The Mustard Seed

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The disciples said to Jesus: tell us what the kingdom of heaven is like.

He said to them: it is like a mustard seed -- smaller than all seeds, but when
it falls on the tilled earth it produces a large tree and becomes shelter for all
the birds of heaven.

Human relationships have changed a lot, and have changed for the worse. In
all dimensions the deeper relationships have disappeared: the wife is no
longer a wife, but just a girlfriend; the husband is no longer a husband, but
just a boyfriend. Friendship is good, but cannot be very deep. Marriage is
something which happens in depth. It is a commitment in depth, and unless
you commit yourself you remain shallow. Unless you commit yourself you
never take the jump. You can float on the surface, but the depths are not
for you.

Of course, to go into the depths is dangerous -- bound to be so, because
on the surface you are very efficient. On the surface you can work like an
automaton; no awareness is needed. But you will have to be more and more
alert, the more you penetrate into the depths, because at every moment
death is possible. Fear of depth has created a shallowness in all
relationships. They have become juvenile.

A boyfriend or a girlfriend may be fun, but cannot become a door to the
deepest that is hidden in each and everyone. With a girlfriend you can be
sexually related, but love cannot grow. Love needs deep roots. Sexuality is
possible on the surface, but sexuality is just animal, biological. It can be
beautiful if it is part of a deeper love, but if it is not part of a deeper love it
is the most ugly thing possible; the ugliest, because then there is no
communion -- you simply touch each other and separate. Only bodies meet,
but not you -- not I, not thou. This has happened in all relationships.

But the greatest relationship has completely disappeared, and the greatest
relationship is between a master and a disciple.

You will not be able to understand Jesus if you cannot understand the
dimension of that relationship which exists between a master and his
disciples. That has completely disappeared. The wife is substituted by a
girlfriend, the husband is substituted by a boyfriend, but the master, and the
relationship that exists between him and his disciples, has completely
disappeared. Or, this relationship has been substituted by a very contrary
thing that exists between a psychiatrist and his patient.

Between a psychiatrist and his patient a relationship exists which is bound
to be ill, pathological -- because a patient comes not in search of truth, is
really not in search of health . This word health is very meaningful: it means
wholeness, it means holiness, it means a deep healing in the self. A patient
does not come for health, because if he comes for health he cannot be
anything other than a disciple. A patient comes to get rid of the illness; the
attitude is totally negative. He has come just to be forced to become normal
again, just to become a working part of the normal world again. He has
become maladjusted; he needs adjustment and the psychiatrist helps him to
be adjusted again. But adjusted to whom? Adjusted to this world, this
society, which is absolutely ill.

What you call the "normal" human being is nothing but normal pathology or
normal madness, normal insanity.

The "normal" man is also insane, but insane within the boundaries, the
accepted boundaries of the society, of the culture. Somebody sometimes
trespasses, goes beyond the boundaries -- then he becomes ill. Then the
whole society, which is ill, says that this man is ill. And the psychiatrist
exists on the boundary to help this man back, back to the crowd.

The psychiatrist cannot be the master, because he himself is not whole. And
the patient cannot be the disciple, because he has not come to learn. He is
disturbed, and he does not want to be disturbed; his effort is only for
adjustment, not for health. The psychiatrist cannot be the master, although
in the West he is pretending to be, and sooner or later he will pretend that
he is the master in the East too. But he cannot be -- he himself is ill. He
may help others to be adjusted, and that’s okay: one ill man can help
another ill man, in some ways. But one ill man cannot bring another man who
is ill to be whole; one madman cannot help another madman to go beyond
madness.

Even your Freuds, your Jungs, your Adlers, are absolutely ill; not only
ordinary psychiatrists, but the greatest of them are ill and pathological. I will
tell you a few things so you can feel it. Whenever somebody mentioned
anything about death, Freud would start trembling. Twice he even fainted
and fell down from his chair just because somebody was talking about
mummies in Egypt. He fainted! And another time also, Jung was talking about
death, corpses, and suddenly Freud trembled and fell down, fainted, became
unconscious. If death was such a fear to Freud, what about his disciples?

And why should death be such a fear?

