The first question:

Question 1

I LIKE YOUR DISCOURSES, I LIKE YOU AS A PERSON AND I LIKE YOU AS THE MASTER, BUT I DO NOT SEE ANY REASON WHY YOU OR ANYBODY ELSE SHOULD BE MY MASTER AND I YOUR DISCIPLE. PLEASE COULD YOU GIVE ME A REASON?

Lida Krausova, I don't find any reason myself Why should you be my disciple and why should I be your Master? There is no why to it. It is irrational, it is absurd -- CREDO QUIA ABSURDUM. It is the MOST absurd thing in life. No reason can be supplied because none exists. All reasons are just to quench the constant curiosity of the mind.

To be with a Master, to be a disciple, is a love-affair. It is exactly that. Have you ever asked why one should fall in love? Have you ever asked why the sunset looks beautiful, why the seagull on the wing looks so fantastic, why the roseflower exists at all?

If you start asking why, then only the meaningless things will have meaning, and all the meaningful things will start disappearing into meaninglessness. Then money will have meaning, but not love. Then machines will have meaning, but not the dew on the grass leaves in the morning sun. Then weapons will have meaning, but not hugging a human being.

Ask the question why and you will start destroying all that is beautiful, because the beautiful exists without any reason. That's why it is beautiful! Its beauty is unfathomable because the why cannot be answered. Its beauty is mysterious because no reason is capable of measuring it, no logic can fathom it, no arithmetic can figure it out. It remains there, utterly mysterious, utterly unknown, utterly unknowable in fact.

Albert Camus is right when he says that the only significant philosophical problem is suicide. The only significant philosophical problem? Suicide? I agree with him. If you ask why, then finally you will be left with only one ultimate question: Why live at all? For what? What is the meaning of being alive? Why go on breathing? Yes, that is the ultimate philosophical question. A real philosopher should stop breathing, because he will not find the answer to why. You are so absurd; you go on breathing? First decide why, then only take the next breath. If you cannot come to a conclusion, stop breathing. It is so unintelligent. Go on breathing, go on breathing, and not knowing why? Stop loving, because there is no why to it. Stop laughing, because there is no why to it.

To be a disciple is to be in love with the ultimate mystery of existence. It is absurd! So I cannot give you any reason why one should be a disciple.

But there is one thing I would like to say to you, Krausova: that the desire to be a disciple has arisen in you. Otherwise, from whence this question, from where? Why this question at all? The desire has arisen; now you would like to make that desire rational, hence the question. You want to satisfy your intellect -- that there is a REASON to be a disciple: "I'm not a fool, I'm not mad. I am going into this disciplehood because there is a REASON to it." There is none, and all reasons are invented reasons.

You can invent, you can invent millions of reasons. Mind is so inventive -- it can create so many fictions, and so easily and cheaply. Nobody is hindering you. You will be surprised to know that when you say "I am becoming a disciple because I want to know God," that is all bullshit. That is just trying to find a reason for some unreasonable act. Your mind feels a little guilty: "What are you doing?" The mind asks, "First supply the answer to me," and you say, "Because I am a seeker for God." And you don't know anything about God -- how can you be a seeker for God? You have never met Him, you have never seen Him. You have never experienced anything divine; how can you search for Him? The search can arise only out of a certain taste that has happened to you, and that has not happened yet. Then you say, "I am in search of truth." What do you mean by truth? What is truth? Nobody has yet been able to define it. Yes, thousands and thousands of thinkers have tried, and all in vain. Nobody has been able to say exactly what truth is. And whatsoever is said about it becomes untrue. You cannot say, "I am a seeker for truth." These are ways just to put mind at ease: "I want to know myself, I want to know what this existence is."

But I say to you again and again, becoming a disciple has nothing to do with these things. Becoming a disciple is just falling in love. It is utterly foolish! But only fools are courageous. It is idiotic!

Remember the story that we were talking about just the other day? -- "Thus the wise man came to be called 'The Idiot'." If you can be so courageous to accept this absurd desire to become a disciple, then only can you become. I am not here to convince you. I am not here to give any reasons to your mind, because all reasons are false. The heart has its own reasons the mind knows nothing of, but those reasons are indefinable, elusive, ineffable, inexplicable. Explain them and they look very stupid.

Somebody asks you, "Why have you fallen in love with this woman?" and you say, "Because she has such a beautiful nose," and it looks so stupid! So you have fallen in love with this long nose? Or you say, "She has such beautiful hair?" How can one fall in love with hair? or with a nose? or with a color? or with a shape? That all looks so juvenile, but the mind hankers for some reason. The mind wants to know why and finds none -- it starts creating its own reasons.

