(The audio recording of the question is not clear.) There is a reason for this. Not a small reason—many reasons. First: dharma is forever a new thing—forever. Dharma is always new. Dharma never grows old; it cannot. But all our beliefs grow old. Dharma is ever fresh, but beliefs become antiquated. So whenever dharma awakens again—whenever it manifests again through some person—all those who are invested in beliefs will feel obstruction and difficulty. This will not happen only once; it will always happen. If Krishna is born, the priest of that time, the so‑called religious man of that time, will turn against Krishna. He will turn against him because he clings to old beliefs, and this man will give dharma a new form. That new form will not be graspable to the blind man. He will not even know that what he is trying to save is adharma, and that against which he is fighting is dharma. He will only know, “What I was holding was right, and now someone is making it wrong.” Therefore the so‑called religious man will never fight the irreligious; he will always fight the truly religious. He will feel no fear from the irreligious, but the religious will frighten him. Whether it is Krishna or Christ or Nanak, whenever the awakening of dharma happens again in the life of any person, dharma will be born anew—taking a new language, a new shape. And those who sit clutching the old shapes—only shapes now, hardened, wooden, dead—will collide with it. If Nanak were to be born today, do not think the Sikhs would not fight him—the Sikh would fight him too. Because Nanak would speak a new language; five hundred years make a difference. In five hundred years Nanak would speak anew. The Sikh would also protest: “What sort of talk is this?” So it is not otherwise. A very famous... Dostoevsky wrote a story. He wrote that after eighteen hundred years Jesus Christ thought, “By now half the earth has become Christian. If I go now, I will be welcomed. When I had gone before, there was not a single Christian, only Jews; they crucified me. Now half the earth is my own people. The whole earth is filled with churches. Now there will be nothing but welcome. Whatever I say, people will immediately agree. Now the time is ripe.” So, in that story Jesus descends. He stands before the great church in Jerusalem. Morning; Sunday; people are coming out of church. They see a man standing there—just like Jesus—so they gather round. They say, “You’ve made the look and form perfect. You look exactly like Jesus. Some impersonator, it seems.” Jesus says, “No, no, you misunderstand. I am Jesus. I have come again, because now there are those who love me. And you cannot recognize me, even though you are coming out just now from praying to me.” They say, “Stop this joke. It will become serious. Our priest is about to come out—the arch‑priest. If he sees you, you will be punished. Run away.” Jesus says, “But he is my priest. Will he too not recognize me?” Just then the priest arrives. Someone throws a stone, someone a pebble, someone hurls an abuse: “This man is insulting our Jesus by pretending to be him. How can there be another Jesus? It happened once; he is unique. No one can be like him again. This man is making a mockery of Jesus.” Not one person shows Jesus respect. The arch‑priest who has come out of the church receives bows from all; they touch his feet. Jesus is very astonished: my priest’s feet are being touched, and I am being mocked. I had thought the priest was someone else’s before; now he is my own—at least he will recognize me. The priest lifts his eyes and says, “Scoundrel, get down! It is a most sinful act for a man to stand here as Jesus. He is the only begotten son of God. No other can compare. Seize this wretch,” he commands the people, “he is making a mockery of our religion.” Jesus says, “You too did not recognize me? You are my highest priest; that cross you wear is mine. You too did not recognize me?” He says, “I recognized you well enough.” But by then Jesus’s hands have been bound. He is thrown into a cell. Jesus is very astonished: before it was someone else’s cell when I was imprisoned eighteen hundred years ago; now it is our own cell. And my own priest will do this? Jesus reflects: priests will always do this; whose priest he is does not matter. At midnight someone opens the door. Carrying a lamp, the priest enters. Setting down the lamp, he falls at Jesus’s feet and says, “I recognized you at once. But you are the eternal disturber; you will upset everything. In eighteen hundred years we have arranged everything. Now all is going perfectly; there is no need for you. We are doing your work—your... perfectly well. We are mediating fully between you and the people. There is no need for you to return. Otherwise you will again create upheaval. I recognized you clearly, but we cannot recognize you before the crowd. If you come into the marketplace, do not force us, or we will have to crucify you again. You are the old disturber.” He says, “You are the eternal troublemaker, because you will again say those subversive things by which all that is settled will be thrown into disorder.” So the difficulty is this: when we cling to a belief, at the time we cling the living person is there with it. But that person departs. We have no experience like his; only his words remain. And we begin to extract meanings from those words. When you try to derive meanings from Nanak’s words, never fall into the error of thinking, “This is Nanak’s meaning.” It can never be Nanak’s meaning. Only a man of Nanak’s stature can draw Nanak’s meaning. You cannot. Whatever meaning you derive will be wrong. However good a meaning you find, it will arise out of you alone; it will be limited to the level of your own consciousness—no more can be. So Nanak departs. A man who loves Nanak remains. And lovers will always be found. Such a lover will keep only the words, the memory; he will decorate them, preserve them—which should be done. But whatever meanings he draws will be his own. And if Nanak returns tomorrow, the meanings Nanak draws will not be the ones the follower had drawn. From there the quarrel begins. The difficulty of the quarrel is the difficulty of the layers of consciousness. It is such a vast difficulty—beyond measure. Then we start to fight, saying, “This has gone wrong.” Behold the irony—how consciousness changes, and what trouble arises. We call Nanak “Guru.” Whereas the whole emphasis of Nanak is that you be shishya. He has not the slightest emphasis on being a Guru; his emphasis is that you be shishya. From that shishya comes “Sikh.” Sikh is not a religion; it is discipleship. It is not a sect. Sikh means: one who is ready to be a shishya—the attitude of discipleship, one who is ready to learn. The emphasis is that you become a shishya, but we will not become shishya. We will make him Guru. This is utterly the reverse. There is a vast difference—earth and sky. If we have to become shishya, we will have to change; but if we make the other a Guru, then we need not change at all—worship is enough. To become a shishya is very difficult; to make a Guru is very easy. You need do nothing; it is the other’s business. You call a man “Guru,” and you are done. You have given respect—the matter is finished. But if you must become a shishya, then your whole life must change. That is a hard affair. To be a shishya is arduous; to make a Guru is easy. What