The Touch of the Master

THERE WAS ONCE A SUFI WHO WANTED TO MAKE SURE THAT HIS DISCIPLES WOULD, AFTER HIS DEATH, FIND THE RIGHT TEACHER OF THE WAY FOR THEM.

HE THEREFORE, AFTER THE OBLIGATORY BEQUESTS LAID DOWN BY LAW, LEFT HIS DISCIPLES SEVENTEEN CAMELS, WITH THIS ORDER:

'YOU WILL DIVIDE THE CAMELS AMONG THE THREE OF YOU IN THE FOLLOWING PROPORTIONS: THE OLDEST SHALL HAVE HALF, THE MIDDLE IN AGE ONE-THIRD, AND THE YOUNGEST SHALL HAVE ONE-NINTH.'

AS SOON AS HE WAS DEAD AND THE WILL WAS READ, THE DISCIPLES WERE AT FIRST AMAZED AT SUCH AN INEFFICIENT DISPOSITION OF THEIR MASTER'S ASSETS. SOME SAID, 'LET US OWN THE CAMELS COMMUNALLY.' OTHERS SOUGHT ADVICE AND THEN SAID, 'WE HAVE BEEN TOLD TO MAKE THE NEAREST POSSIBLE DIVISION.' OTHERS WERE TOLD BY A JUDGE TO SELL THE CAMELS AND DIVIDE THE MONEY; AND YET OTHERS HELD THAT THE WILL WAS NULL AND VOID BECAUSE ITS PROVISIONS COULD NOT BE EXECUTED.

THEN THEY FELL TO THINKING THAT THERE MIGHT BE SOME HIDDEN WISDOM IN THE MASTER'S BEQUEST, SO THEY MADE ENQUIRIES AS TO WHO COULD SOLVE INSOLUBLE PROBLEMS.

EVERYONE THEY TRIED FAILED, UNTIL THEY ARRIVED AT THE DOOR OF THE SON-IN-LAW OF THE PROPHET, HAZRAT ALI.

HE SAID, 'THIS IS YOUR SOLUTION. I WILL ADD ONE CAMEL TO THE NUMBER. OUT OF THE EIGHTEEN CAMELS YOU WILL GIVE HALF -- NINE CAMELS -- TO THE OLDEST DISCIPLE. THE SECOND SHALL HAVE A THIRD OF THE TOTAL, WHICH IS SIX CAMELS. THE LAST DISCIPLE MAY HAVE ONE-NINTH, WHICH CAMEL -- IS LEFT OVER TO BE RETURNED TO ME.

THIS WAS HOW THE DISCIPLES FOUND THE TEACHER FOR THEM.

SUFISM depends absolutely on the concept of the Master. Without the Master there is no Sufism. Sufism does not believe in the books, it believes in the living Master. One has to come to somebody who has come to know by himself. The books may contain great wisdom, but there is no way to decode it. If you decode it, you will decode it according to your mind. That will falsify the book.

Islam is known as the religion of the book -- the Koran. Hinduism is also known as the religion of the book -- the Veda. And so is the case with Christianity. The word 'bible' simply means the book.

But Sufism insists that the book cannot help you. No hook can help you. Sufis of course have a book which they call The BOOK OF THE Books, hut it is empty. Nothing is written in it -- not even a single word. That is their attitude about books -- that although many things will be there, for you it will remain empty, because you can read only that which you know.

Just the other day I heard somebody ask Mulla Nasruddin, 'Why did Jesus say "Blessed are the poor in spirit"?'

Mulla thought for a while and then said, 'Blessed are the poor in spirit for they have no money to buy booze.'

Another time somebody asked Mulla Nasruddin, 'And what is the eleventh commandment?'

He said, 'Thou shalt not get caught.'

Your mind will become your master when you are reading a book, and the mind is the problem. This mind can continue perfectly well with a book. The book is dead. The mind has to interpret, comment, decide what the meaning is. So when you are reading a book, you are reading your own mind in an indirect way. The book goes on throwing you back to yourself.

You may become very learned but you will never become a man who really knows. You will know many things about God but you will never know God. And you will know many things about truth but you will never know truth. And to know ABOUT IS just meaningless. To know is the thing, not to know ABOUT. To know about means you have missed. But the books can give you a very, very strong feeling that you know; without knowing at all you can have the feeling that you know -- and that will become your greatest barrier to knowing. That will become a China Wall around you; your bridges will be broken. How to bridge? How to connect7 How to attain to this connection with the divine?

The divine seems so far away; the divine seems almost impossible. The God is not obvious; the God is not close by. You look all around and the existence seems to be almost empty of God. That's what Martin Heidegger says -- 'I have not found a single thing in the world which I can call sacred.'

From the ordinary standpoint he is right. Where can you find the sacred? The sacred is missing -- not because the sacred is not there, but because you don't know how to feel the sacred. You have not yet evolved that intuitive capacity that can feel the sacred. God is far away; the world is very close by. Matter is all around and you never come across the spirit. Hence religion remains just a theory, it neVer becomes an experience.

