I criticized those Californian pretenders who are talking about channeling themselves with dead masters, with the people who have gone beyond and cannot come back to the earth because their work on the earth is complete. These people in California have not gone into any discipline which makes them mediums. They know nothing of meditation. They know nothing of the state of no-mind – because only in the state of no-mind is there a possibility of contacting some unembodied soul.

These people who have become channels are not in any meditative state, one thing. The second thing is that whatever messages they are bringing are such crap that it is disrespectful towards the dead. Those poor fellows cannot say anything now, that “this is not my message.”

When a message comes from a master it has to be something so absolutely needed that the masters who are no more in their bodies feel that a message should be sent to all unconscious, sleeping, blind people. But it is only when there is something urgent; otherwise, there is no need.

I have looked into a few of the books which these channels have produced – they are absolutely rubbish! They can be valued only by weighing them – that much paper has been wasted. I have not come across a single mediumistic book which shows the greatness or the grandeur of a Gautam Buddha. And strangely enough, all these mediums are not mentioning the names of the real masters because then, compared to their statements, the rubbish message that they bring will look too poor.

If somebody says, “This is a message from Gautam Buddha,” then it has to be of his quality. So they are talking about masters who have never happened, they are talking about masters who happened on the continent of Atlantis which has drowned. Fortunately there is no proof now, no document, no evidence left about whether there was such a master, ever.

But I can say that these statements are not coming from any master. The statements themselves are not luminous. There is nothing that gives them the authority of experience. It is all gibberish.

And you should also see that these people who have been chosen for this great work of becoming vehicles…their lives don’t prove it. They are just as greedy, as angry, as jealous as anybody else. Their mediumship would have transformed them. In fact, unless they were transformed, they could not become mediums.

My sannyasins working around the world in therapy groups have felt that sometimes they are open to me, available to me, and sometimes they are closed. It is human nature, ups and downs; they are not enlightened yet.

Sometimes they see the eternal snows, far away in the Himalayas; but they are far away and just once in a while, when there are not clouds and the sun is shining, you can see them.

But you are not there.

When a sannyasin is closed, his first work should be not on the group participants, his first work should be upon himself. He has to open, he has to be available to me. This is simply an excuse – because if he is open to me, he is open to the whole existence.