The Perfect Master, Vol 1 Talks on Sufi Stories

It happened many times and Ramakrishna was not able... What to say about cutting? -- he would forget all about Totapuri and the idea that he had given him. And he would look at the face of the Mother inside, and it was so alive and so beautiful, so full of light. It was no ordinary experience: it was the greatest vision, the ultimate vision of form, God as form, beyond which is only the formless.

Totapuri got fed up and he said, "Now, today I leave. Before I leave, you try once more, and I have brought this piece of glass."

Ramakrishna said, "For what?"

He said, "When I see that your tears start coming and you start swaying and you are feeling orgasmic, I will cut on your third eye with this glass. Blood will start coming. And I will cut DEEP, just to remind you that I am here!Just to remind you: take the sword and cut the Mother in two pieces."

And Ramakrishna said, "From where to bring the sword?"

And Totapuri said, "From where have you brought this Mother? From the same source -- it is all imagination."

And that day Ramakrishna tried. Totapuri cut his third eye with that piece of glass. Blood started Flowing, and he pushed the glass deep into the third eye. In a single moment of awareness, Ramakrishna took a sword, cut the Mother in two pieces. The Mother disappeared, and it opened the door for the formless.

For six days he was in samadhi. And when he came back, the first words that he uttered were, "The last barrier has fallen. I am infinitely grateful to you, Master Totapuri -- infinitely grateful to you. The last barrier has fallen."
This is the meaning when Zen people say, or I say to you, "If you meet the Buddha on the way, kill him." In fact I should say to you, "If you meet me on the way, kill ME" -- because you may not meet Buddha, you may meet me. 'On the way' means when you start moving from form to no-form, your Master will be the last barrier. You have become so attached to the Master. You have been in such love with the Master. You have enjoyed so many delights and ecstasies through him. It seems sheer ungratefulness to cut him -- no, it is not. But this is a Zen way of saying a thing.

Christians will feel offended, Jains will feel offended, Hindus will feel offended, Mohammedans will feel offended -- this is not the right way to talk about your Master!

Different mystics have chosen different ways of speaking, but if you look deep down the message is not very different. Containers are different but the content is not different. And everybody has to choose his way of speaking, and has to choose the way that his disciples will understand.
A psychology professor conducted an experiment to prove a point about work. He hired a man to hit a log with the reverse side of an axe. The man was told that he would be paid twice the amount he normally made. The fellow lasted half a day. He gave it up, explaining, "I have to see the chips fly."
Now, a man who cuts wood, if he is told to cut the wood with the reverse side of the axe, soon will lose his enthusiasm. He needs to see the chips fly -- they keep his enthusiasm, they keep him moving, they keep his energy flowing. That is his language! He can work only in that language. That is his noe-sphere -- without that he cannot function.

And each mystic has to speak according to himself and according to the disciples that gather around him. And each mystic attracts a certain kind of people. Can't you see it: here, a certain kind of people has gathered -- the people of the future. You will not find orthodox people here, you cannot find. Impossible. You will not find the puritans here, the moralists. You will not find the hypocrites here. This is not the place for them! I am not the man for them.

One French orientalist went to see George Gurdjieff. Just once he went to see him. The orientalist used to live in Paris; Guenon was his name. And just close by, a few miles away from Paris, was Gurdjieff. But only once he went, for half an hour. And then he came back and he started talking against Gurdjieff -- he talked his whole life against Gurdjieff. He used to say to people: "Flee from Gurdjieff as you flee from the plague -- just flee from him! He is the most dangerous kind of disease on the earth." What happened? He was a moralist, very very puritan. And what he saw there in half an hour's time was very very different.

Gurdjieff used to force people who were not drinkers, he would force them to drink as much as possible. Now, that was his device. When a man is utterly drunk, he becomes very very real and honest. This is a very bad state of affairs, but this is how it is. People have become so false that to see their original face you have to wait... only when they are absolutely drunk. Then their masks slip by; they cannot hold them, they are so drunk. Everything becomes shaky and they start coming up in their true colors.

