Sufism, Vol. 2 The Perfect Master Chapter 2: There is no Self, no Other, Question 1

The first question:

Question 1

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A MASTER AND A PSYCHOTHERAPIST?

A MASTER IS NOT: A PSYCHOTHERAPIST IS. The Master is a hollow bamboo, a mere passage, for the divine to descend. He is not on his own. He has nothing to say, he has nothing to do -- but much happens through him. But it is always through him. He is not the doer of it. He is just a watcher. He allows it, he does not hinder it. He cooperates with it, but he is not the originator of it. He is just a vehicle.

The psychotherapist IS. He is a doer, knowledgeable. He has all the expertise available. He is not a hollow bamboo. He is not an absence. Hence much cannot happen through him. He can only do a patchwork: here and there a little polishing, a little white-wash, a little adjustment -- that's all. His work is trivial. Man's work is bound to remain trivial. Only God is great. And only that which comes from God is vast.

Man's doing is bound to remain petty, small -- of no significance in fact, or only of momentary importance. But when God descends, something of the eternal reaches into your being.

The psychotherapist knows about the mind and the workings of the mind. But man in his deepest core is not a mind at all. That's the problem. Man's disease, man's illness, is not only that of mind -- it is spiritual, it is metaphysical, it is existential.

The physiologist, the physician, can help you about the body; and the psychologist, the psychotherapist, can help you about the mind -- but these are just your surfaces. You are not your surface: you are your depth. Neither the physician can touch that depth, nor the therapist can touch that depth. That depth can only be touched by a Master -- because he IS that depth.

A Master is a no-mind. And that is the greatest difference that is possible. The psychotherapist knows about the mind, is a very cultivated mind, cultured, educated, efficient. Technologically he knows the know-how.

The Master is a no-mind. He has no know-how. He makes his nothingness available to the disciple, but that nothingness IS a healing force. The psychotherapist TRIES to heal, but never succeeds. The Master never tries to heal, but always succeeds. His love is his therapy. Out of his absence flows his love.

And that love is God's love in fact.

When Jesus says again and again, I and my Father are one, this is exactly what he is saying: Don't think of me as myself. I only represent. I am just a symbol. I am just a door. LOOK through me and you will find the beyond.

The Master lives in a totally different reality. The psychotherapist lives in the same reality where you live. There is no qualitative difference between you and the psychotherapist; between the patient and the doctor there is no qualitative difference. The difference is that of knowledge, that of quantity. He knows more than you know, but he is nOT MORE than you are! He is exactly at the same level. He is worried with the same anxieties. He is troubled by the same nightmares.

Sigmund Freud himself remained obsessed with the fear of death his whole life. How is he going to help? And he is the founder of psychoanalysis. How is he going to help? All his help can only be a pretension. He himself is trembling. He was so afraid of death that even to mention the word 'death' was enough... and he would start perspiring. Just the mention of ghosts was enough... and he would fall in a swoon. And it was not only so with him.

Carl Gustav Jung was exactly the same. He was so afraid of death that he could not see a dead body. He always wanted to go to Egypt to see the ancient mummies. He was very much interested in the occult, and certainly the pyramids of Egypt have great keys of occult knowledge, and those mummies are carrying some great messages to be deciphered and decoded. He had become aware of it. He wanted to go, and many times he tried to go but never could he manage. He would fall ill. Whenever he would arrange to go to Egypt he would fall ill -- just the idea of seeing the dead mummies, three thousand years old, was enough to shake him to the very roots. Slowly slowly, he became aware that whenever he made the arrangement he fell ill -- that illness was psychological.

Once it happened: somehow he dragged himself to the airport; even though he had a fever out of his fear, he went to the airport -- but could not manage to enter into the aeroplane. From the airport he rushed back home. He became so frightened that he dropped the whole idea for ever, and he never went to Egypt to see those mummies. And he was very much interested in them.

Now, how are these people going to help?

A Master knows there is no death -- not only knows through others but through his own experience. He has looked deep into his life, and death has disappeared like a fog -- evaporated. A Master is one who is absolutely free, not only from pathological psychology but is free of psychology itself, is free of mind. He has cut the very root of all pathologies.

With the psychotherapist your relationship is that of a patient and doctor. It is not intimate -- it cannot be. It is professional. With the Master your relationship is that of love; it is not professional. It is intimate. It is the most intimate relationship there is. Yes, not even between lovers does such intimacy exist as exists between a Master and a disciple. It is a marriage. And such a marriage where not only bodies, not only minds, but two beings meet.

The psychotherapist is trying to become the Master in the West. A strange phenomenon is happening: the psychotherapist is trying to become the Master, is trying to become the guru -- and the priest, the guru, is trying to become the psychotherapist! Now priests talk about psychology, and psychologists talk about religion -- because priests are seeing that whatsoever they have been selling up to now cannot be sold any more -- it is out of date. People are no more interested in it. People are no more interested in theology. People are interested in knowing about their mind and its working; people are more interested in having a better mind, more efficient, more calm and quiet and collected.

So the priest is moving, slowly slowly, from theology to psychology. And the psychoanalyst, the psychotherapist, is becoming aware of the phenomenon that the people's real problems are not psychological but religious.

Carl Gustav Jung is reported to have said: "observing thousands of patients in my life, this has been one of my most important conclusions -- that people who come to me after the age of forty-two, or nearabout, are not really suffering from any psychological problems but are suffering from religious problems."

I perfectly agree with Jung -- that is the time when a person suddenly becomes aware of death. Just as at the age of fourteen a person suddenly becomes aware of sex, and sex becomes important, and sexual fantasies come rushing towards his being from all over the place, and each thing starts taking a sexual color -- the dress, the way he walks, the way he talks, the way he looks -- everything starts taking a sexual tinge, just like that, at the age of forty-two suddenly death is encountered for the first time. Life starts declining. One has to be ready for the second phase of life. And the modern society does not prepare people for the second phase.