The real thing is not that you have fallen in love with this woman because she is beautiful. Just vice versa is the case: she looks beautiful because you have fallen in love. Love comes first, beauty is second. Beauty is just a shadow experience, because the same woman is not beautiful to others. Sometimes others will laugh at you: "What do you go on seeing in this woman? I don't see anything at all." "She looks so horrible to me," somebody will say, "and you are mad."

Beauty arises when there is love. Beauty is an experience of a love-relationship. Wherever you fall in love, you will feel something beautiful happening. Fall in love with the trees and they become beautiful; that's how they look beautiful to the painter. Fall in love with anything and that looks beautiful. Fall in love with money and the money starts taking on a beauty. Have you not seen people touching their notes and rupees with such love and such care, almost caressing, kissing?

I have heard....

Once upon a time Goldstein was walking along a busy highway when he came upon the scene of an automobile accident. Several injured men were still lying about on the road.

The Jew approached one of the victims and asked, "Has the insurance man been around here?"

"No."

"Well then," said the Jew, "I will just lie down here by your side."

He can't see the misery. People are dying... and he can only see money.

And another story about the same Goldstein:

He was in court. He had caught his wife with a man in the bed.

The judge asked him, "You say, Goldstein, that the unwritten law would have justified you in killing Mr. Cohen, and that you had pulled a gun on him, yet you did not fire. Why?"

Mr. Goldstein: "Well, Judge, when I pointed my pistol at him, he said, 'How much you want for that gun?' I ask you, Judge, could I kill a man when he was talking business?"

If you are in love with money, then suddenly money has something that nobody will be able to see in it. Everybody will laugh at you, but you will be able to see it. Fall in love with anything and you start seeing things which are not available to others.

Love creates beauty. Love is creative. Love is the only creative force there is. So even things like money can become significant and meaningful, and can have a grandeur which is simply not there. So when you come across a Christ or a Buddha or a Kabir, if you are utterly dull, dead, insensitive, if you are really mediocre, if you have lost all your intelligence, if you have become absolutely closed like a stone, you have lost all openings to your being -- not even a window ever opens, no sunlight enters in you and no wind ever plays inside you and moves inside you -- then maybe you can pass without falling in love. Otherwise it is impossible.

Disciplehood arises out of love.

And the Master is not a person. A Master is a Master only when he is not a person. When you can see into some being and you -- cannot find the person there but an emptiness, a presence certainly but no person present, an awareness with no center, a flame, a light, a door beckoning you, then those who have courage, and those who have real intelligence....

And what do I call real intelligence? I call real intelligence that quality within you which allows you to live without asking why. An intelligent person lives, celebrates, delights. An unintelligent person goes on asking "Why? Why?" and wastes his life.

Krausova, you ask me, "I LIKE YOUR DISCOURSES..."

That will not help much. That will make you more knowledgeable, it will not impart any being to you. You will become a little more informed, you will become a little more learned. Your mind will have a little more possession, your ego will feel good. Liking my discourses is not going to help much; it can even harm you -- because these discourses are not really any knowledge that I am imparting to you. These discourses are only devices so that I can become available to you and you can become available to me.

I talk to you so that a relationship which goes deeper than talking can arise. These talks are just an opportunity for you to be close to me. These talks are engagements for your constantly chattering mind -- so the mind becomes engaged in the talks and the heart can leap towards me. But if you think that it is enough, then you are getting satisfied by the outer shell and you are missing the real thing.

You say, "I LIKE YOUR DISCOURSES, I LIKE YOU AS A PERSON..."

I'm not a person, and if you like me as a person you have missed me. You have missed the impersonal that is present here. I am just an opening. Come close to me and I will help you to become impersonal too. The person is a facade, it is camouflage. The person is just a pseudo-phenomenon, it is invented. The personality is just that which you have been taught to do, that which you have been taught to be. The personality is given to you by the society. It is NOT your essence, it is the outer core -- like clothes.

One has to go beyond the person; then only one comes to know who one is.

You say, "I LIKE YOU AS A PERSON AND I LIKE YOU AS THE MASTER."

You don't understand what you are saying: 'as the Master' -- because the Master exists only with the disciple. The Master cannot exist without the disciple. I am a Master only to those who are disciples. For others I am a teacher, not a Master. You are confused about these two words. You can like my discourses; then I am a teacher. You can like my person; then I am a teacher. When you start feeling in absurd love with me, discourses or not.... Because one day I may stop talking. Then? And that can happen any day. Then those who are in love with me will be here, and those who were only here for words will be gone. They will say, "Now what is the point?" I am a teacher to them, not a Master. When I have become silent, then those who love me -- not for any reason at all -- only they will be able to stay with me. All those who stay for certain reasons will be gone.