could be easier than appointing a Guru? You have nothing to do. Our people—those who know—always put the emphasis on: you learn. But our emphasis becomes: you are the teacher. We immediately say, “You are the Guru, and we honor you.” Now note the irony: Nanak, at least, cannot agree to be a Guru. No man who has the stature of a Guru—who could be a Guru—will agree to be one; and the one who agrees to be a Guru has not the stature to be a Guru. Whoever is truly in the position to be a Guru will say, “Paramatma is the Guru.” He will never stand in between. And one who is not in the position to be a Guru will say, “I am the Guru—and if you are to reach Paramatma, you must come through me.” Such people will not want to become Gurus; they will want to teach us only how to be shishya. Another irony: if you accept one person as Guru, your discipleship is limited; then you learn only from him, not from others. But if you become simply a shishya, you learn from the whole existence; there is no question of learning from only one. Therefore being a shishya is infinite; making a Guru is a very finite relationship. You bind yourself to one. And when you make one a Guru, then with whoever is even a little different from him, you become hostile; and if someone stands opposite to him, then the enmity is confirmed. But if we keep only the shishya‑bhava, then why enmity with the different? Why enmity with the opposite? We will learn from both. From wherever something is available, we will learn. We will learn from darkness and from light; from the mosque and from the temple; from the Quran and from the Bible. But if once we declare, “Only the Quran,” then we will not learn from the Gita. Then there will be difficulty. This Guru Granth contains the sayings of all the wise ones of that time—but it has been closed. That is the danger. The sayings of the wise should have continued to be collected; it became closed. At that time it was a completely open book—an extraordinary event: the sayings of all the realized ones then living were compiled. Therefore I hold that the very day the Guru Granth was closed, loss began. It should not be closed; it should be open. In truth, Nanak’s meaning is exactly this; his emphasis is: become a shishya, and wherever learning is found, learn from there. Because wherever learning is found, there is Paramatma. From where you learn is not the question. Whether you learn from the words of Farid, or from Nanak, or from Kabir—it makes no difference. The source does not matter. The day the Guru Granth was closed—now nothing can be added—loss began from that very day. In my view it should have remained open; even now it should be open; even now the voice of the wise should go on being added to it. It should have no end. Only then will it remain the Guru Granth; otherwise it will not. It has been closed. Now we will not be able to assimilate what is contrary or different. The book will become small. In its own time it was a great book, an open book; now it is no longer so. Now we have shut it. The realized ones of that era were included—but what of those after? Now we start to consider whether the later realized one matches us or does not. And the day we begin to decide, “If he matches us, then we will accept,” the error has begun. For this whole existence—this entire cosmos—has nothing truly opposed in it. Opposition may appear; in truth there is nothing antagonistic. Wherever we see opposition, it is due to our own mistake. Otherwise the whole arrangement of existence proceeds by creating polarities. There is negative and positive—and from the union of both electricity flows. If electricity decides one day, “We will flow only with the negative, not with the positive,” that very day it will stop. This whole life is woven of opposites: night and day; cold and heat; birth and death. Everything is included here. Ram and Ravan may appear separate to us; in Paramatma they are together. Ram cannot be without Ravan, nor Ravan without Ram. That without which you cannot be, is not your enemy; for without it you cannot exist at all. It is your very ground of being. So a person like Nanak will not forbid anyone. He will only say: remain open to learning. For me, Sikh means precisely this—open to learn. And if anywhere you find learning, be prepared to learn. To be prepared to learn is a great difficulty! Because the mind is usually inclined to teach, not to learn. To be a Guru is very easy. To be a shishya is very difficult. Anyone is ready to be a Guru; whenever the chance comes, man becomes a Guru. To become a shishya is extremely difficult. There was a Sufi— a fakir. He was passing along a road. A small child was carrying a lamp to light in the temple. The fakir asked, “Did you light this lamp?” The child said, “I did.” “Did this flame appear before your eyes?” “Before my eyes.” “Then, where did this flame come from?” The child blew out the lamp and asked the Sufi, “The flame has gone before your very eyes—tell me, where has it gone? If you can tell where it has gone, then I will also try to tell from where it came.” The Sufi fell at the child’s feet and said, “I am in search of Gurus—and I have found one in you as well. You have opened yet another door in my mind—to the infinite and the unknown. I had asked in jest; I had not thought the jest would become serious, and turn back upon me.” When that Sufi fakir was dying, someone asked him, From whom all did you learn? Who were your masters? He said it would be hard to count. He named many people; among them he even named a child. About that child he said, I don’t know his name, because after one incident I didn’t dare ask him—lest he say something else completely upside-down. After that I had no courage to ask him his name. This is what I call discipleship. That fakir, even after attaining the supreme knowing, is remembering it on his deathbed. In spiritual life there are really no gurus; there are only disciples. And wherever the emphasis shifts to the guru, there spiritual life ends and politics begins. This needs to be understood very clearly.
We tend to think: if there is a disciple there must be a guru. The guru should not know he is a guru, while the disciple should know he is a disciple. If the guru comes to know, “I am the guru,” the whole thing is spoiled. He is no longer a guru—it becomes worship of the ego. It becomes ego, and then “gurudom” rises. The disciple should know, “I am a disciple.” And he should know it always—twenty-four hours a day—that I have to learn, learn, learn; I am ignorant; I do not know. And wherever there is anything to learn, I should keep learning.
This is the condition of truly religious people. If such a religious person were to be born on the earth—the attempt has always been made, but he rarely appears—if he were born, there would be no quarrel. No quarrel at all. If I say something and in you there is only the feeling and longing to learn, you will listen, understand, and depart. If there is something to learn, you will take it; if there isn’t, you won’t. But if you are already stuffed with your learning, firmly convinced that you already know what knowledge is—then there will be collision. Then difficulty will arise. You will say, “No, this isn’t right.” And the irony is: if we truly knew what is right, there would be no problem. We do not know that at all. Yet we are always ready to say what is not right.
