Mystic Mantra: The good disciple

Osho loved telling stories and had the gift of simply expressing the inexpressible. In Guida Spirituale, he tells a Sufi story: A man went in search of a master. Outside his village, he met an old man sitting under a tree. He asked the old man, “Have you ever heard in your long life — you look like a wanderer…” He said, “Yes, I am a wanderer. I wandered all over the earth.” The man said, “That is the right kind of person. Can you suggest to me where I should go? I want to be the disciple of a perfect master.”

The old man suggested a few addresses to him and the young man thanked him and went on. After 30 years he couldn’t find a master. The moment he returned to his village he saw the old man sitting under the tree. And he recognised that he was the master he was looking for! He fell at the old man’s feet and said, “Why didn’t you tell me that you are the master?”

The old man replied, “But that was not the right time for you. You needed some experience. Wandering gave you a certain maturity. The last time you met me, you had not seen me. You were asking me about some master. That was proof that you could not feel my presence, nor smell the fragrance. You were utterly blind. But even to be with wrong people is good, because that is how one learns. For 30 years I have been waiting for you here, I have not left this tree.”

The seeker was even more surprised when he looked at the tree. Because in his dreams, he has seen that tree and there was always a feeling that he would find the master sitting under it. Last time he didn’t see the tree at all. The tree was there, the master was there, everything was ready, but he was not ready. In the The Grass Grows By Itself, Osho explains the art of being a disciple. The greatest art in the world is to be a disciple, he says. It is unique and incomparable. Nothing like it exists in any other relationship.

To be a disciple, to be with a master, is to move into the unknown. You cannot be very aggressive there. To be near a master is to be just a passivity, absorbing whatsoever the master gives or whatsoever the master is — not asking. The moment you start asking you have become aggressive, the receptivity is lost, you have become active. The passive, the feminine, is no longer there. In fact, you wait and truth reaches you. The truth seeks you, like water seeks some hollow ground, moves downwards, finds a place and becomes a lake.