What I am doing here is not creating a relationship, really. Rather, on the contrary, I am trying to dissolve the relationship. If we can be here without thinking in terms of master and disciple, if we can just be here, present, alert, alive, the thing will happen. Wife and husband: it is a relationship. Father and son: it is a relationship. Master and disciple? – it is not a relationship at all. It only appears so, but it is not a relationship because the whole effort is to dissolve duality, and relationship exists in duality.

So a master is really trying not to be a master, and the master is trying for you not to be a disciple. The whole effort is to bring you to a point where relationship disappears, where there are not two, but simply a presence. And when there is no relationship, but you are alert and I am alert…remember, if you are alert and I am alert, then I am not and you are not, and in that alertness the I is dissolved and the flames of two lamps become one. Only in that oneness does the divine start working.

The divine works only in oneness; that is his mode of function. The more divided you are, the less he can function; the more divided you are, the farther you move away from the divine. That is what I have meant.

So two things about this question: one, the master is not doing anything, not playing any role. He is not making any endeavor. It is not in any way an effort on his part. He has become alert, awakened, and now something goes flowing through him. This flow is riverlike. Whenever this river moves it will make people more alert. It is not that there is any effort on its part: this is its nature. So a master is by nature a master, not by any effort. Wheresoever he moves he will be a master.

I remember one story about an Egyptian mystic, Dhun-Nun. Dhun-Nun always moved hidden in the garb of a beggar, and he had even emperors as his disciples. One disciple asked him, one very rich disciple, “Why do you move as a beggar? Why do you mix with the common masses and crowds? This is not good, because you are a great master.”

Dhun-Nun is reported to have said, “A master is by his nature a master, so wherever he moves he is a master – wherever; it makes no difference. If he is standing in a crowd, there also he is a master. He is the master and he is functioning and the crowd is being transformed by his presence, just by his presence.”

It is said that in the Koran Mohammed says that no master should go to a rich man’s house. If the rich man wants to meet him, he should go to the master. Then one Sufi mystic, Bayazid, who was going to rich men’s houses and to the emperor’s palace to teach there, was asked, “Why are you going against the prophet? Mohammed says that no master should go to a rich man’s house. There is no need. If the rich man desires, then he should come to the master’s feet. But you are moving even to the palace, so what is the matter? Are you against the prophet, or don’t you believe in the saying?”