There was a great mathematician in Russia, Ouspensky. A Greek fakir, Gurdjieff, was living then. Ouspensky went to him and said, “I have some questions to ask.” Gurdjieff was a very astonishing man—one of the few truly unusual beings in the last fifty years. He picked up a blank sheet of paper, handed it to Ouspensky and said, “I know you are a great scholar—famous, well-published. First write on this paper everything you know, so I won’t talk about that. We’ll talk only about what you don’t know; otherwise we’ll waste time.” That sounded reasonable. He sent Ouspensky into the next room and said, “Fill both sides. What you know we’ll drop; we’ll speak of what you don’t.”
Ouspensky has written: for the first time in my life I was in a fix. When I began to write “God,” my pen would not move—because I did not know. “Soul”—I could not write, because I did not know. In the end I had to return the paper blank. I knew nothing. Gurdjieff said, “You have the capacity to be a disciple. Now sit.” Since you have nothing to teach, the quarrel is over. Now, whatever I say—if you wish to understand, understand; if you don’t, don’t. But you will not be able to say, “This is wrong,” because you do not know what is right. That much is settled.
And for years Ouspensky remained with him. He never once said, “This is wrong.” Years later Gurdjieff said, “This man is remarkable; he kept his word.” Ouspensky replied, “I did not keep a word; the fact simply became clear. If I don’t know what is right, how can I call anyone else wrong? I only tried to learn and to understand. And as I understood and learned, rays of the right began slowly to become clear. It was good you handed me that blank paper the very first day; otherwise I would never have learned anything. At every step I would have said, ‘No, not like this.’”
What we truly call discipleship means only this: we stand with a total awareness of our ignorance. That’s all. Therefore, wherever anyone says, “I have come to know,” we agree to listen.
The proclamation of “gurudom” is a very different proclamation. A man trying to become a guru is not very eager that you come to the truth; he is eager that what he says be accepted as truth. But when someone has known the truth, there is no insistence that you must accept it. Why would there be? And can truth be accepted merely on someone’s say-so? It can only be known. It can only be known through experience.
The difficulty that has always arisen is just this—and it is rather amusing. If Nanak, Buddha, Krishna, Kabir, Christ, and Muhammad meet somewhere in liberation, they must be laughing heartily. They all said the same thing. And there, behind them, their followers stand with swords drawn, after one another’s lives. And if those masters themselves were to return, they could not persuade their followers not to fight. The followers would say, “They have lost their minds. How can we accept that?”
There is a memoir from Freud’s life—astonishing. While Freud was alive, a vast movement had arisen around him in psychology. His great disciples had spread across the world; a kind of priesthood had formed. Twenty of his foremost disciples had come to meet him. He was an old man, sitting at the table; they sat around him—and a dispute broke out about the meaning of some statement of Freud’s. In arguing they forgot altogether that Freud was present; they could ask him. He was sitting there! The dispute grew so heated that it turned bitter, even hostile.
Freud said to them, “Friends, I am still alive, not dead. But it amazes me that you do not ask me what I meant. When I die, what will you do? I am sitting right here, and you do not bother to ask me my meaning—you are deciding it among yourselves, fighting over it. I shudder to think what you will do when I am gone.”
All the frameworks we construct around a person are the frameworks of our own understanding. We do not rise above our understanding; we erect our own scaffold and stand under it. Then, when truth manifests again—who knows through whom?—it collides with that mold. And the follower of Krishna or the follower of Nanak will be the very one to fight him. He will appear the enemy. Jesus said—when talk of crucifying him began and he was being seized—about Abraham, an ancient prophet of the Jews: “Before Abraham was, I am. And I have come to fulfill what Abraham said.” But who would listen?
Abraham’s priests, his temples—they could not tolerate a man saying, “Before Abraham was, I am,” and “I am saying the same thing Abraham said.” They could not accept it. “This carpenter’s son! Where is Abraham, an avatar of God, and where is this carpenter’s boy!” Today Jesus is no longer a carpenter’s son; he is the Son of God. If another man says the same today, they will say, “This is a tanner’s son, a shopkeeper’s boy—he dares to vie with God!”
Whenever a light arises, it arises from a human being. He will be someone’s son—a carpenter’s, a tanner’s, a shopkeeper’s. But after thousands of years, when stories have crystallized, by then he has become God. And his followers refuse to accept that an ordinary man could speak as he did about their master. Impossible!
But that is exactly what happened with their master. They do not remember. The amusing thing is that we go on repeating the same mistake—still we repeat it. Nothing changes. Our beliefs shackle us; beliefs become rigid. What comes from cosmic consciousness often appears contrary to our minds. And times change.
Nanak spoke to people five hundred years ago. The Vedic rishi spoke perhaps ten thousand years ago—ten-thousand-year-old language, symbols, understanding in the people addressed and in the one who spoke. In ten thousand years everything has changed. Even if I wanted to, I could not speak that language. And to whom would I speak it? Where is the one who could understand that language? I must speak with you, to you. Everything changes—the framework, the clothing, the forms, the shapes, the words. The soul is always the same, but no one recognizes the soul; we recognize words.
In Buddha’s time it happened that Buddha and Mahavira lived at the same time in the same region, and their followers reported opposite statements from them. Mahavira said, “The soul is everything.” Buddha said, “There is no soul at all”—a direct clash. Mahavira said, “Know the soul and supreme knowledge is attained.” Buddha said, “As long as you posit a soul, you are in ignorance.” These are exactly opposite statements. The listener clings to words. The follower of Mahavira still clings to “soul”; the follower of Buddha still clings to “no-soul.” Neither knows that both are pointing to the same with two opposite terms. You may ask, “Then why point with opposite terms?” There is a reason.
