Your mind always wants change. It does not know devotion; it loves fashions, its interest is always in some novelty. So it will go on moving from one path to another path, becoming more and more confused – because each path has its own language, each path has its own unique methods, and each master is going to defend his path against all the other paths.
If you move on many paths you will collect contradictory arguments; you will become so much divided you will not know what to do. And if it becomes your habit to change paths – because the new has a certain attraction for the mind – you will move a few feet on one path, a few feet on another path, but you will never complete the journey.
One day Jalaluddin Rumi took all his students, disciples and devotees to a field. That was his way to teach them things of the beyond, through the examples of this world. He was not a theoretician; he was a very practical man. The disciples were thinking, “What could be the message, going to that faraway field and why can’t he say it here?”
But when they reached the field, they understood that they were wrong and he was right. The farmer seemed to be an almost insane man. He was digging a well in the field – and he had already dug eight incomplete wells. He would go a few feet and then he would find that there was no water. Then he would start digging another well…and the same story continued. He had destroyed the whole field and he had not yet found water.
The master, Jalaluddin Rumi, told his disciples, “Can you understand something? If this man had been total and had put his whole energy into only one well he would have reached to the deepest sources of water long ago. But the way he is going he will destroy the whole field and he will never be able to make a single well. With so much effort he is simply destroying his own land, and getting more and more frustrated, disappointed. What kind of a desert has he purchased? It is not a desert, but one has to go deep to find the sources of water.”
He turned to his disciples and asked them, “Are you going to follow this insane farmer? Sometimes on one path, sometimes on another path, sometimes listening to one, sometimes listening to another…. You will collect much knowledge, but all that knowledge is simply junk, because it is not going to give you the enlightenment that you were looking for. It is not going to lead you to the waters of eternal life.”
Masters tremendously enjoy criticizing others. If the others are really enlightened, they also enjoy being criticized. They know that the purpose of both is the same: to protect the vagrant mind of the disciple, to keep him on one track They have to deny that there is any other path anywhere that can lead you except this one.