Even a false teacher can be a help, even a dead teacher can be a help – because the real thing is not to whom you are surrendering, the real thing is that you are surrendering. The happening is in you. To whom it is addressed is absolutely irrelevant. Krishna may be there or he may not be there; Buddha may be a historical person or he may not be; Jesus may just be a myth – it makes no difference. If you can surrender to Jesus, whether Jesus was ever there or not, the thing will happen to you. It is the surrendering that is meaningful.

So one way, one basic way, is surrender. Another is absolute will. Don’t surrender, but then be absolutely yourself. I said that when you surrender, the Self cannot be surrendered. Whatsoever you surrender is bound to be the ego, the false, the persona – not the essence. Another basic path is to be yourself totally, don’t surrender – but then be a will.

Again, the ego has no will; it cannot have. The ego is absolutely will-less because a false entity cannot have the quality of will. Will belongs to the real. You are absolutely will-less. In the morning you decide something; in the afternoon you yourself cancel it. When you are deciding, at that very moment some part of you is canceling it. You say, “I love.” Go deep, and somewhere in the corner hate is hiding – in that very moment. You decide, “I am going to do this,” and in that very moment the contrary is there.

Will means nothing contrary in the mind. Will means one – no duality. Ego cannot have any will. Ego means many contradictory wills simultaneously. You are a crowd as far as ego is concerned, and it is bound to be. It is natural, because as I said, ego is created by relationships. It is a by-product. You have many relationships, so your ego is a construct of many relationships. It cannot be one, it is a crowd.

Really, look at it in this way: you have a part of your ego which was created with your mother – a fragment of your ego was created by you in relationship with your mother. Another part of your ego was created by you in relationship with your father, another was created in relationship with your wife. Now the fragment that was created by your wife cannot be the same as that which was created by your mother. They will be antagonistic. They will fight inside you. It is not only that your wife and your mother will fight outside, the ego part which is in you will also fight. It is not only that your father and your mother will fight outside. They have created fragments of your ego and they will fight inside. So you have many fragments, you have a crowd in the name of the ego – a crowd. A constant fight, a conflict, is going on. You cannot will anything.

Gurdjieff used to say, “You cannot will, because you are not.” Man is not, because man is not one. You are a crowd, and a crowd without any real unity. You have many faces, you have many wills. In a certain moment, in a certain situation, one fragment is the master. Then you say something, then you decide to do something. In that moment you feel that you have a will, but in the next moment that fragment has gone down, another fragment has come up – and this fragment is not even aware of your decisions.