Some people can understand the pointer only through the word “soul,” and some only through the word “no-soul.” Some can find God only by dancing; some only by closing their eyes in silence. Some attain through silence; some through song. The one who attained through silence will say, “Be silent. Words are nonsense—drop them. Abandon all words.” The one who attained by singing will say, “Sing—and become song. Don’t hold back at all. Be music itself.” These two statements will sound opposite. And those who have only words will keep quarreling: “No, you must be silent; only then you attain.” And another will say, “No, until you sing and become word-sound itself, you will not attain.”
Their quarrel will go on for thousands of years. And both are fools. They are only conveying this much: the one who attained spoke his way. And there are a thousand ways to attain. There will be a thousand—because you will come by your path, I by mine; a third by a third, a fourth by a fourth. We do not all stand at the same place; our routes will differ. Meera will attain by dancing; Mahavira cannot—he cannot dance. We cannot even imagine Mahavira dancing. Impossible. Nanak can attain by singing—the tambura will go on sounding at his side. If you play it near Buddha, he will say, “Stop it. You are disturbing me. This won’t do. Remove this tambura.”
This is their individuality—the way by which it happened for them. They will speak of that. And in the end what remains with us is the tambura. One man stands ready to smash the tambura; another to play it. And neither understands what is at stake. We must discern: Is this for me? Can I drown in melody? If I can, good—let me drown. If not, let me settle in silence. But this is difficult—there are a thousand kinds of persons, a thousand approaches, countless words. Infinite are the paths—because the Infinite cannot be reached by a single path. Infinite will be his ways.
Because of all this, when I say one thing, someone will feel, “No, that runs contrary to our path.” The question is not of paths; all paths may be mutually contrary. The question is: where do they take us? If they lead to the same place, there is no trouble in their being contrary. Let them remain contrary. Attend to whether we arrive. But on arrival we do not know the place; we know only the paths.
Our condition is like this: draw a large circle; at its center draw twenty-five lines from the circumference. We all stand on the circumference. We can see only our own line; we cannot see the center where all the lines meet. I stand on my line; you on yours. There is great distance between them. How can I believe your line will reach where mine reaches? I will say, “You will never arrive—I will, because someone ahead of me arrived and said this is the path.” You will say, “You fool, we have already arrived—someone ahead of us arrived and said this is the way.” Then the quarrel is certain. And it need not be full of enmity.
This quarrel is very natural—perfectly natural. He feels, “How will you arrive? You might mislead someone. You might ruin someone.” Poor fellow—he creates obstacles so you won’t spoil others. It is his naiveté, for he does not know that many paths arrive there. He is making it narrow: only mine arrives. Gradually such clarity should arise in the world; so far it hasn’t.
So at least in matters of religion there is no reason to fight. None. A good time may yet come when if there is a mosque next door, you go there and pray; if a temple, then in the temple; if a gurdwara, then in the gurdwara. And if none is nearby, sit at home and pray. That time can come; it should come. That has been everyone’s longing, but it doesn’t happen; rather, a new nuisance arises.
Even I know that nuisance is almost inevitable. It often happens. That is why Nanak said: all paths are His. The gurdwara was not built for Sikhs—not for Sikhs. Whoever wishes to, let him seek there too—there is a door for him as well. It is a door. That is why it was named gurudwara—a doorway to the guru. That is beautiful—better than “temple.” Just a door. It is not a palace where by simply entering you will find God. It is only a door—through it also you may find. And it is open to all. For if God’s door were closed to some, it would be a very miserly door. At least God’s door should not be closed. It is open to all—let anyone come.
This was the intent; it does not come to pass. In the end, something very contrary happens: where ten fighting factions stood, an eleventh is added. The eleventh springs up. The intention was that the eleventh would not fight, and would give a door to the ten. The result is that yet another fighting party is born. “Come here; from here you will arrive.” Then tomorrow someone else will arise to erase that, and a twelfth will be formed. Then twelve—and thirteen.
Only the number of quarrelling parties keeps increasing. And every new party, the day it is formed, is formed so that it may end the quarrels of the rest. It is a great difficulty. It has happened—and in some sense it is natural. If you come to love what I am saying, I know I could form a party. If that love grows, I could turn you into yet another party that fights. Even without my wanting it, it can happen.
The Jains have a principle—syadvad. It means: this too is right, that too is right. A very precious insight. They say: this is right, that is right. To say “only this is right” is not right. They call it syadvad. But if you ask a Jain about syadvad, he will say, “Only syadvad is right.” Now look at the irony. If someone says syadvad is wrong, he will not be able to muster the courage to say, “That too is okay.”
What an amusing contradiction the human mind runs. The principle is simply this: however opposite someone’s statement, there will still be something right in it. If even one person in the world is saying it, then at least the God within one person is speaking—there must be something right in it; otherwise he could not say it. Even the greatest lie contains a little truth; otherwise even the greatest lie cannot stand. It must stand upon truth. Otherwise it will collapse at once. However big the lie, we must search out the foundation of truth beneath it; otherwise it cannot stand. However grand a house of lies we build, somewhere in the foundation we must lay a brick of truth; otherwise it will fall.
There is an Arabic saying: lies have no feet. They must always borrow their feet from truth. Hence a lie loudly claims to be truth. Without claiming truth it is crippled; it cannot walk a step. It can walk only as much as it borrows truth’s claim. The moment that claim falls, it falls. Therefore a lie strives hard to be truth—only so it can stand.
This grip of our mind—“this is true, that is true”—should only mean: we will attend to the truth. We will drop worrying about the lie and extract the truth. We will always be content with that much. But the follower of this very principle will say: anyone who says this principle is wrong is absolutely wrong; this principle alone is absolutely true. And we are back where we started.
The human intellect is so small that when truths arrive from the supreme intelligence, instead of letting those truths lift us up to them, we drag them down to our own level. That is natural. All my life I may try to pull you up to the upper floor; but after I die you will carry my corpse down to the lower floor where you are. What else will you do? I will have made my effort; in the end you will make yours.
We come to love all those who have told us some ultimate thing so much that, when they are no longer here, we bring them down to our place. All right too—what will they do up there alone now?
