You are not even a watcher because you are not watching – you are just a presence. Words are not adequate because whatsoever word is used it seems as if it is being done. No, I was not doing it. I was simply lying, sitting, walking – deep down there was no doer. I had lost all ambition; there was no desire to be anybody, no desire to reach anywhere – not even God, not even nirvana. The buddha-disease had completely disappeared. I was simply thrown to myself.

It was an emptiness and emptiness drives one crazy. But emptiness is the only door to God. That means that only those who are ready to go mad ever attain, nobody else.

But if you have a master things are simple. He can hold your hand when you are losing all track of your being. He can become your support. If you love your master that love will be the last link. Every link disappears but that link remains. It disappears only when you have attained your own perspective, your own clarity. It is just like an umbilical cord. The child lives through the mother in the womb for nine months and if you cut the umbilical cord he will die. He lives through it. That is the only link.

In exactly the same way, if you love the master, a subtle silver cord arises between you and the master – a very invisible phenomenon to others but very visible to the disciple. He can almost touch it. You become joined together with your master from your navel. The master is your mother, the master is your womb. And this umbilical cord, this invisible silver cord, remains nursing you until you are ready and the pregnancy is ripe, until you are ready to be reborn and you can breathe on your own.

The master is a must. If you can find one you are fortunate. Then he will interpret to you and the darkness will look like light, the illness will look like a new well-being; the curse he will transform into a blessing. In fact, it is a blessing but you interpret it as a curse. He is not doing anything, he is simply showing you what the case is.

With this background, listen to this story.

Lung Shu said to the physician Wen Chih, “Your craft is subtle. I have an illness. Can you cure it?”

This man must have been like me, unfortunate. He must have been working without a master. Now he thinks that he has an illness. It is natural, that’s how it appears – it looks like an illness. All the old has gone; your old intelligence functions no more, your old memory functions no more, your old identity is there no more. You cannot say, Who am I?’ Your name, your address, all have become irrelevant. You don’t belong to anybody, you don’t belong to anywhere. For the first time you are an outsider in this world, you are a stranger. Unrelated, uprooted you are – like a tree which is uprooted from the ground and has started dying.