So each disciple had to go through that torture. It was torture for somebody who had not been drinking too much or who was against alcohol. Just think of Morarji Desai: if he had gone to Gurdjieff...! He would force people to drink so much that they would fall on the ground, start uttering nonsense, shouting, shrieking, abusing. And that was his way of watching them: then he would sit silently and watch, listen to them. Once he had understood your reality, then there was no problem -- then the work started. But you reveal your reality only when you are drunk. Otherwise, you maintain your false face.

This moralist saw this happening, and he was aghast. He could not understand it. Sometimes orthodox people come here, but they escape; they never come back again. It is a different kind of commune. I can be understood only by the new man that is going to be born, that is on the way. The past cannot understand me. So I have to use the language of the future.

And you know, everybody has to use his own language.

I have heard:

Second tramp, "Yes, you look tired."

Kabir speaks in one way, Krishna in another, Nanak in still another -- they were people of different centuries, different atmospheres, different climates, AND they were talking to different kinds of people and different potentialities.

WHY AM I SO NICE TO OTHERS AND SO HARD WITH MYSELF?

"Let me ask you something," said the preacher. "Do you pray every day?"

"Why, er-uh-not usually," the driver stammered.

"Do you always wash your hands before every meal?"

"Not always."

"And do you ask God's blessings before you eat?"

"No!" the driver answered tersely.

"Then all is perfectly clear," said the preacher. "It is irrevocably intertwined with the divine law of compensation. Since you eat like a horse, your horses eat like humans."

It almost always happens: people who are nice to others are hard on themselves -- they have to be. There are ordinarily only two types of people: the murderers and the suicides. Murderers are people who are dangerous to others, very dangerous -- they can kill. And the people who are not dangerous to others tend to be dangerous to themselves -- they can commit suicide.

There is no necessity to be divided in two categories, you can go beyond them. And that's my teaching. There is no need to decide A PRIORI that you have to be hard with others or you have to be nice with others. You have to be CONSCIOUS in yourself. It is not a question of being hard or nice to anybody -- you have to be conscious inside yourself. And the first effect will be that you will be nice to yourself. The first ripple of being conscious is being nice to oneself -- the first ripple of consciousness is self-love.

You wily be surprised to know this, because you have always been taught that self-love is a kind of selfishness -- it is not. It is the foundation of all altruistic love. Self-love is the BASE of all possible love -- love with your wife, love with your children, love with your God. Unless you love yourself you cannot love anybody else.

Meditate over Jesus' saying: Love thy neighbor as thyself. But thyself comes first. People have started loving their neighbors and have forgotten that they don't love themselves. So when you love your neighbor and you don't find him very loving -- and you have to love him because you have been taught, and this is good manners, and civilization and culture, respectability comes through it, and you love your neighbor -- you will hate yourself. Then the law of compensation will work.

And if you hate yourself, how can you love your neighbor? You can only pretend; only on the surface can you show. Deep down, you would like to murder him. Deep down, you are full of hate. This is the situation that has happened to humanity.

My approach is totally different: Be conscious! And the first ripple will be self-love, you will love yourself, because you are closest to yourself. And it has to start there. Just as you throw a stone in a silent lake and ripples arise, first they arise just around the stone, and then they spread towards the bank. Then they go on spreading.....

Love yourself. For that you have to be very conscious. Only a conscious person can love himself, because only a conscious person knows that "I am not there, but God is." How can you love yourself? You don't know who is there. You have not Even tasted anything there, you have not seen anybody there. It is all darkness.

And you have been taught that you are ugly, that you are worthless: "Improve upon yourself! Be this! Be that!" Nobody has told you to accept yourself. Everybody has been telling you to reject yourself, so you hate yourself and then you become hard with yourself. Hatred is hard. And then whatsoever you go on thinking about, Deva Sharan, that "I am soft and nice to others," that softness and niceness is hypocrisy, it is not true -- it can't be true.