Osho's Commentary
There is a reason for this. Not a small reason—many reasons. First: dharma is forever a new thing—forever. Dharma is always new. Dharma never grows old; it cannot. But all our beliefs grow old. Dharma is ever fresh, but beliefs become antiquated. So whenever dharma awakens again—whenever it manifests again through some person—all those who are invested in beliefs will feel obstruction and difficulty. This will not happen only once; it will always happen. If Krishna is born, the priest of that time, the so‑called religious man of that time, will turn against Krishna.
He will turn against him because he clings to old beliefs, and this man will give dharma a new form. That new form will not be graspable to the blind man. He will not even know that what he is trying to save is adharma, and that against which he is fighting is dharma. He will only know, “What I was holding was right, and now someone is making it wrong.”
Therefore the so‑called religious man will never fight the irreligious; he will always fight the truly religious. He will feel no fear from the irreligious, but the religious will frighten him. Whether it is Krishna or Christ or Nanak, whenever the awakening of dharma happens again in the life of any person, dharma will be born anew—taking a new language, a new shape. And those who sit clutching the old shapes—only shapes now, hardened, wooden, dead—will collide with it.
If Nanak were to be born today, do not think the Sikhs would not fight him—the Sikh would fight him too. Because Nanak would speak a new language; five hundred years make a difference. In five hundred years Nanak would speak anew. The Sikh would also protest: “What sort of talk is this?” So it is not otherwise.
A very famous... Dostoevsky wrote a story. He wrote that after eighteen hundred years Jesus Christ thought, “By now half the earth has become Christian. If I go now, I will be welcomed. When I had gone before, there was not a single Christian, only Jews; they crucified me. Now half the earth is my own people. The whole earth is filled with churches. Now there will be nothing but welcome. Whatever I say, people will immediately agree. Now the time is ripe.”
So, in that story Jesus descends. He stands before the great church in Jerusalem. Morning; Sunday; people are coming out of church. They see a man standing there—just like Jesus—so they gather round. They say, “You’ve made the look and form perfect. You look exactly like Jesus. Some impersonator, it seems.” Jesus says, “No, no, you misunderstand. I am Jesus. I have come again, because now there are those who love me. And you cannot recognize me, even though you are coming out just now from praying to me.” They say, “Stop this joke. It will become serious. Our priest is about to come out—the arch‑priest. If he sees you, you will be punished. Run away.” Jesus says, “But he is my priest. Will he too not recognize me?” Just then the priest arrives. Someone throws a stone, someone a pebble, someone hurls an abuse: “This man is insulting our Jesus by pretending to be him. How can there be another Jesus? It happened once; he is unique. No one can be like him again. This man is making a mockery of Jesus.” Not one person shows Jesus respect. The arch‑priest who has come out of the church receives bows from all; they touch his feet.
Jesus is very astonished: my priest’s feet are being touched, and I am being mocked. I had thought the priest was someone else’s before; now he is my own—at least he will recognize me. The priest lifts his eyes and says, “Scoundrel, get down! It is a most sinful act for a man to stand here as Jesus. He is the only begotten son of God. No other can compare. Seize this wretch,” he commands the people, “he is making a mockery of our religion.” Jesus says, “You too did not recognize me? You are my highest priest; that cross you wear is mine. You too did not recognize me?” He says, “I recognized you well enough.” But by then Jesus’s hands have been bound. He is thrown into a cell.
Jesus is very astonished: before it was someone else’s cell when I was imprisoned eighteen hundred years ago; now it is our own cell. And my own priest will do this? Jesus reflects: priests will always do this; whose priest he is does not matter.
At midnight someone opens the door. Carrying a lamp, the priest enters. Setting down the lamp, he falls at Jesus’s feet and says, “I recognized you at once. But you are the eternal disturber; you will upset everything. In eighteen hundred years we have arranged everything. Now all is going perfectly; there is no need for you. We are doing your work—your... perfectly well. We are mediating fully between you and the people. There is no need for you to return. Otherwise you will again create upheaval. I recognized you clearly, but we cannot recognize you before the crowd. If you come into the marketplace, do not force us, or we will have to crucify you again. You are the old disturber.” He says, “You are the eternal troublemaker, because you will again say those subversive things by which all that is settled will be thrown into disorder.”
So the difficulty is this: when we cling to a belief, at the time we cling the living person is there with it. But that person departs. We have no experience like his; only his words remain. And we begin to extract meanings from those words. When you try to derive meanings from Nanak’s words, never fall into the error of thinking, “This is Nanak’s meaning.” It can never be Nanak’s meaning. Only a man of Nanak’s stature can draw Nanak’s meaning. You cannot. Whatever meaning you derive will be wrong. However good a meaning you find, it will arise out of you alone; it will be limited to the level of your own consciousness—no more can be.
So Nanak departs. A man who loves Nanak remains. And lovers will always be found. Such a lover will keep only the words, the memory; he will decorate them, preserve them—which should be done. But whatever meanings he draws will be his own. And if Nanak returns tomorrow, the meanings Nanak draws will not be the ones the follower had drawn. From there the quarrel begins. The difficulty of the quarrel is the difficulty of the layers of consciousness. It is such a vast difficulty—beyond measure. Then we start to fight, saying, “This has gone wrong.” Behold the irony—how consciousness changes, and what trouble arises.
We call Nanak “Guru.” Whereas the whole emphasis of Nanak is that you be shishya. He has not the slightest emphasis on being a Guru; his emphasis is that you be shishya. From that shishya comes “Sikh.” Sikh is not a religion; it is discipleship. It is not a sect. Sikh means: one who is ready to be a shishya—the attitude of discipleship, one who is ready to learn.
The emphasis is that you become a shishya, but we will not become shishya. We will make him Guru. This is utterly the reverse. There is a vast difference—earth and sky. If we have to become shishya, we will have to change; but if we make the other a Guru, then we need not change at all—worship is enough. To become a shishya is very difficult; to make a Guru is very easy. You need do nothing; it is the other’s business.
