No master is comparable to any other master. Each master is so unique that he’s incomparable. You cannot compare Buddha with Mohammed. If you compare, it will be sheer stupidity, and whatsoever you conclude will be wrong. You cannot even compare Buddha with Mahavira – both were contemporaries and lived in the same province, moved in the same towns, sometimes stayed in the same city, and once stayed in the same dharamsala, but you cannot compare them. They are poles apart. Mahavira is Mahavira, Buddha is Buddha. They are so unique that not even a single point of comparison exists! If you start comparing you will miss the whole point, you will miss their reality. That reality is unique. Masters cannot be compared.

If you look into them with no comparison in your mind you will find the same reality – hence darshan. A master’s darshan is enough. To see him is enough. You should look deep into his being – not with thoughts to compare, not with prejudices, not with a priori ideas; just silently, with no thoughts flickering in your mind, with no clouds. You should just look into him, and then you will be surprised. Masters are unique in their manifestation and they are one in their innermost core. Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, Christ, Lao Tzu, Zarathustra – they are all one in their innermost core. Their circumference is really very, very unique, and their center is one. But to see the center you will have to be utterly silent.

Now this man says, “I want to make comparisons.” If you want to make comparisons, how can you be silent? If you want to make comparisons, you will have to carry all the thoughts that you want to compare. You will have to carry all your scriptures, your memory. You will have to have logical criteria about how to compare. You will have to carry scales to compare. You will be so burdened with your idea of comparison that you will not be able to see into the reality.

Each master is unique, and yet represents the universal.

The dervish sent him a bottle with oil and water in it, and a piece of cotton wick. Enclosed in the package was this letter…

Sufis are known to do such things, things which look absurd on the surface. The man has asked one thing and the master is doing something else. The man wanted to come to him to have a philosophical understanding about what his message was, so that he could compare it with other messages. He wanted to have a look into his systems of thought so that he could compare it with other systems of thought and could decide which is better, which is good, which is to be followed.

Now this Abdul-Aziz,

…sent him a bottle with oil and water in it, and a piece of cotton wick. Enclosed in the package was this letter…

All scriptures, Sufis say, are like this letter. They have certain instructions, not certain dogmas. They have certain instructions. If you follow those instructions you will have a door opened to you. But they are not theories to be believed in. They are just like “how to do” books – manuals, instruction manuals. They don’t preach any philosophy, they simply give you instructions: “Do this and this will happen. Do this and this will happen. Don’t do this, otherwise this will happen.”