Be a disciple

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When not only your head is in communication with the master but your heart too,

when not only does he look logical but a great love arises in your being for

him, then you become a disciple. A disciple knows how to commune, the student

knows how to communicate. The student lives on the verbal, intellectual level;

the disciple on the nonverbal, feeling level. His heart starts opening. Just as

the sun rises in the morning and the flowers start opening, the disciple feels

some opening is happening in him. He is no more the same person. The master has

touched his being; something has penetrated in. The disciple has become

pregnant.

 

And the third step is to be a devotee. The student relates through the head, the

disciple through the heart, and the devotee through his totality. It is no more

a question of head or heart, body or mind or soul; his whole being becomes

suffused. He becomes one with the master. It is no more a dialogue of the head

or of the heart. There are no more two; the flames have become one.

 

This is the moment of real initiation, of real sannyas. Buddha is talking about

it. He says: the followers of the awakened awake....

 

They become just like the master. They have the same quality, the same

fragrance, the same aura. To understand a buddha, the only way is to become a

buddha yourself; there is no other way.

 

The disciple will know about the buddha; the devotee will know the buddha. The

disciple will feel the buddha. The disciple is just in between the student and

the devotee. He will remain a little vague, clouded; he will not have clarity.

In that sense, the student is clear -- intellectually clear. The devotee is

totally clear. The disciple is in the middle: something is clear and something

is very unclear; something is light and something is dark. The disciple is in a

state of twilight, neither day nor night.

 

Buddha is talking about the devotee when he uses the word "follower." He does

not mean a Christian, a Hindu, a Buddhist. He means someone who has the courage

to take the plunge into the very being of the master; he is a real follower. And

in that plunge he starts having the same quality -- the quality of being awake.

 

Ordinarily you are living in a kind of sleep; a metaphysical slumber surrounds

you. And even if sometimes there are possibilities, opportunities for you to be

awakened, you avoid, because you have invested so much in your sleep. You are

afraid of being awake. Deep down you know that if you become awake your dreams

will be disturbed -- and you may be having beautiful dreams, nice dreams, sweet

dreams. And who wants to get disturbed when there are so many beautiful dreams

surrounding you? And when you are dreaming, you don't think that you are

dreaming; your dreams look real.

 

That is one of the strange things about dreams: they have such a deep impact on

you. They hypnotize you so deeply that many times you have known that they are

dreams when you wake up in the morning, but again every night you fall back into

the same hypnosis.

 

This is the case with you in so many lives. You have lived the same kind of life

again and again -- the same desire, the same greed, the same ambition -- and

each time you were frustrated, but again you are ready to become a victim. It is

exactly like dreams.

 

This morning also when you woke up you remembered so many dreams from the night

and you laughed; it looked so ridiculous. But let the night come again and you

will dream again, and when you will be dreaming you will believe them. They are

real deceivers! And when one believes that this is real, why should one want to

be awake and disturb it? You resist awakening.

 

Even if you come across a buddha you will not look at him. You will look

sideways; you will not look into his eyes. The fear... his energy may start

pulsating in you. Hence, many times you have come across a Buddha, a Krishna, a

Mahavira, a Christ, a Mohammed, but you have missed again and again on your own

accord. You were afraid to encounter them -- the encounter may prove too

dangerous.

 

"Hello. This is long distance. I have a call for you from Palm Springs."

 

"Hello, Herman, this is Rube. Listen, I am stranded here and I need five hundred

dollars."

 

"I can't hear you. Something is wrong with the phone."

 

"I want five hundred dollars!"

 

"I still can't hear you."

 

"I can hear it okay," interrupted the operator.

 

"Then you give him the five hundred dollars!"

 

You listen only to that which fits with you; you avoid listening to that which

can be a disturbance. You become deaf, you become dumb, you become blind. You

have chosen a particular sleepy life and you have lived with that style for so

long that it looks almost natural. The unnatural has become the natural and the

natural has been completely forgotten.

 

Osho: The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha