First thing: God is not a person. And remember, you are also not a person. It is ignorance, it is self-ignorance: that’s why you appear like a person. If you move deeper, soon personality becomes blurred; a moment comes when you don’t know who you are. Sometimes it happens that if somebody wakes you suddenly, you may have observed many times, you suddenly don’t know where you are – whether it is morning or evening, whether it is your house or somewhere else, what town it is; for a single moment everything is blurred, no time sense, no space sense, and you don’t know who you are. Why does it happen? – because in deep sleep you move towards the center, of course unconsciously, but at the center there is no personality, an impersonal energy exists. And if somebody suddenly wakes you, you have to move from the center to the periphery in such a rush that there is no time to gather personality. In a sudden rush you simply lose identity – and this is your reality, this is who you are in fact.
Deep in meditation you will become more and more aware of the indefinable, unlimited. First it will look like a blurred phenomenon, and you may even become afraid, scared: What is happening to you? Are you losing your mind? Are you going mad? If you become afraid you will miss. Don’t be worried, it is natural. You are moving to the indefinable from the defined; in between there will be a ground where everything will get blurred.
That’s why Zen masters have said: “Before one enters on the path, rivers are rivers, mountains are mountains. When one enters into the path, rivers are no more rivers, mountains are no more mountains. And when one has achieved the goal, again rivers are rivers, mountains are mountains.” What do they mean? They mean that there comes a moment when everything becomes blurred. And that is the time a school, a master, will be needed, because when everything is blurred you are again like a small child – helpless, not knowing who you are, identity lost, not knowing where you are going, not knowing what is happening; a school is needed. This is the meaning of an ashram, of a monastery, where many people exist on many layers and they can help each other. And a master exists on the ultimate level – you need not be afraid, you can always look towards him.
When your identity is lost then the master is your only source of sanity – you will be insane. Many people work alone and many people go mad. If you move in the East, you will find many people who are hanging…. They have worked without a master; they came to the blurred territory – now they don’t know where to go. They have forgotten from where they came and they don’t know now where to go. They don’t know who they are. They are absolutely mad. They are better than you, but mad. And now they cannot take any step, because who will take the step and where? At this moment a master is needed.
One of the greatest works Meher Baba did in his life – he lived just near Pune and he is one of the greatest masters – and never has it been done before: he traveled all over India for years, just making contact with such mad people. Not doing anything else, just doing one thing: moving from one village to another, making contact with such people who have gone mad, who are on a better ground than you but some help is needed – just a push. Just a push so that again rivers become rivers, mountains become mountains; again they achieve a new identity.