You call a man “Guru,” and you are done. You have given respect—the matter is finished. But if you must become a shishya, then your whole life must change. That is a hard affair. To be a shishya is arduous; to make a Guru is easy. What could be easier than appointing a Guru? You have nothing to do. Our people—those who know—always put the emphasis on: you learn. But our emphasis becomes: you are the teacher. We immediately say, “You are the Guru, and we honor you.” Now note the irony: Nanak, at least, cannot agree to be a Guru. No man who has the stature of a Guru—who could be a Guru—will agree to be one; and the one who agrees to be a Guru has not the stature to be a Guru.
Whoever is truly in the position to be a Guru will say, “Paramatma is the Guru.” He will never stand in between. And one who is not in the position to be a Guru will say, “I am the Guru—and if you are to reach Paramatma, you must come through me.” Such people will not want to become Gurus; they will want to teach us only how to be shishya.
Another irony: if you accept one person as Guru, your discipleship is limited; then you learn only from him, not from others. But if you become simply a shishya, you learn from the whole existence; there is no question of learning from only one. Therefore being a shishya is infinite; making a Guru is a very finite relationship. You bind yourself to one. And when you make one a Guru, then with whoever is even a little different from him, you become hostile; and if someone stands opposite to him, then the enmity is confirmed.
But if we keep only the shishya‑bhava, then why enmity with the different? Why enmity with the opposite? We will learn from both. From wherever something is available, we will learn. We will learn from darkness and from light; from the mosque and from the temple; from the Quran and from the Bible. But if once we declare, “Only the Quran,” then we will not learn from the Gita. Then there will be difficulty.
This Guru Granth contains the sayings of all the wise ones of that time—but it has been closed. That is the danger. The sayings of the wise should have continued to be collected; it became closed. At that time it was a completely open book—an extraordinary event: the sayings of all the realized ones then living were compiled. Therefore I hold that the very day the Guru Granth was closed, loss began. It should not be closed; it should be open.
In truth, Nanak’s meaning is exactly this; his emphasis is: become a shishya, and wherever learning is found, learn from there. Because wherever learning is found, there is Paramatma. From where you learn is not the question. Whether you learn from the words of Farid, or from Nanak, or from Kabir—it makes no difference. The source does not matter. The day the Guru Granth was closed—now nothing can be added—loss began from that very day.
In my view it should have remained open; even now it should be open; even now the voice of the wise should go on being added to it. It should have no end. Only then will it remain the Guru Granth; otherwise it will not. It has been closed. Now we will not be able to assimilate what is contrary or different. The book will become small. In its own time it was a great book, an open book; now it is no longer so. Now we have shut it. The realized ones of that era were included—but what of those after? Now we start to consider whether the later realized one matches us or does not.
And the day we begin to decide, “If he matches us, then we will accept,” the error has begun. For this whole existence—this entire cosmos—has nothing truly opposed in it. Opposition may appear; in truth there is nothing antagonistic. Wherever we see opposition, it is due to our own mistake. Otherwise the whole arrangement of existence proceeds by creating polarities.
There is negative and positive—and from the union of both electricity flows. If electricity decides one day, “We will flow only with the negative, not with the positive,” that very day it will stop. This whole life is woven of opposites: night and day; cold and heat; birth and death. Everything is included here. Ram and Ravan may appear separate to us; in Paramatma they are together.
Ram cannot be without Ravan, nor Ravan without Ram. That without which you cannot be, is not your enemy; for without it you cannot exist at all. It is your very ground of being. So a person like Nanak will not forbid anyone. He will only say: remain open to learning. For me, Sikh means precisely this—open to learn. And if anywhere you find learning, be prepared to learn. To be prepared to learn is a great difficulty!
Because the mind is usually inclined to teach, not to learn.
To be a Guru is very easy. To be a shishya is very difficult. Anyone is ready to be a Guru; whenever the chance comes, man becomes a Guru. To become a shishya is extremely difficult.
There was a Sufi— a fakir. He was passing along a road. A small child was carrying a lamp to light in the temple. The fakir asked, “Did you light this lamp?” The child said, “I did.” “Did this flame appear before your eyes?” “Before my eyes.” “Then, where did this flame come from?” The child blew out the lamp and asked the Sufi, “The flame has gone before your very eyes—tell me, where has it gone? If you can tell where it has gone, then I will also try to tell from where it came.” The Sufi fell at the child’s feet and said, “I am in search of Gurus—and I have found one in you as well. You have opened yet another door in my mind—to the infinite and the unknown. I had asked in jest; I had not thought the jest would become serious, and turn back upon me.”
When that Sufi fakir was dying, someone asked him, From whom all did you learn? Who were your masters? He said it would be hard to count. He named many people; among them he even named a child. About that child he said, I don’t know his name, because after one incident I didn’t dare ask him—lest he say something else completely upside-down. After that I had no courage to ask him his name.
This is what I call discipleship. That fakir, even after attaining the supreme knowing, is remembering it on his deathbed. In spiritual life there are really no gurus; there are only disciples. And wherever the emphasis shifts to the guru, there spiritual life ends and politics begins. This needs to be understood very clearly.
We tend to think: if there is a disciple there must be a guru. The guru should not know he is a guru, while the disciple should know he is a disciple. If the guru comes to know, “I am the guru,” the whole thing is spoiled. He is no longer a guru—it becomes worship of the ego. It becomes ego, and then “gurudom” rises. The disciple should know, “I am a disciple.” And he should know it always—twenty-four hours a day—that I have to learn, learn, learn; I am ignorant; I do not know. And wherever there is anything to learn, I should keep learning.
This is the condition of truly religious people. If such a religious person were to be born on the earth—the attempt has always been made, but he rarely appears—if he were born, there would be no quarrel. No quarrel at all. If I say something and in you there is only the feeling and longing to learn, you will listen, understand, and depart. If there is something to learn, you will take it; if there isn’t, you won’t. But if you are already stuffed with your learning, firmly convinced that you already know what knowledge is—then there will be collision. Then difficulty will arise. You will say, “No, this isn’t right.” And the irony is: if we truly knew what is right, there would be no problem. We do not know that at all. Yet we are always ready to say what is not right.
