For instance, you have asked about Vijayananda and Mahesh speaking against me. They have to speak. Someone who has escaped cannot say that he has run away out of weakness, that he was not worthy, that he was undeserving, that his ability fell short, that the mountain was too high. That he had thought it was just a small hillock and he would manage to climb it, but it turned out to be a Mount Everest and he could not do it. No one who has run away will say that he could not climb the mountain, he has to protect his ego, after all. No one will say, “I was defeated and this is why I have left.” In order to protect his ego he will have to start speaking against me. There will be suffering also, because he will also see his own lies.

So Vijayananda sends messages to me offering his respectful greetings, but he also goes on speaking against me. A duality has arisen. Inwardly he knows his weakness…he couldn’t walk with me. So he goes on sending his greetings to me and making statements against me also. He will have to make statements against me because people ask him why he has left. Then there are only two possibilities: either the master is wrong or the disciple is wrong. Naturally, if he had had the courage to say he was wrong then there would have been no need to go, the question of running away would never have arisen. But he didn’t have that courage, so now he will have to protect himself.

Understand this situation. When you take sannyas you start speaking in my favor. It is not necessarily true that you will speak in my favor, but the greater possibility is that now that you have taken sannyas you will have to speak in my favor because if you don’t people will say, “Are you mad? Then why did you take sannyas?” For your own protection you will have to speak in my favor.

So when you speak in my favor it is not necessarily certain that you are saying something about me, it is more likely that you may be speaking to protect your own ego, “Yes, my master is a real master – he has attained the ultimate reality.”

You don’t know anything. What do you know right now? Until you have attained how can you know? But you will have to speak in my favor, you will have to praise me. It is in praising me that you can defend your ego. You will have to repress all your doubts, you will have to throw them into the unconscious. It is not that doubts do not arise. Doubts do not go away so easily – that you come, take sannyas, and your doubts vanish. If only it were that easy! Doubts will follow you for years. Doubts will return again and again. But you cannot say it to anybody, if you did it would be humiliating. If you say to anyone that you have doubts whether your master is really a master, then people would say, “Then why have you accepted him as a master? Then why are you wearing orange clothes? – and why this mala? Why have you created this whole drama?” Then you will be in great difficulty, you will be in great trouble.

If you truly expressed your doubts people would say you are an idiot, so to avoid this you will repress your doubts and talk a lot about trust. You will try to prove that there has never been a master like me in the world – because there has never been a disciple like you in the world! Your ego will be fed by the great height of your master, and the higher you can prove your master to be the greater a disciple you are. The master you have chosen has to be great – would a person like you choose someone inferior?