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AGAIN THE TAP WAS GIVEN;

MONKS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD ATTEMPT

THE TRICK IN VAIN.

Just tapping from the outside is not going to help, unless the inner energy has become a tremendous longing to come out. Then, even without any tapping from outside the bird is going to break the eggshell by itself.

There have been many masters who had no masters. Their own longing for the truth was so tremendous they needed no help. Their own overflowing energy gave them the freedom to fly into the sky. The eggshell is very thin; it is not a China wall. You are not imprisoned in something made of steel; you are imprisoned in something made of thoughts. Such a thin rice paper, a Japanese curtain, that you can come out any moment you want. You don't have to wait for somebody to knock from the outside. And if you don't have energy, even if someone knocks it is not going to help.

There is a very beautiful poem of Rabindranath Tagore, "The King of the Night":

There is a temple devoted to the King of the Night -- very ancient, huge, with one thousand priests. The high priest one night dreams that the King of the Night has appeared and said to him, "Tomorrow I am going to visit the temple. Clean it, prepare it. I have not been there for centuries. I have to go to many other temples too."

He woke up, perspiring, although he has been praying every day for just this fact, that "you should appear, you should give us a glimpse of your being, your splendor."

And now the dream has come, but a dream...? In the middle of the night, he called all the priests from their beds and said, "I am sorry to disturb you, but the problem is really serious. I have seen in my dream the King of the Night, saying, `Prepare, clean the temple, I am coming to visit tomorrow.'"

The other priests started laughing. They said, "It seems you have become too old, senile. Just a dream and you have unnecessarily harassed us."

The old man said, "I understand that you will laugh about me. I thought about it before I woke you up, but there is no harm in preparing. Anyway the temple has needed painting for centuries."

The temple had been completely abandoned

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