The true master is one who helps the disciple finally to get rid of the master too, so that the disciple can encounter reality directly, immediately. The false master is one who creates more and more dependence in the disciple, makes him a slave, so much so that the disciple cannot even think of being without the master.

That’s what is happening all over the world. So many so-called saints go on creating dependence in you; their whole effort is how to enslave people. They condition you in such a way that their conclusions become your conclusions. They don’t give you eyes, they give you ideas.

The real master gives you eyes, not ideas. He gives you insight into reality and then leaves you in total freedom to function out of that insight.

Buddha says:

He looks deeply into things
and sees their nature.
He discriminates
and reaches the end of the way.

Discrimination is one of the very important words to be understood. Buddha has used the word again and again; his word is vivek. Vivek has far deeper meanings than the English equivalent discrimination. Vivek contains awareness, and discrimination through awareness. One can discriminate without being aware; then it will not be discrimination according to Buddha. You can be told what is right and what is wrong and you can discriminate, “This is right and this is wrong,” but because it is not your awareness it is not discrimination. Unless you see what is right and what is wrong it is not going to help much.

The Ten Commandments are of no help to you unless they are handed over to you by God himself, not to Moses. They may have been of infinite value to Moses because he came to those insights himself, independent of the whole past, of the whole tradition. But you are simply repeating like parrots.

From their very childhood we start teaching children what is right and what is wrong, what should be done and what should not be done. And they become conditioned so much that they forget completely that this is not their own voice. They start thinking this is their conscience – it is not. It is a strategy of the priests and the politicians, a conspiracy against man. They have created a conscience in you and because they have created a conscience in you they have prevented the growth of your own conscience. Your own conscience comes out of your own consciousness; it can’t come from the outside. Nobody can give it to you, it has to happen to you in your deep aloneness.

Buddha says: The master knows what is false and what is true. He knows on his own authority, not on any other authority. He does not know according to the Koran and he does not know according to the Talmud, he does not know according to the Vedas – he knows himself. And only when you know yourself does your knowing have a validity, an authenticity – an authenticity that can transform you, that can give you a new birth.