Can you conceive of a Buddha being afraid of death? Then he would no
longer be a Buddha.

Jung has reported that many times he wanted to go to Rome to visit the
Vatican and particularly the library, the Vatican’s library, which is the
greatest, which has the most secret records of all the religions that have
existed -- very rare. But whenever he went to purchase the ticket he would
start trembling -- just going to Rome! What will happen when you go to
moksha? He would cancel the ticket and come back. He never went, never.
Many times he tried, and in the end he decided: "No, I cannot go."

What is the fear, going to Rome? Why is a psychiatrist afraid of going to
religion? Because Rome is just the symbol, the representative. And this Jung
had created a philosophy around his mind, and that philosophy was afraid of
being shattered. It is just as if a camel is afraid to go to the Himalayas,
because when a camel comes near the Himalayas, for the first time he
comes to know that he is nothing. This whole philosophy that Jung has
created is just childish. Man has created such vast, cosmic systems, and all
those systems are in ruins now. The fear is that going to Rome means going
to the ruins of the great systems that the past has created.

What about your small system? What about this small corner that you have
cleaned and decorated? What about your philosophy?

Great philosophies have tumbled down and gone to dust: go to Rome, see
what has happened! Go to Athens, see what has happened! Where are the
schools of Aristotle and Plato and Socrates? All have disappeared into dust.
The greatest systems in the end come to dust; all thoughts finally prove to
be useless, because thought is just a man-created thing.

Only in "no-thought" do you come to know the divine.

Through thought you cannot come to know the eternal, because thought is
of time. Thought cannot be of the eternal; no philosophy, no system of
thought can be eternal. That was the fear.

At least four or five times Jung made reservations and canceled. And this
man Jung is one of the greatest psychiatrists. If he was so afraid of going to
Rome, what about his disciples? Even you are not afraid -- not because you
are better than Jung, but just because you are more unaware. He was
aware that in Rome his head would come down; the moment he looked at
the ruins of all the great systems, a trembling, a fear of death -- that:
"What will happen to my system? What will happen to me?" would take hold.
He trembles and comes back, and in his memoirs he writes: "Then finally I
dropped the whole project. I am not going to Rome."

The same thing happened to Freud many times. He also tried to go to Rome
-- so it does not seem to be just a coincidence -- and he also was afraid.
Why? Freud was as angry as you can be, Freud was as sexual as you can
be, as scared of death as you can be, as neurotic in his behavior as you can
be, so what is the difference? He may have been a more intelligent man,
may have been a genius perhaps, or he could help a little, but he was as
blind as you are as far as the ultimate is concerned, as far as the
secretmost, innermost core of being is concerned.

No, psychiatry cannot become religion.

It may become a good hospital, but it cannot become the temple -- it is not
possible. And a psychiatrist may be needed because people are ill,
maladjusted, but a psychiatrist is not a master and a patient is not a
disciple. If you come to a master as a patient then you will miss, because a
master is not a psychiatrist. I am not a psychiatrist.

People come to me and they say: "I am suffering from this mental anxiety,
neurosis, this and that."

I say: "It is okay, because I am not going to treat your anxiety, I am going
to treat you. I am not concerned with your diseases, I am simply concerned
with you. Diseases are on the periphery, and there is no disease where you
are."

Once you come to realize who you are, all diseases disappear.

They exist basically because you have been hiding self-knowledge, you have
been avoiding yourself; you have been avoiding the basic encounter
because you don’t want to look at yourself. Why don’t you want to look at
yourself? What has happened to you? Unless you are ready to encounter
yourself you cannot become a disciple, because a master can do nothing if
you are not ready to face yourself. He can only help you to face yourself.

Why are you so afraid? Because something has gone wrong somewhere in
the past. A child is born and he is not accepted as he is. Many things have
to be changed, forced; he has to be disciplined. He has many parts which
the society and his parents cannot accept, so those parts have to be
denied, repressed; only a few parts can be accepted and appreciated. So
the child has to work it out. He has to deny many fragments of his being
which cannot be allowed manifestation. He has to deny them so much that
he himself becomes unaware of them. This is what repression is, and the
whole society exists on repression.