There was a great mathematician in Russia, Ouspensky. A Greek fakir, Gurdjieff, was living then. Ouspensky went to him and said, “I have some questions to ask.” Gurdjieff was a very astonishing man—one of the few truly unusual beings in the last fifty years. He picked up a blank sheet of paper, handed it to Ouspensky and said, “I know you are a great scholar—famous, well-published. First write on this paper everything you know, so I won’t talk about that. We’ll talk only about what you don’t know; otherwise we’ll waste time.” That sounded reasonable. He sent Ouspensky into the next room and said, “Fill both sides. What you know we’ll drop; we’ll speak of what you don’t.”
Ouspensky has written: for the first time in my life I was in a fix. When I began to write “God,” my pen would not move—because I did not know. “Soul”—I could not write, because I did not know. In the end I had to return the paper blank. I knew nothing. Gurdjieff said, “You have the capacity to be a disciple. Now sit.” Since you have nothing to teach, the quarrel is over. Now, whatever I say—if you wish to understand, understand; if you don’t, don’t. But you will not be able to say, “This is wrong,” because you do not know what is right. That much is settled.
And for years Ouspensky remained with him. He never once said, “This is wrong.” Years later Gurdjieff said, “This man is remarkable; he kept his word.” Ouspensky replied, “I did not keep a word; the fact simply became clear. If I don’t know what is right, how can I call anyone else wrong? I only tried to learn and to understand. And as I understood and learned, rays of the right began slowly to become clear. It was good you handed me that blank paper the very first day; otherwise I would never have learned anything. At every step I would have said, ‘No, not like this.’”
What we truly call discipleship means only this: we stand with a total awareness of our ignorance. That’s all. Therefore, wherever anyone says, “I have come to know,” we agree to listen.
The proclamation of “gurudom” is a very different proclamation. A man trying to become a guru is not very eager that you come to the truth; he is eager that what he says be accepted as truth. But when someone has known the truth, there is no insistence that you must accept it. Why would there be? And can truth be accepted merely on someone’s say-so? It can only be known. It can only be known through experience.
The difficulty that has always arisen is just this—and it is rather amusing. If Nanak, Buddha, Krishna, Kabir, Christ, and Muhammad meet somewhere in liberation, they must be laughing heartily. They all said the same thing. And there, behind them, their followers stand with swords drawn, after one another’s lives. And if those masters themselves were to return, they could not persuade their followers not to fight. The followers would say, “They have lost their minds. How can we accept that?”
There is a memoir from Freud’s life—astonishing. While Freud was alive, a vast movement had arisen around him in psychology. His great disciples had spread across the world; a kind of priesthood had formed. Twenty of his foremost disciples had come to meet him. He was an old man, sitting at the table; they sat around him—and a dispute broke out about the meaning of some statement of Freud’s. In arguing they forgot altogether that Freud was present; they could ask him. He was sitting there! The dispute grew so heated that it turned bitter, even hostile.
Freud said to them, “Friends, I am still alive, not dead. But it amazes me that you do not ask me what I meant. When I die, what will you do? I am sitting right here, and you do not bother to ask me my meaning—you are deciding it among yourselves, fighting over it. I shudder to think what you will do when I am gone.”
All the frameworks we construct around a person are the frameworks of our own understanding. We do not rise above our understanding; we erect our own scaffold and stand under it. Then, when truth manifests again—who knows through whom?—it collides with that mold. And the follower of Krishna or the follower of Nanak will be the very one to fight him. He will appear the enemy. Jesus said—when talk of crucifying him began and he was being seized—about Abraham, an ancient prophet of the Jews: “Before Abraham was, I am. And I have come to fulfill what Abraham said.” But who would listen?
Abraham’s priests, his temples—they could not tolerate a man saying, “Before Abraham was, I am,” and “I am saying the same thing Abraham said.” They could not accept it. “This carpenter’s son! Where is Abraham, an avatar of God, and where is this carpenter’s boy!” Today Jesus is no longer a carpenter’s son; he is the Son of God. If another man says the same today, they will say, “This is a tanner’s son, a shopkeeper’s boy—he dares to vie with God!”
Whenever a light arises, it arises from a human being. He will be someone’s son—a carpenter’s, a tanner’s, a shopkeeper’s. But after thousands of years, when stories have crystallized, by then he has become God. And his followers refuse to accept that an ordinary man could speak as he did about their master. Impossible!
But that is exactly what happened with their master. They do not remember. The amusing thing is that we go on repeating the same mistake—still we repeat it. Nothing changes. Our beliefs shackle us; beliefs become rigid. What comes from cosmic consciousness often appears contrary to our minds. And times change.
Nanak spoke to people five hundred years ago. The Vedic rishi spoke perhaps ten thousand years ago—ten-thousand-year-old language, symbols, understanding in the people addressed and in the one who spoke. In ten thousand years everything has changed. Even if I wanted to, I could not speak that language. And to whom would I speak it? Where is the one who could understand that language? I must speak with you, to you. Everything changes—the framework, the clothing, the forms, the shapes, the words. The soul is always the same, but no one recognizes the soul; we recognize words.
In Buddha’s time it happened that Buddha and Mahavira lived at the same time in the same region, and their followers reported opposite statements from them. Mahavira said, “The soul is everything.” Buddha said, “There is no soul at all”—a direct clash. Mahavira said, “Know the soul and supreme knowledge is attained.” Buddha said, “As long as you posit a soul, you are in ignorance.” These are exactly opposite statements. The listener clings to words. The follower of Mahavira still clings to “soul”; the follower of Buddha still clings to “no-soul.” Neither knows that both are pointing to the same with two opposite terms. You may ask, “Then why point with opposite terms?” There is a reason.