For life you have been prepared in the school, college, university -- for almost twenty-five years you have been prepared! You have been taught how to live, but you have not been taught at all how to die. And death is the culmination of life. It is a great art.

Religion is the art of death -- how to die joyously, how to die with hallelujah on your lips, how to die dancingly. How to transform the quality of death into the quality of samadhi. How to transform the experience of death into the experience of communion with the divine.

It is near about the age of forty-two that suddenly religion starts becoming important. And modern man does not accept that, so a thousand and one problems arise. Jung is right: people suffer from something which is not psychological but religious. They need an understanding that can help them to go through death. They need some awareness of the immortality of the soul. They need something that is not part of the body but is part of the beyond, so they can trust it. They need a boat so when they leave the body they can move to the other shore.

The psychologists are becoming aware that people's problems are fundamentally religious, so they are turning to be gurus. And the priests and the gurus, seeing that their old theologies, their old gods, are just out of fashion, nobody is interested in those old gods and old scriptures... people may not say anything out of politeness, but the moment you mention the word 'god' people feel a little embarrassed. They start looking sideways. They want to avoid the subject and the topic completely. They don't want to hear about the angels and heaven and hell. And certainly they are not interested in your so-called great theological problems about how many angels can dance on a single pin-point. These things look stupid now. Man has grown out of all this. These are hangovers.

So a strange phenomenon is happening. But remember, when the priest talks about psychology he looks stupid, because he is just trying from the back door to bring religion in. ale cannot find any other proofs, so now he is calling on psychology. And psychology cannot give ANY proofs Torn religion. So all the proofs that he gathers through psychology are just imaginary, artificial, arbitrary, somehow managed and manipulated, not valid. He looks stupid.

And so is the case with the psychotherapist who turns to be a guru -- because it is not only through knowledge that you can become a Master: you will have to grow in being. No university can make you ready for it. You will have to go inside yourself; you will have to travel a long way in your inferiority.

So all that the psychologist or the psychotherapist talks about religion remains just bare, mere philosophy. His personality gives no evidence of it.

I hove heard:

"There is nothing wrong with you," said the psychiatrist to his patient. "You are just as sane as I am."

But, doctor," cried the patient, as he brushed wildly at himself, "it's these butterflies -- they're all over me!"

"For heaven's sake, "cried the doctor, "don't brush them off on me!"

Now that man is mad -- there are no butterflies -- but to work with mad people, how, long can you remain sane? It has been the observation of many people that in a madhouse, the maddest person it the doctor. Working with mad people continuously, slowly slowly, rather than changing them, which is very difficult, he becomes changed by them.

In the midst of her psychiatric session. Mrs Blossom suddenly exclaimed, "I think I have taken a fancy to you, doctor! How about a kiss?"

"Absolutely not!" the doctor replied indignantly. "That would be contrary to the ethics of my profession. Now continue as before."

"Well, as I was saying," the patient continued, "I'm always having arguments with my husband about his father, and just yesterday... I'm sorry, but it just occurred to me again. What harm would there be if you gave me just one little kiss?"

"That's absolutely impossible!" the doctor snapped. "In fact, I shouldn't even be lying on this couch with you!"

The psychotherapist is not much different from you, cannot be. He knows a little bit more than you know about the mind. But by knowing more about the mind, nothing is helped. One has to go beyond the mind.

Psychotherapy thinks that there are unhealthy minds AND healthy minds -- but the experience of the Buddhas is totally different. They say: Mind as such is unhealthy. There are no healthy minds. Mind AND unhealthy are synonymous. So you cannot make the mind healthy. Yes, you can make it more adjusted, you can make it normally unhealthy, not abnormally unhealthy. You can bring it to a point where it is just like everybody else. That is normal unhealthy, normal neurosis. But you cannot make mind healthy. It is impossible. Can you make a disease healthy? If the disease is there, you are unhealthy. You cannot say, "Now I have a very healthy disease."

Mind is the disease! The Master is one who has seen it and gone beyond the mind, who lives in the land of no-thought, who lives in that absolute silence. But from that absolute silence, the impossible becomes possible. Just to be with a Master is to be in a healing presence.

The Master is not a therapist, but his presence is therapy. His presence heals, and heals wounds of so many lives. But his process of healing is not psychological: it is existential. He does not go on tackling each of your diseases separately: he simply cuts the root in one single stroke. He cuts the mind. He does not bother about the branches and the leaves.

The psychotherapist goes on cutting the leaves. You have this fear, afraid the psychotherapist will try years of psychoanalysis and somehow you become adjusted to the fear.

A man continued to piss in his bed in the night. Now he was getting to be thirty-five -- it was already too late. He was married, he had children. Now it was time for the children to piss in the bed -- and he was still doing it.

The wife suggested, "Why don't you go to the psychotherapist?"

So he went. Then the LONG psychotherapy continued... analysis is a long process, and very costly. And after six months a friend asked, "How are things going?"

He said, "Perfect!" He was buoyant, flowing with joy. He said, "Perfect. I have found the greatest psychotherapist there is in the world."

The friend asked, "So he has cured you?"

He said, "No, but I no longer feel guilty about it. He has convinced me that this is perfectly natural, normal -- in fact, he himself does it."

The psychotherapist is in the same boat as you are in. All that he can do is a little bit of patchwork.

The Master KILLS you, destroys you, in your totality -- gives birth to a new man. The Master becomes a mother to you, a womb. To be a disciple is to enter into the womb of the Master. It is a death and a resurrection.

Sufism

VOL. 2, SUFIS: THE PERFECT MASTER

Chapter-2

There is no Self, no Other