The greater part of the being of the child has to be repressed, completely
thrown into the dark. But that repressed part asserts itself, tries to rebel,
react; it wants to come into the light and you have to force it back again
and again. So you become afraid to encounter yourself, because what will
happen to the repressed part? That will come again, that will be there. What
will happen to the unconscious? If you encounter yourself the unconscious
will be there, all that you have denied will be there. And that gives you fear.

Unless a child is accepted totally as he or she is, this fear is bound to
remain. But no society has yet existed which accepts a child totally -- and
it seems that no society will ever exist which will accept a child totally,
because it is almost impossible. So repression is bound to be there, more or
less. And everybody has to face, some day, this problem of facing oneself.
You become disciples the very day you forget about what is good, what is
bad; you forget about what is accepted, what is not accepted. You only
become a disciple the day you are ready to expose your whole being to
yourself.

The master is just a midwife.

He helps you to pass through a new birth, to be reborn. And what is the
relationship between a master and a disciple? A disciple has to trust; he
cannot doubt. If he doubts, then he cannot expose himself. When you doubt
somebody you shrink; you cannot expand. When you doubt . A stranger is
there, then you close yourself; you cannot be open because you don’t know
what this stranger is going to do to you. You cannot be vulnerable before
him; you have to protect yourself and create an armor.

With a master you have to drop the armor completely -- that much is a
must. Even with a lover you may carry your armor a little; before a beloved
you may not be so open. But with a master the openness has to be total,
otherwise nothing will happen. If you withhold even a little part of yourself
the relationship is not there. Total trust is needed, only then can the
secrets be revealed, only then can the keys be offered to you. But if you
are hiding yourself, that means you are fighting with the master, and then
nothing can be done.

Struggle is not the key with the master, surrender is the key.

And surrender has disappeared from the world completely. Many things have
helped it: for three or four centuries man has been taught to be
individualistic, egoistic; man has been taught not to surrender but to fight;
not to obey but to rebel; man has been taught not to trust but to doubt.
There has been a reason for it: it is because science grows through doubt.
Science is deep skepticism. It works not through trust; it works through
logic, argument, doubt. The more you doubt, the more scientific you
become. The path is the very opposite of the religious path.

Religion works through trust: the more you trust, the more religious you
become. Science has worked miracles and those miracles are very visible.
Religion has worked greater miracles, but those miracles are not so visible.
Even if a Buddha is there, what can you feel? What can you see? He is not
visible -- visibly, he is just a body; visibly, he is just as mortal as you are;
visibly, he will become old and die one day. Invisibly, he is deathless. But
you don’t have the eyes to see that which is invisible, you don’t have the
capacity to feel the innermost, the unknown. That is why only trusting eyes,
by and by, start to feel and become sensitive. When you trust, it means
closing these two eyes. That is why trust is blind, just like love is blind --
but trust is even more blind than love.

When you close both these eyes, what happens?

An inner transformation happens. When you close these eyes which see
outwardly, what happens to the energy which goes through the eyes? That
energy starts moving backwards. It cannot flow from the eyes towards
objects, so it starts turning, it becomes a turning. Energy has to move,
energy cannot be static; if you close one outlet, it starts finding another.

When both eyes are closed, the energy that was moving through these two
eyes starts turning -- a conversion happens. That energy hits the third eye
in you. The third eye is not a physical thing: it is just that the energy that
moves through the eyes towards outside objects is now returning towards
the source. It becomes the third eye, the third way of seeing the world.
Only through that third eye is a Buddha seen; only through that third eye is
a Jesus realized. If you don’t have that third eye, Jesus will be there but you
will miss him -- many missed him.

In his home town, people thought that Jesus was just that carpenter
Joseph’s son.

Nobody, nobody could recognize what had happened to this man: that he
was no longer the carpenter’s son, that he had become God’s son. That is
an inner phenomenon. And when Jesus declared: "I am the son of the divine,
my father is in heaven," people laughed and said: "Either you have gone
mad, or you are a fool or a very cunning man. How can a carpenter’s son
suddenly become God’s son?" But there is a way .

Only the body is born out of the body. The inner self is not born out of the
body, it is born of the holy ghost, it is of the divine. But first you have to
attain the eyes to see, you have to attain the ears to hear.

