have fallen into many traps.