Some people can understand the pointer only through the word “soul,” and some only through the word “no-soul.” Some can find God only by dancing; some only by closing their eyes in silence. Some attain through silence; some through song. The one who attained through silence will say, “Be silent. Words are nonsense—drop them. Abandon all words.” The one who attained by singing will say, “Sing—and become song. Don’t hold back at all. Be music itself.” These two statements will sound opposite. And those who have only words will keep quarreling: “No, you must be silent; only then you attain.” And another will say, “No, until you sing and become word-sound itself, you will not attain.”
Their quarrel will go on for thousands of years. And both are fools. They are only conveying this much: the one who attained spoke his way. And there are a thousand ways to attain. There will be a thousand—because you will come by your path, I by mine; a third by a third, a fourth by a fourth. We do not all stand at the same place; our routes will differ. Meera will attain by dancing; Mahavira cannot—he cannot dance. We cannot even imagine Mahavira dancing. Impossible. Nanak can attain by singing—the tambura will go on sounding at his side. If you play it near Buddha, he will say, “Stop it. You are disturbing me. This won’t do. Remove this tambura.”
This is their individuality—the way by which it happened for them. They will speak of that. And in the end what remains with us is the tambura. One man stands ready to smash the tambura; another to play it. And neither understands what is at stake. We must discern: Is this for me? Can I drown in melody? If I can, good—let me drown. If not, let me settle in silence. But this is difficult—there are a thousand kinds of persons, a thousand approaches, countless words. Infinite are the paths—because the Infinite cannot be reached by a single path. Infinite will be his ways.
Because of all this, when I say one thing, someone will feel, “No, that runs contrary to our path.” The question is not of paths; all paths may be mutually contrary. The question is: where do they take us? If they lead to the same place, there is no trouble in their being contrary. Let them remain contrary. Attend to whether we arrive. But on arrival we do not know the place; we know only the paths.
Our condition is like this: draw a large circle; at its center draw twenty-five lines from the circumference. We all stand on the circumference. We can see only our own line; we cannot see the center where all the lines meet. I stand on my line; you on yours. There is great distance between them. How can I believe your line will reach where mine reaches? I will say, “You will never arrive—I will, because someone ahead of me arrived and said this is the path.” You will say, “You fool, we have already arrived—someone ahead of us arrived and said this is the way.” Then the quarrel is certain. And it need not be full of enmity.
This quarrel is very natural—perfectly natural. He feels, “How will you arrive? You might mislead someone. You might ruin someone.” Poor fellow—he creates obstacles so you won’t spoil others. It is his naiveté, for he does not know that many paths arrive there. He is making it narrow: only mine arrives. Gradually such clarity should arise in the world; so far it hasn’t.
So at least in matters of religion there is no reason to fight. None. A good time may yet come when if there is a mosque next door, you go there and pray; if a temple, then in the temple; if a gurdwara, then in the gurdwara. And if none is nearby, sit at home and pray. That time can come; it should come. That has been everyone’s longing, but it doesn’t happen; rather, a new nuisance arises.
Even I know that nuisance is almost inevitable. It often happens. That is why Nanak said: all paths are His. The gurdwara was not built for Sikhs—not for Sikhs. Whoever wishes to, let him seek there too—there is a door for him as well. It is a door. That is why it was named gurudwara—a doorway to the guru. That is beautiful—better than “temple.” Just a door. It is not a palace where by simply entering you will find God. It is only a door—through it also you may find. And it is open to all. For if God’s door were closed to some, it would be a very miserly door. At least God’s door should not be closed. It is open to all—let anyone come.
This was the intent; it does not come to pass. In the end, something very contrary happens: where ten fighting factions stood, an eleventh is added. The eleventh springs up. The intention was that the eleventh would not fight, and would give a door to the ten. The result is that yet another fighting party is born. “Come here; from here you will arrive.” Then tomorrow someone else will arise to erase that, and a twelfth will be formed. Then twelve—and thirteen.
Only the number of quarrelling parties keeps increasing. And every new party, the day it is formed, is formed so that it may end the quarrels of the rest. It is a great difficulty. It has happened—and in some sense it is natural. If you come to love what I am saying, I know I could form a party. If that love grows, I could turn you into yet another party that fights. Even without my wanting it, it can happen.
The Jains have a principle—syadvad. It means: this too is right, that too is right. A very precious insight. They say: this is right, that is right. To say “only this is right” is not right. They call it syadvad. But if you ask a Jain about syadvad, he will say, “Only syadvad is right.” Now look at the irony. If someone says syadvad is wrong, he will not be able to muster the courage to say, “That too is okay.”
What an amusing contradiction the human mind runs. The principle is simply this: however opposite someone’s statement, there will still be something right in it. If even one person in the world is saying it, then at least the God within one person is speaking—there must be something right in it; otherwise he could not say it. Even the greatest lie contains a little truth; otherwise even the greatest lie cannot stand. It must stand upon truth. Otherwise it will collapse at once. However big the lie, we must search out the foundation of truth beneath it; otherwise it cannot stand. However grand a house of lies we build, somewhere in the foundation we must lay a brick of truth; otherwise it will fall.
There is an Arabic saying: lies have no feet. They must always borrow their feet from truth. Hence a lie loudly claims to be truth. Without claiming truth it is crippled; it cannot walk a step. It can walk only as much as it borrows truth’s claim. The moment that claim falls, it falls. Therefore a lie strives hard to be truth—only so it can stand.
This grip of our mind—“this is true, that is true”—should only mean: we will attend to the truth. We will drop worrying about the lie and extract the truth. We will always be content with that much. But the follower of this very principle will say: anyone who says this principle is wrong is absolutely wrong; this principle alone is absolutely true. And we are back where we started.
The human intellect is so small that when truths arrive from the supreme intelligence, instead of letting those truths lift us up to them, we drag them down to our own level. That is natural. All my life I may try to pull you up to the upper floor; but after I die you will carry my corpse down to the lower floor where you are. What else will you do? I will have made my effort; in the end you will make yours.
We come to love all those who have told us some ultimate thing so much that, when they are no longer here, we bring them down to our place. All right too—what will they do up there alone now?