It is a very delicate affair to understand Jesus; you have to pass through a
great training.

It is just like understanding classical music. If suddenly you are allowed to
listen to classical music for the first time you will feel: "What nonsense is
going on?" It is so delicate, a long training is needed. You have to be an
apprentice for many, many years; only then are your ears trained to catch
the subtle -- and then there is nothing like classical music. Then ordinary
day-to-day music, like film music, is not music at all; it is just noise, and
that too, foolish. Because your ears are not trained you live with that noise
and you think it is music. But for classical music you need very aristocratic
ears. A training is needed, and the more you are trained, the more the
subtle becomes visible.

But classical music is nothing before a Jesus, because that is the cosmic
music. You have to be so silent that there is not a single flicker of thought,
not a single movement in your being; only then can you hear Jesus, can you
understand Jesus, can you know him.

Jesus goes on repeating again and again: "Those who have ears should be
able to understand me. Those who have eyes, see! I am here!" Why does he
go on repeating: "Those who have eyes, see! Those who have ears, hear!"
why? He is talking of some other dimension of understanding only a disciple
can understand.

Very few understood Jesus, but that is in the very nature of things and
bound to be so. Very few -- and who were those few? They were not
learned scholars, no; they were not professors of the universities, no; they
were not pundits or philosophers, no. They were ordinary people: a
fisherman, a farmer, a shoemaker, a prostitute -- they were very ordinary
people, most ordinary, the most ordinary of ordinaries.

Why could these people understand? There must be something extraordinary
in an ordinary man. There must be something special which exists in an
ordinary man and disappears in so-called "extraordinaries." What is this? It is
a humbleness, a trust.

The more you are trained in the intellect, the less trust is possible; when
you are not trained in the intellect, more trust is possible.

A farmer trusts, he has no need to doubt. He sows the seeds in the field and
he trusts they will come up, they will sprout when the right season comes.
They will sprout. He waits and he prays, and in the right season those seeds
sprout and they become plants. He waits and he trusts. He lives with the
trees, plants, rivers, mountains. There is no need to doubt: trees are not
cunning, you need no armor around you to protect yourself from them; hills
are not cunning -- they are not politicians, they are not criminals -- you
need no armor to protect yourself from them. You do not need any security
there, you can be open.

That is why when you go to the hills you suddenly feel a rapture. From
where does it come? From the hills? No, it comes because now you can put
the armor aside, there is no need to be afraid. When you go to a tree
suddenly you feel beautiful. It is not coming from the tree, it is coming from
within you. But with a tree there is no need to protect yourself, you can be
at ease and at home. The flower is not going to suddenly attack you; the
tree cannot be a thief, it cannot steal anything from you. So when you go
to the hills, to the sea, to the trees, to the forest, you put aside your
armor.

People who live with nature are more trusting.

A country which is less industrialized, less mechanized, less technological,
lives more with nature, has more trust in it. That is why you cannot
conceive of Jesus being born in New York -- almost impossible. Jesus freaks
can be born there, but not Jesus. And these "freaks" are just neurotic; Jesus
is just an excuse. No, you cannot think of Jesus being born there, it is
almost impossible. And even if he were born there, no one would listen to
him; even if he were there, nobody would be able to recognize him. He was
born in an age without technology, without science, the son of a carpenter.
He lived his whole life with poor, simple people who were living with nature.
They could trust.

Jesus comes to the lake one day, early in the morning. The sun has not yet
come up over the horizon. Two fishermen are there and they have just
thrown their net to catch fish when Jesus comes and says: "Look! Why are
you wasting your life? I can make you fishers of men. Why are you wasting
your energy on fishing for fish? I can make you catchers of men, fishers of
men. Come, follow me!"

If he had said that to you when you were sitting in your office or in your
shop, you would have said: "Go away! I don’t have any time. Don’t waste
my time!" But those two fishermen looked at Jesus; they looked at Jesus
without any doubt. The sun was rising and the man was beautiful, this man
Jesus. And his eyes -- they were deeper than the lake, and his radiance was
greater than the sun. They threw away their nets and they followed Jesus.