He does not claim that he is a master. But whatsoever a master requires, he requires from his listeners. The master says, “Listen without thinking, listen totally, without any interference from your thoughts.” And that’s what he requires from his disciples whom he does not call disciples. It is a very sophisticated game. He can say sannyas is wrong – he has to say it.

And whenever he is in India – and soon now, wherever he will be, in every meeting he will find my sannyasins. That irritates him very much, and it must be even more irritating that when he talks against sannyas and against sannyasins, my sannyasins laugh and enjoy it.

He has been asking them, “Why do you come to me? If you have already got a master there is no need to come.” To one of my sannyasins he said in a private interview, “If you have got a master, you need not come here.”

And my sannyasin said, “But my master says ‘Go everywhere. Wherever you find something can be learned, go there!’ This is his teaching and we are following him, and we are not here to follow you!”

Naturally he gets very irritated. But you need not defend him. And this is the beauty, that he cannot accept me but I can accept him. It makes no problem for me. I accept all kinds of people and all kinds of philosophies; my vision is wide enough.

In fact why is he so much against masters and disciples? It is a wound that has healed but the scar is still left. He was forced to be a disciple against his will. He was a small child when he was adopted by Annie Besant and the theosophists, only nine years old, completely unaware of what was being done to him. And he was forced to follow a very rigid discipline.

Twenty-four hours a day he was being trained, because one of the theosophist leaders, Leadbeater, had this idea, this vision, that this boy is going to become a world teacher – a jagatguru, a master of the whole world – that he is going to become the vehicle of Lord Maitreya, that he has to be prepared so he can receive the new incarnation of Buddha in his body. So he was tortured in many ways.

He was not allowed to eat like other children, he was not allowed to play with other children, as any child would like to. He was guarded. He was not allowed to go to ordinary schools, he was almost completely kept a prisoner. And then getting up early at three o’clock in the morning, and then the ritual bath, and so many, many rituals – Tibetan, Chinese, Indian, Egyptian…he must have become tired.