My position is exactly in the middle. I don’t ask any surrender from you; hence, I am not on the old track. I don’t deny you the beauty of being a disciple. I don’t insult you; I don’t reject you. I accept your love, but I will not accept your surrender. In accepting your love and your disciplehood I am your master, but there is no relationship of surrender.

I am not here to erase your individuality.

I am here just to erase your ego.

That does not need any surrender, it needs a deep meditative understanding on your part.

I can give you love, I can share my own understanding with you, but there is no condition attached to it. My joy will be to see you as a growing individual in total freedom. And in total freedom, yes is as much possible as no.

I can understand Maneesha’s problem, that no is very difficult, more difficult to a master who does not ask surrender. No becomes more difficult because the master allows it. If the master does not allow no, he is repressing something in you, and his not allowing no does not destroy the possibility of no in you. On the contrary, the master himself is afraid that if you are not prevented, you can say no.

The yes from you is meaningless if you are not free to say no. Your yes has meaning only because you are absolutely free to say no. It does not mean that you have to say no. It does not mean that there will be a situation where you have to say no. In fact it will become more and more impossible for you to say no.

To say no is easy when you are prevented, prohibited. Then, it becomes a question of your individuality; it becomes a question of your spiritual freedom. And certainly anybody who has any dignity is bound to find situations where he would like to say no. If he does not say it he is behaving as a hypocrite. He is not saying no because he is afraid to lose the love of the master and to lose the possibility of getting higher states of consciousness.

But this is business, this is cunningness. And there should not exist any business or any cunningness between the master and the disciple.

Krishnamurti has moved to the very extreme: no master, no disciple. But that created an absurd situation, for his whole life, and he lived long, ninety years. He started being a teacher at the age of fifteen, and he wrote his first book At The Feet Of The Master at the age of fifteen. It was so early that later on he could not even remember whether he had written it or not. It appeared as if in a dream, far away, just an echo.

From the age of fifteen to the age of ninety, almost seventy-five years continuously – no master has been teaching so long. Gautam Buddha was teaching for only forty-two years; so was Mahavira. Jesus taught for only three years, because at the age of thirty-three he was crucified; he started his teaching career at the age of thirty. Perhaps Krishnamurti is the only person who has been a teacher for seventy-five years.