What happens in silence? When you are silent, you are not, the boundaries dissolve, you are one with the total.

Then what is the function of a master? The function of the master is just to be close to you, so that you can have a taste of someone who has tasted the whole, so he can become a via media. It is difficult for you to taste the whole because you are so full of the ego. Somebody who is ego-less, in whom God is flowing easily, one who is glowing with God, streaming with his energy…just by the side of him, sitting silently, waiting, some day you are overflooded.

Let me tell you one Taoist story.

A disciple of Lao Tzu said, “Master, I have arrived.”

Lao Tzu said, “If you say you have arrived, then it is certain that you have not arrived.”

The disciple waited for a few months, then one day he said, “You were right, master. Now, it has arrived.”

First he had said, “I have arrived’ and the master denied. And then after a few months, one day, suddenly he burst open, and he said “It has arrived.”

Lao Tzu looked with tremendous compassion and love and patted his head. And he said, “Now it is right. Now, tell me what has happened. Now I would like to listen. What has happened?”

He said, “Up to that day when you said ‘If you say you have arrived. then it is certain that you have not arrived’ I was making effort. I was doing all that I could do, I was trying hard. The day you said ‘If you say you have arrived, then you have not arrived’ it struck home. How could ‘I’ arrive? Because ‘I’ is the barrier, so I had to give way.”

It can arrive, and Taoists even call it “It”. They don’t call it “he.” They don’t call it “she,” they don’t call It “God the Father,” they don’t call it by any personal name they simply say “It.” “It” is non-personal, it is the name of the whole: “Tao” means it.

“Tao has arrived,” he said, “and it came only when I was not there.”

Lao Tzu said, “Tell the other disciples the situation in which it happened.” And he said, “The only thing that I can say is that I was not good, I was not bad, I was not a sinner, I was not a saint, I was not this, I was not that, I was not anybody in particular when it arrived. I was just a passivity, a tremendous passivity, just a door, an opening. I had not even invited it. Listen! I had not even invited it, because even the invitation would have gone with my signature. I had not even invited…. In fact, I had completely forgotten about it. I was just sitting. I was not even seeking, searching, enquiring. I was not there, and suddenly it overflooded me.”