Even they were unable to believe me. I said, “Believe me, I am ready.” And when I started arguing they said, “You were so willing to be circumcised and yet you are so unwilling to accept anything we say at all?”

I said, “That’s my way. About the nonessential I am always ready to say yes; about the essential, I am absolutely adamant, nobody can force me to say yes.”

Of course they had to expel me from their so-called Sufi order, but I told them, “Expelling me, you are simply declaring to the world that you are pseudo-Sufis. The only real Sufi is being expelled. In fact, I expel you all.”

Bewildered, they looked at each other. But that’s the truth. I had gone to their order, not to know the truth; I knew that already. Then why had I entered? Just to have good company to argue with.

Argument has been my joy from my very childhood. I will do anything just to have a good argument; but how rare it is to find a really good milieu for argument. I entered the Sufi order – this I am confessing for the first time – and even allowed those fools to circumcise me; and they did it by such primitive methods that I had to suffer for at least six months. But I didn’t care about that; my whole concern was to know Sufism from within. Alas! I could not find a real Sufi in my life. But that is true not only about the Sufis, I have not found a real Christian either, or a real Hassid.

J. Krishnamurti invited me to meet him in Bombay. The man who brought the message was a common friend, Parmananda. I told him, “Parmananda, go back and tell Krishnamurti that if he wants to see me, he should come – that is proper – rather than asking me to come to him.”

Parmananda said, “But he is years older than you.”

I said, “You go to him. Don’t answer on his behalf. If he says that he is older than me, then it is not worth going, because awakening cannot be older or younger; it is always just the same – simply fresh, eternally fresh.”

He went and never came back, because how could Krishnamurti, an old man, come to see me? Yet he wanted to see me. This is interesting, is it not? I never wanted to see him, otherwise I would have gone to him. He wanted to see me, and yet still wanted me to go to him. You must concede that is a little too much. Parmananda never returned with a reply. Next day, when he came, I asked, “What happened?”

He said, “Krishnamurti became very angry, so angry that I did not ask him again.”

Now, he wanted to see me; I would have loved to see him, but I had never wanted to, for the simple reason that I don’t like to go to people, even though the person was J. Krishnamurti. I love what he says, I love what he is, but I have never desired – at least have never said to anyone – that I want to see him, because then it is a simple matter: I should go to him. He desired; he wanted to see me, and yet wanted me to come to him. I don’t like that, and never will.