That’s why here I go on talking about instant enlightenment, and I go on sending you into groups, meditations, processes. Sometimes people come to me and ask, “If enlightenment is possible right now then why do you send us? Why do you make us suffer – in the Primal, in the Encounter, in the Gestalt? Why do you send us to these Rolfers who are very skillful torturers?” What can I do? If you cannot listen to me, you will have to go to the Rolfers. Either you become awakened right now – it is your choice – or go on…then I will send you to the groups. They will torture you, goad you, provoke you, pull you this way and that. They will create such misery for you that you will decide finally that it is better to become enlightened rather than suffer so much.

And unless you say to me “Now I am enlightened” I will go on sending you. They help.

You have to follow the long, the hard way, if you cannot understand the shortcut, if you cannot take the jump, then you will have to get down by the ladder, rung by rung. Finally you reach the same place. One who has jumped into the valley and one who has been coming down by a ladder, finally they reach the same point.

And remember: even descending by a ladder, when you come to the last rung, you jump! What will you do when you have come to the last rung? Your jump will be small, the other person’s jump has been big – he jumped from the top of the hill, you jump only from the last rung. But the last moment is always of jump. It cannot be otherwise.

Whether you follow the gradual path or the sudden – the sudden is, of course, a pathless path, a gateless gate – whatsoever you follow, finally, at the last moment, the quantum leap has to happen. It depends how much courage you have. If you have real courage to risk all, to stake all, to surrender all, it will happen this moment. If you are miserly, business-like, clever, cunning, conditional, then it will happen slowly.

For the majority, growth groups are of immense importance. They prepare you, they help you to come to the point from where, even if you are not very courageous, you can take the jump. But the jump has to happen because you have to become discontinuous with yourself.

Don’t see any conflict between these two. It has always been thought that there is a conflict between the sudden and the gradual. This may be the first place in the world where the sudden and the gradual are meeting. Otherwise, those who have been teaching sudden enlightenment…Hui Neng. Of course, Hui Neng became suddenly enlightened – how can he teach you gradual enlightenment? And his followers, although they are not enlightened they go on talking about sudden enlightenment, and they are against the gradual, antagonistic to the idea of gradual growth.