Osho – Unless you can find a buddha you will be following some other blind person. Unless you are with a man like Buddha, Jesus, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, you will be with people who are just like you. That is one of the greatest calamities that is happening to the modern mind, to the modern man. The spiritual guides have disappeared — long ago they disappeared. They were replaced first by the priests.
Now the priests are being replaced by the psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, psychologists. The priests were blind, now the psychiatrists, the psychoanalysts are blind. They don’t know what they are doing, they don’t know where they are. They go on helping people and they are unconscious, sometimes even more than the patient. They are insane, sometimes more so than the patient, but they are professional experts, they have studied, they are full of information. They know everything about light without ever having experienced any light. They know everything about what integration is, but it is only ABOUT — they don’t have any inner integration. Their own beings are in fragments, falling apart.
One can be helped only by a buddha, by one who is awakened, because only the awakened can wake those who are fast asleep. If you are asleep and your psychoanalyst is asleep, who is going to wake you up?
In the ancient days people searched far and wide for a buddha; they traveled thousands of miles just in search of a master. Not that they were not aware of many knowledgeable people who knew all about the Vedas and the Upanishads and the Gitas and the Korans and the Bibles; they knew about the scholars, but they had a clear-cut distinction between one who knows on his own authority and one who knows on the authority of the scripture. They never followed the man who had no authentic experience of his own, who had not encountered his self, who was not a flame. And it takes time to search.
You will come across hundreds of masters; ninety-nine point nine percent will be pseudo, false coins. But the only way to seek and search is to go on seeking and searching and whenever you come across a pseudo master, watch! Is what he is saying wisdom or knowledge? Is what he is saying his own or is it within quotes? And it is not very difficult; just a little patience is needed and you will know the pseudo as pseudo.
Harold started hitchhiking and in just a few moments he was picked up by Eleanor, a luscious-looking librarian.
“Would you like a cigarette?” he asked.
“No, thanks,” she replied. “I don’t smoke!”
They rode in silence for a short time and Harold said, “I know a nice bar up the road here; would you like to stop and have a drink?”
“Thank you, no,” said Eleanor. “I don’t drink!”
Ten minutes later, Harold took a wild shot and said, “Why don’t we stop at the next motel and make love?”
She said, “Alright!”
They stopped, made it like mad for two solid hours, and then were back driving in her car.
“Say, I’m curious,” said Harold. “When I asked you to have a smoke, you said no. When I offered to buy you a drink, you turned me down. Yet you went to the motel with me. How come?”
“Well,” said the librarian, “I always practice what I preach. I tell my Sunday school that you don’t have to smoke or drink to have a good time!”
You will come across such preachers everywhere who practice what they preach, but what they preach is not their own experience; what they preach is all borrowed. It may look like wisdom but it is not. And you cannot avoid it. You will have to knock on many doors before you find the right one. That’s the only way, that’s how things are. And it is good to knock on many doors because knowing many pseudo masters, slowly slowly you will become aware of what it is to be a real master. By knowing the false you will become capable of knowing the real. To know the false as false is a great step towards the real.
Source – Osho Book “The Dhammapada: The Way of The Buddha, Vol 5”
