CAN YOU PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THE MASTER'S TRUST IN THE DISCIPLE? The very fact that the master accepts a disciple shows his trust in the potential of the disciple. Otherwise, he would not have been accepted. Every man has the potential, but the right time, the right place, the right experience make all the difference. Otherwise, every human being is capable of being enlightened, will be enlightened, but when, at what time -- whether in this life or in another life -- depends on many things: how much your experience is, your experience of being frustrated in the world, how much you are in misery. Are you still hoping that tomorrow things will be better, or have you lost all hope? Is your despair ultimate, or only momentary? Have you come to the master because you have fought with your wife today, but after fifteen minutes things will be different -- anger will be gone? I used to live on a university campus. The first day, I entered into my bungalow. I was alone, and the attached bungalow was occupied by a Bengali professor. And the walls were so thin that even if you plugged your ears, still you would be able to hear what was going on on the other side of the wall. Because the husband and wife were fighting so badly, I thought that there was going to be some blood. I could not sleep. It was one o'clock in the night and they were fighting and fighting and fighting. And I could not understand what they were saying either, but things must have been serious because finally the professor said, "I am going to commit suicide" -- that he said in English. I said, "This is something good; at least I can understand this much." So I came out of my house to prevent him -- "Just wait. In the middle of the night, where will you go to commit suicide? In the morning it will be better" -- but by the time I was out he was gone, fast. I asked his wife -- who had not come out even to say goodbye! I said, "What am I supposed to do? Should I go to the police station? Somebody has to be informed by phone? What has to be done?" She said, "Nothing has to be done. Do you see his umbrella is here? Without his umbrella he cannot go anywhere. He will be coming soon -- the moment he remembers the umbrella. In anger, he has forgotten the umbrella. A Bengali without an umbrella?" I said, "But suicide is such a serious matter, and an umbrella is not needed at all." She said, "You just wait. You sit here. I will make coffee for you because you have been... I knew that you must be hearing all this." And within fifteen minutes he was back. And I said, "What happened?" He said, "What happened? I forgot my umbrella! And now it must be at least two o'clock in the morning." I said, "That's the right thing to do. In the morning, take your umbrella and go out, find a right place." But who goes in the morning? In the morning I reminded him, "You are still here? The sun has risen. You should go now and search for the right place." He said, "I was thinking to go, but when I opened the umbrella it was not repaired because the rains have not come." I said, "I see you with that umbrella every day, going to the university." He said, "That is just habitual. Because there are no rains, nothing, so there is no question of opening it; one just carries it. Now I tried and opened it -- it is not repaired. And I have been telling my wife that my umbrella should be kept repaired in case some emergency arises. Now I wanted to commit suicide and the umbrella is not ready." I thought, "This is really great of you, and every person who commits suicide should learn something from you." One day, it must have been afternoon, three o'clock or something, I again heard that he is going to commit suicide. But this time I was not so much excited, because I thought that this is the usual business. Still, I came out to say goodbye. He looked at me with a very strange face. He said, "What do you mean by goodbye?" I said, "You are going to commit suicide, and I don't think that we will be meeting again so I am saying goodbye. But what are you carrying?" He was carrying a tiffin. I said, "Where are you taking the tiffin?" He said, "You know these Indian railway trains -- sometimes they are ten hours late, twelve hours late. And I cannot tolerate hunger at all, so I will lie down by the line and wait for the train. If it comes, good; otherwise, I am taking my supper with me." I said, "You are a clever and intelligent person -- anybody looking at you would think you are going on some picnic." And when he was gone, his wife came. She said, "Has he gone?" I said, "He has gone." She said, "He will be coming soon. This idiot," she said, "whenever he wants to go for a picnic.... But he is such a miser that he will not take even me with him, so he says that he is going to commit suicide. He must be eating just near the railway station; you can go and see right now." The railway station was not very far away, so I went and I saw him. He was enjoying all Bengali sweets and things. I said, "Chatterji, the train is standing on the platform. Leave your tiffin, run! Just lie down ahead of the train!" He said, "It is too late. First I have to finish everything that I brought, and today I have missed. And the train comes to this station only once in twenty-four hours" -- because it was not a big station, it was a small station, and the train used to stop only once for the university because the university was outside the city. So he said, "Today it is finished." But I said, "You were first saying, `I am going to wait.' And this is not suppertime; it is only three o'clock." He said, "When you have such sweets in your hand, you cannot wait. And I am just coming back home with you." There are people who would like to become sannyasins, who would like to become disciples. It may be just an emotional, sentimental, temporal thing, and within two minutes it has come and it is gone. They had the potential, but it was not the right time. Even if they take sannyas, even if they become disciples -- because no master is so unkind as to say no to somebody who wants to become a disciple -- they are going to betray. They are going to leave sooner or later because it was not something very deep, coming from their very heart. It was something very superficial, something so superficial that if they had waited for a few minutes more, they would have changed their minds. It was a mind thing, and mind is never stable, it is continuously changing. You cannot stay with one thought in the mind even for a few seconds. Sometimes, try: just one thought, and you try to stay with it, and you will be surprised that in not more than thirty seconds you have forgotten about it and your mind has moved somewhere else. And then suddenly you remember that you were trying to stay with one thought, and you could remain only thirty seconds. Gurdjieff used to give this experiment to everyone who had come to become a disciple. He would give him his own pocket watch and tell him, "Keep it in front of you, watch the second hand and choose any word -- your name. Keep just that name in your mind, and just tell me how long you can keep it" -- fifteen seconds, thirty seconds, at the most, forty seconds, not even one whole minute. Mind is in a flux. So those who want to become disciples because of some mind thing are not going to stay. There is no need to say no to them, they will be going themselves. But the master knows perfectly well when somebody comes with an urge from the heart, with an urge that he can stake his whole life for but he will not turn back. Only these few people attain to the fulfillment. Everybody has the potential, but everybody is not ripe at this moment -- perhaps at some other time, in some other life, with some other master. But one day is going to come in everybody's life that becomes a turning point, a 180 degree turn, and then disciplehood is a beautiful growth. Then the whole energy is moving in one direction, with one intention, with no diversions. Then the distance from the goal is less. The more intense is your urge, the smaller is the distance. If your intention is total, then there is no distance at all. Then you need not go to the goal, the goal comes to you.
by
k.jagadeesh
+91-9841121780, 9543187772
Email: jagadeeshkri@gmail.com
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