A teacher is one from whom you get knowledge. He teaches you, hence he is the teacher. The Master is one who destroys your knowledge; the function is totally opposite. The Master is one who helps you to unlearn. He does not give you learning, more learning; he starts shattering all that you have gathered in the past. He goes on hammering on the head. Slowly, slowly the rock of the head is turned into sand -- it disappears. The Master exists only for the disciple; it is a relative phenomenon.

I am a Master only f you are a disciple. Only then do you know what it means.

So, Krausova, your use of the word 'Master' is simply out of confusion. You are saying that you love me as a teacher -- but I am not a teacher! I am against all teaching! The work that is being done here is against all teachers. It is not against the Masters, but it is against the teachers. The teacher goes on teaching you something that he himself knows not. The teacher himself is just carrying borrowed knowledge. And if you are alert enough, you can see; you can easily see who is a teacher and who is a Master.

The teacher talks out of the memory. It has no depth, it does not come from his heart, it does not arise from his being. It is just an accumulation in his bio-computer called 'the mind'. Machines can do that. Sooner or later computers will be doing it and they will prove far better teachers than any human beings, because they will be far more efficient, quick, infallible -- but no computer can ever be a Master. Teachers will be replaced by computers, but Buddhas cannot be replaced by computers, because the teacher simply goes on giving that which has been given to him. First you have to feed the teacher just like you feed the computer. The knowledge has to be put inside the memory of the teacher, then he starts giving it back to you.

Buddha gives you something which has not been given to him from the outside, something which has arisen in him as a fragrance, something which has bloomed in him. That is the difference between a teacher and a Master. And if you are sensitive, alert, intelligent, you will be able to see: there will be a flame when a Master speaks. He will be TOTALLY what he is saying. His assertions will be PASSIONATE. He will be behind those assertions, he will be the validity of those assertions.

When a teacher repeats those things, he hesitates, he's afraid: "Maybe it is right, maybe it is not right" -- there is doubt. He's not behind his assertions. He cannot say that he is a witness. Something IS BOUND to go wrong. Something is BOUND to be dead, stale. And the teacher is BOUND to commit mistakes, because that is not his own vision. Somewhere or other he will find it difficult to stand behind the assertion; his doubts will start filtering in. He's an imitator, and something or other will betray him.

I have heard....

An American soldier was attending a swank banquet in a London town-house given by Lady Brighton. In the midst of the gaiety, everyone felt quite embarrassed when above all the clamor, the lady loudly broke wind.

One of the Englishmen immediately rose and declared, "Ladies and gentlemen, I beg your pardon."

Fifteen minutes later the Lady Brighton cut one again. This time a Frenchman arose and apologized.

And when half an hour later, the lady emitted a colossal fart, the one American guest arose, bowed to the Englishman and the Frenchman, and declared, "Gentlemen, this one is on me!"

You can imitate, but it will show: it will show where you are, who you are. The teacher can pretend only so far, and maybe the stupid people, the unintelligent people, are deceived by it. But the teacher is not the Master.

The Master is one who has witnessed reality, who is not propounding anything on the basis of somebody else's witnessing, but who is himself a witness. But to know this you will have to become a disciple.

What does the word 'disciple' mean? It comes from a root which means simply learning, capacity to learn. If you come across Christ, would you not like to be closer and closer to him, to learn something, to see something, to be something that he has become? He is like a tree in bloom and you are like a seed. Would you not like to listen to this tree and its story and its struggle? All those seasons, summer, winter, rain, and all those long years of arduous effort, uphill tasks -- it was almost miraculous to survive, and the tree survived -- and now the tree has bloomed. The seed has bloomed. The seed has to come into DEEP closeness with a tree: that is the meaning of being a disciple.

But I am not supplying any reason, I am simply elaborating about the meaning. I am not saying to become a disciple. Nobody can become; it happens -- suddenly the desire arises and the desire is strong, so strong that it puts your whole mind aside. And that desire must have arisen, hence the question.

Don't ask for any reason from the outside. Just listen to your desire, your heart's desire, listen to your own longing. If you feel that you would like to have an intimate relationship with me, if you feel that you would like to come as close as possible to me, then that's enough. That desire is enough; no other reason is needed. Then you fall in love.

All that a man can do is prevent himself from falling. Nobody can fall in love, but one can prevent. Man's capacity to negate is more than man's capacity to posit. You cannot create love but you can prevent it. Remember this capacity for negation.

You cannot bring God into your life, but you can close your doors and prevent Him from coming. You cannot bring the sun inside the room, but you can close the doors and pull the curtains and you can stop it from coming. You cannot create the wind but you can stop it coming to you, reaching you; you can move into a hole behind a rock.

Man's capacity to negate is infinite. And if you don't negate, that's all: if this desire is arising in you to become a disciple, just don't negate your desire. Wait, allow it, let it happen, and suddenly you will see something new has penetrated into your being, and you will never be the same again.