A real niceness for others can arise only if you are nice with yourself. Start from there. Forget all about what you have been told. Your priorities are all wrong. Don't put the other as more important than you. Nobody is more important than you. You are the most important person in the world, you are the center of the world. And I am not telling you to become egoistic: I am simply saying a truth -- that each is a center to the whole world, to the whole universe. God exists in you, you have to be the cent r. I am not saying that others are not centers -- everybody is. But how are you going to understand others' significance if you don't know your significance?

Love yourself. And out of that love a great love will arise for others, because they are also like you.
And the last question:
Question 6

WHAT IS THE TRADE SECRET OF THE PRIESTS? HOW HAVE THEY BEEN ABLE TO EXPLOIT MAN FOR SO LONG?

His friend asked, "How do you manage to keep awake so late at night?"

"It's simple," replied the first. "The man behind me carries a spear too."
The second story:
Preacher Pitts had undertaken that morning to describe the terrors of hell to his congregation.

"Brothers and sisters," he intoned, "some of you have seen melted iron running out of a furnace, haven't you? It's white, sizzling and hissing. Well, in the place I'm talking about, they use that stuff for ice cream."

"Brothers and sisters, if there are any among you who have committed adultery, may your tongue cleave to the woof of your mowf."

Fear has been their trade secret. Create fear in people, and when people are frightened they are ready to become slaves, then they are ready to do anything. I

Heaven is a way of looking at things, and hell too. But in the past the fear has been used as a trade secret. AND joined with fear is greed. That is another side of the same coin. One side is fear, another side is greed. Both have been exploited. And a really religious person is one who is free of fear and greed.

And if you are free of fear and greed, you will be free from the exploitations that have been going on and on down the centuries. Because of it, religion has not been of any help to humanity; rather, it has been a curse, it has not been a blessing. Make it a blessing. Drop fear and greed. Live joyously! Live in a heavenly way THIS moment, now.

Live... Love... be... and forget ALL fears. There is nothing to be afraid of. We are part of this existence. This existence is not antagonistic to us. It is very friendly. It has created us! How can it be inimical? And there is nobody sitting there counting your sins, and nobody is there to punish you. God is not to be feared.

And if there is fear, you cannot love. Fear kills all capacity to love. In all the languages of the world, there are words like 'god fearing' -- they are ugly words. Drop them. Never use them. Let this religion be a religion of love -- be god loving. And then you are out of the grip and the trap of the priest.

And not only are you out of the grip and the trap of the priest -- you will free the priest too. He is also suffering with you. Continuously talking to you again and again about hell and heaven, he also becomes convinced of it. It is not that only you are the victim -- he is also a victim. It has become a nightmare to all.

This is what I mean by a new religious consciousness in the world: free of fear and greed. The whole energy has to be poured as celebration....
The Perfect Master, Vol 1

Chapter #5

Chapter title: Yes, Just Like That

25 June 1978 am in Buddha Hall

ShortTitle: PERF105

Audio: Yes

Video: No

Length: 0 mins

A SUFI TEACHER WAS VISITED BY A NUMBER OF PEOPLE OF VARIOUS FAITHS WHO SAID TO HIM, "ACCEPT US AS YOUR DISCIPLES, FOR WE SEE THAT THERE IS NO REMAINING TRUTH IN OUR RELIGIONS, AND WE ARE CERTAIN THAT WHAT YOU ARE TEACHING IS THE ONE TRUE PATH."

Knowledge is the greatest deceptive force in the world. It makes people cunning, hypocrites, egoists. It gives them false notions that they know -- that they know what truth is, that they know what 'the true path' is. And because of this, they go on missing.

They come across truth many times, but they cannot see. Their eyes are full of knowledge, hence blind. A knowledgeable man is a blind man. He is cunning and clever, but not intelligent. Cunningness and cleverness LOOK like intelligence, but that is only an appearance. And don't be deceived by the appearance, because it is there where man's basic confusion. is rooted -- in his cleverness, his cunningness, his knowledgeability.

