The spiritual master looking for disciples

There was a spiritual Master who had realised God and God wanted him to play fully the role of a spiritual Master; God wanted him to have disciples, but how could he have them when nobody came to him? Since God wanted him to have disciples, the Master, too, wanted them, but nobody came to him to become his disciple.

So God asked him to do something. God asked him to go outside his house every day, early in the morning and stand right in front of his house in the street with folded hands and ask every person he saw to become his disciple. From morning until evening he was to do this, for God had asked him.

Every day, in front of his house, he saw a few hundred people. As they walked past him along the street he said to each, “Would you kindly become my disciple?” He spoke sincerely, but the people did not respond. They ridiculed him. Young boys, girls, grown-up men and women laughed at him or pushed past, ignoring him. Nobody paid any attention to his plea. Some taunted him and asked, “How is it that you are crying for a disciple with folded hands? A realised soul does not cry for ordinary human beings.” A full year passed in this way and he did not get one single disciple.

At the end of the year he said to God, "God, you wanted me to have disciples. I tried my utmost. You asked me to beg the passers-by every day with folded hands to be my disciples and I did it. But nobody wanted to be my disciple. What can I do?”

God said, "This time you have to touch the feet of everybody and say, ‘Would you like to be my disciple?’ Children, men and women — irrespective of age, you must touch their feet and beg them to be your disciples.”

The following day the Master went out and started touching the feet of everyone he met. He was on the street from morning until evening. Again people laughed at him or ignored him. Sometimes he even got merciless kicks from young men who said: “Why don’t you leave everybody alone? Who wants to be your disciple?” When he was about to touch the feet of the women, they felt uncomfortable and embarrassed. Some of them suspected that he was not sincere — that he was perhaps playing some kind of a trick. So he was ignored or insulted by many women. But he persisted in doing so as God had asked him to.

His efforts brought no result. With folded hands he did not get any disciples; by touching the feet of people who passed him during the day he did not get a single disciple in the whole year. People only misunderstood him in their own way, according to their own standard.

The third year God said, "This year you have to go and touch everybody’s head without any fear.”

The Master said, "How can I touch everybody's head? If I touch somebody’s feet, he may at least show me an act of compassion. But if I touch people’s heads, especially women’s, what will they think of me? They will all misunderstand me and insult me, they will probably do many horrible things. Many untold things will happen.”

God said, "No, you have to touch everybody’s head with your divine pride.” He had to do as God asked.

When he touched the head of the first man he saw and said, "Would you like to be my disciple?” the man immediately said, “Yes, I would.”

In this way, in one day he blessed two hundred human beings — children and adults. The moment he touched their heads and asked, "Would you like to be my disciple?” they said, "Yes.” Children did not understand the meaning of ‘disciple’, but they felt it was something nice to be. But grown-up men and women knew the meaning and wanted to be his disciples. Among the people who accepted him there were seventy whom he had begged in previous years with folded hands and by touching their feet, but they had refused him, mocked at him, ridiculed him. But when he touched their heads, they all became his disciples.

The Master asked God, "How can it be? When we show modesty, humility, when we fold our hands, when we touch their feet, we do not get disciples. But when we touch their heads, when we bless them with our divine pride and divine authority, then they accept us.”

God told him, "Look here, when you see ordinary human beings and deal with them, if you fold your hands they immediately think, ‘This fellow is inferior, otherwise why is he folding his hands?’ And when you touch their feet they think, ‘Oh, he is
really inferior, he is just like a slave.' Nobody wants to stand with folded hands in humility; nobody wants to touch others' feet. When you touch another’s feet, he will immediately feel that he is superior and you are inferior. And even when you touch somebody's head, an ordinary person will recoil and say, ‘What right have you to touch my head?’ But when you deal with your divine majesty, divine power, divine light and touch the heads of people who are really spiritual, they will feel your divine majesty. When you bless them, immediately people will think, ‘Perhaps he has something, otherwise how could he dare to touch my head. In this world nobody dares to touch my head. How is it that this man comes out of the blue and dares to touch my head and bless me?”

God continued, “Unfortunately, ordinary people do not know what a spiritual Master does. When a spiritual Master stands in front of someone with folded hands, he tries to make the seeker feel that he has someone inside his heart who is really great. Otherwise a spiritual Master would not stand in front of him with folded hands. Then, when a Master touches his feet, he feels, 'Really, I have Divinity within me. That is why he is touching my feet.' When the seeker goes one step forward, he feels, ‘The Divinity that the spiritual Master is seeing inside me is also inside him, otherwise he would not have touched my feet. For him to touch his own feet is no embarrassment because he is all one — his head, his feet and his hands are all one. So when he goes deep within he feels that we are one. Who is touching whose feet?' This is what the spiritual seeker is able to understand about Master.

But ordinary people will always misunderstand. When they misunderstand, it is necessary for the spiritual Master, on the strength of his divine authority and his God-ordained pride, to show them divine light. This pride is not ego-pride. This pride is founded on their universal oneness. Other pride comes from the sense of separateness, the feeling that ‘You are yourself and I myself. You are totally different from me; that is why I want to maintain my separateness. I am stronger than you, so why should I bow down to you?’ But the divine pride is not like that. Divine pride comes from the universal feeling of oneness. ‘He and I are one, inseparably one. Who is touching whose head? Who is touching whose feet? We are all one. Our oneness has come from the Source. We are in the Source and we are for the Source.'"