:: IN FOCUS ::

MASTERLINESS

“There is no such thing as a Master, but there is certainly something you can call masterliness. Everybody cannot manage -- even all the people who have become enlightened have not been Masters.

To be a Master, different qualities are needed than just enlightenment. You can become enlightened and perhaps nobody will ever know about it. To give the message you have got, you need to be articulate, immensely articulate, because you are going to do something which is almost impossible -- you are going to transform the experience of silence, wordlessness, into words.

You have to be a charismatic personality so that people are automatically attracted towards you. No need for advertisement: mouth to mouth, people start hearing about you, that something immense has happened to a man... and not only that, the man is capable in some strange way to relate it to you. Through words, through silence, just by his presence, just by looking into your eyes, just holding your hand, something transpires. Something starts happening to you which you have never thought about, never dreamed about.

Yes, there is a certain quality which makes a man a Master. But I say that there is no need of a Master because people in their ignorance, in their unconscious state, start becoming dependent on the Master. He becomes a father figure, and that is where everything goes wrong. He himself unknowingly destroys what he is doing.

I am here with you, and I say that I am not your Master and you are not my follower -- and you know perfectly well, I know perfectly well, that I am your Master and you are my follower. But I go on insisting that you are not my follower and I am not your Master -- you are my fellow travelers -- just so that you don't become dependent on me, just so that you don't start thinking it is my responsibility; you need not be worried: the Master is there, he will take care, he is the savior. He will save you, you need not do anything....
No, I want you to be responsible. I want you to take all your responsibility on yourself. I can impart whatsoever has happened to me, and it is no obligation to you. I am not obliging you; I am simply enjoying sharing.

To have enlightenment is tremendous bliss, but it is nothing compared to sharing it. When one starts seeing the same flame in thousands of eyes, the same luster and glory around thousands of faces, no enlightenment can be compared to it. It transcends all bliss that you have known in enlightenment. That was an individual affair, small; a window had opened and you had looked through the window. The sky, the stars... but the frame of the window was there. Your experience was framed. You have never been out of the house, so naturally you will deduce that this is the sky -- the frame of your window.

Yes, you are seeing real stars and the real sky, but you are confined, limited. Your window is giving a frame to your experience. If you want to share with others, you will have to come out, you will have to seek people with whom you can share. You will have to go and knock on many doors to find people who are almost ready to receive it. And when you go out of the house searching for seekers and disciples, then you know the whole sky, the infinity of it, the unlimited number of stars. Now you know that sky you had seen was framed.

There is no frame, there is no boundary to existence. Sharing your enlightenment, you come to know there is no boundary to enlightenment, either. It is not yours or mine, it is existential.

This I call transcendence of enlightenment. This is the moment when the enlightened person becomes ordinary: he has transcended even that speciality of being enlightened. Now he is at ease with himself and his ordinariness.

But this ordinariness has an immense impact of its own, it has the charisma I am talking about. It makes the man a magnetic force. He becomes the very center of the whole existence, and all those who are in search -- even groping in darkness -- start moving towards him. But don't give it a frame. When you call it a Master, you have given it a frame. Let it remain a quality -- masterliness.

There is no God, there is godliness. There is no religion, there is religiousness. There is no Master, there is only mastery, masterliness. And as the Master becomes a quality, immediately the disciple becomes a quality. Then there is no disciple, only discipleship.
Discipleship is a totally different thing. Disciplehood, or to come to the exact right word, discipline. The word discipline means learning, the process of learning. There is no disciple, no learner, but there is a process of learning.

There is no Master who teaches you, but there is a Master -- being who shares that which he has found. And his treasure is infinite, inexhaustible.”

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