One has to unlearn it all, then only does one become a disciple. If you know already, you can't be a disciple; your very knowledge will hinder you. How can you surrender when you know? Knowledge never surrenders. It is only innocence that is capable of that great quantum leap.

Surrender is possible only out of innocence, because out of innocence arises trust, out of innocence is faith, out of innocence is all religion.

I have heard a beautiful anecdote:

The children, because they thought he was going to show them something, looked steadily at him and he also looked steadily at each child separately. After that he told them to go home.

When the children came home and were given their food, they refused to eat. One said that the meat must not be eaten. Another asked how one could eat unclean meat. And so all the children refused to eat. They said the dishes were unclean and the food was unclean.

Then, as women do, one went to another and told her that all of a sudden her son came home from the prayer house and refused to eat; whatever was given to him, he said it was unclean. Then her neighbor said that her son too refused to eat and shouted that everything was unclean and that one could not pray in her house because her hair was uncovered. Then another neighbor came in and also told such things about her son -- the whole town was amazed! Then they each learnt that their sons were not the only ones who suddenly became pious. They said that the visitor whom they had ridiculed and thought crazy was none other than a saint. By looking at the children, he had instilled in them something of his being. The parents became afraid that they had shamed him and went to beg his forgiveness.

Zusya laughed and forgave them all. He wanted to look in their eyes too, but they escaped as fast as they could.
In this beautiful anecdote, what happened? The children were innocent. They were ready to look into the eyes of this strange Master. They became connected! For a moment they were lost into the vastness of the Master; for a moment the Master flowed in them. There was a meeting and a merging, a communion.

Just looking in their eyes for a few moments, something was transferred -- the purity of the man, the holiness of the man. Something of his being spilled into the eyes of the children. They were no more the same. Their vision changed.

But the grown-ups escaped. They were afraid to look into the eyes of the Master. What was THEIR fear? They were cunning, clever, knowledgeable. They must have thought, "It is a kind of hypnosis or something. This man is a magician or something." They must have thought of a thousand and one things: "The time is not ripe for us. We cannot go on this faraway journey. The moment has not come. We will have to wait. We have to do a thousand and one other things, then...."

They were not innocent. Even their apology was out of cunningness; it was not out of love and understanding. They were afraid: if the man is so strange and powerful, he may do something wrong to them. Hence the apology. Not out of understanding, not out of humbleness, but out of fear.

But the children? -- they simply got in tune with the Master!

Jesus is right when he says: Unless you are like small children you will not enter into my kingdom of God.

Jesus was standing in a marketplace; a crowd was standing around him, and somebody asked, a rabbi, "You talk so much about the kingdom of God, but WHO will be capable enough, pure enough, virtuous enough, saintly enough, to enter into your kingdom of God? What will be the characteristics of the people who will be allowed in?"

Jesus looked around. The rabbi thought he would say, "People like you." And the rich man of the town who had donated much to the synagogue and who had been a charitable man thought he would say, "Men like you."

And there was another who had practiced all that has been told down the ages, all the rituals, prayers. He had followed every rule and regulation. He was a virtuous man, known as a saint. He thought, "Certainly, he is searching for me. He will say, 'Men like you.'"

But they were all frustrated. His eyes moved... he stopped at a small child who was just standing in the crowd. He took the child up and showed the people that "Those who are like this small child, they will be able to enter into my kingdom of God."

People who are knowledgeable start searching for truth. And they have taken one thing for granted, that they already know what it is. Now it is only a question of searching. They will be able to recognize it, they know its characteristics.

It is not so. Unless you know truth, there is no way to know it. No scripture can describe it. There is no possibility of ANYBODY giving you the knowledge of truth. A Master never gives the knowledge of truth to you; he simply makes his truth available to you. If you are courageous, if you are innocent, if you are open, ready to take the jump, ready to die in the Master, then you will know truth -- not knowledge about truth but an experience of it. Truth always comes as an experience. It is always existential.