Sufism believes that you can approach God only through a Master.

A Master is one who can become a via media, who will bee just between you and the divine -- a door through whom you can have a glimpse. He knows -- not as knowledge but as experience. His experience has transformed him, transfigured him, transported him to another world. A- Master lives in two realities together, a Master is a paradox. One of his feet is in the world, his other foot is in God. From one side he is just like you and from another side he is just the opposite of you. A Master is a paradox. Through the paradox of the Master you will be able to reach the divine; there is no other way.

So the first step for a seeker is to fall in love with a Master, to seek a Master. If you can find a Master, half the journey is over. In fact, the most arduous part is over. To find the Master is the basic requirement of becoming a Sufi. Sufi seekers travel tor thousands of miles in search of a Master, in search of the man with whom they can feel in tune, with whom they can vibrate into the unknown, with whom they can take the first step beyond the known.

So the first thing, the first and the most important thing, is to find a Master. Sufis say that the greatest blessing of life is to be with a Master. If you are not with a Master, you have missed the whole opportunity. Then you live with the non-essential; then you never come in contact with the essential. And the only way to come in contact with the essential is to be connected with someone who is in contact.

It is almost like.... Have you seen somebody in a circus or in a carnival, or in an exhibition sitting on an electric chair? The chair looks ordinary. You can't see that the chair is an electric chair, vibrating with electricity. And you can't see -- because it is not visible to the eyes -- that the man's whole body is electrified. But if you touch the man, you get a shock. The man who is sitting on the electric chair is electrified. You cannot see, but if you touch you are immediately connected with electricity.

So is the case with a Master. He's electrified by the divine. It may not be visible to those who are just spectators; it may become an experience only for those who come close and touch.

Once you have touched a Master or the Master has touched you, something that has never been in your consciousness has happened. And from that knowing there is no way to fall back. I t is irreversible. And once you have felt it, then you know it is. And then you can see the same flame in the trees and in the rivers and in the people. Maybe it is not so clear, maybe it is clouded, hidden behind smoke, asleep, but it is the same whether asleep or awake, hidden behind a cloud of smoke or burning brightly with no smoke. It is the same flame. Once you have touched a Master or you have been touched by a Master...

Michelangelo painted the Day of Creation in the Sistine Chapel. He changed the whole story, the biblical story. And even the people who were making the Sistine Chapel, who were financing it, and the pope -- even they could not detect that he had done something utterly new, something which is not in the Bible.

The Bible says that God created Adam. He created Adam with mud, humus -- hence the word 'human'. And then God breathed into the nostrils of Adam -- he breathed life. Now Michelangelo must have thought -- I was looking in his diaries, there are many references. -- he must have thought for many days, 'To paint this will look a little awkward. God breathing into the nostrils of Adam? It will look a little awkward to paint it.' So he changed it. He painted one of his most famous paintings: God touching Adam, not breathing. There is just God's finger there from the unknown. God is high in the heaven, in the clouds; Adam is on the earth. A finger just comes and touches Adam. and that touch makes him alive.

Nobody thought that he had changed the whole story. It is not so in the Bible -- not by touch but by breathing into him was Adam made alive. But Michelangelo was a student of Sufism. He was deeply interested in Sufism, and he must have come across the idea of the touch of the Master -- that the disciple becomes alive by the touch of the Master.

Yes, it is a touch. It is the jump of a flame from one lamp to another lamp. Once you have felt it -- and it is a feeling, there is no way of describing it -- once you have felt it, you have become aware of the sacred. Then it is all over, then only it is.

So Sufis say that the greatest blessing of life is to find a Master -- one who knows, one who sees, one who is. You ARE only when you are in God -- before that you are just empty, before that you are a house without a Master, before that you are just a dwelling where nobody dwells, before that you only think that you are, but you are not. You are very momentary, you are bubble-like. You don't have any integrity, you don't have any centre, you don't have any soul.

Gurdjieff, who was immensely impressed by Sufi ideas, who was, in fact, a Sufi Master, introduced a very new concept into the Western mind. In fact, nobody had talked about it in that way before. Gurdjieff introduced the idea that you have no soul. The soul has to be created. Don't remain placid, smug, and don't remain confident that you have a soul. All the great religions have told you that you have a soul, that it is already there -- but Gurdjieff introduced a very new insight. He said that the soul is not there; there is only a possibility of it. You can have it, but you may miss it. There is no certainty about it. You have to create it. Yes, if you want, you can create it, but don't take it for granted. Don't think that it is already there inside you.

This is a Sufi insight. Sufis say that only the Master is. You are not. One who has seen God exists for the first time. You exist only when you confront God. You exist only when God looks into your eyes and you look into his eyes. You exist only when you are touched by God and you touch God. Before that, your existence was just an emptiness, a dark night of the soul. It was just a stumbling, a hoping, a waiting. It was very insubstantial; it was dreamstuff. It had no reality in it.

A Master i