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Main Index
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when everything harmonises, when there is no conflict not even a trace of it, when you are an orchestra not a crowd.... Nobody is trying to manipulate, nobody is trying to become the master, nobody is trying to exploit, oppress... the whole being is overflowing with joy.
Tao is spontaneity, it is not discipline, hence Tao is the ultimate in religion -- no religion touches that peak. The moment a religion starts becoming a discipline, it has already fallen very low.
There are three stages of a religion. Just like there is childhood, youth and old age in the life of a man or a woman, so there are three stages in the life of a religion. When religion is born -- the childhood of religion, when a Master is alive, fresh, and the energy is flowing from the source and the fragrance is coming, when Buddha is alive or Lao Tzu is alive or Jesus is alive -- then religion has its first, virgin, innocent state: the childhood. It is as fresh as the dewdrops in the morning, fresh as the rose flower, fresh as the stars, innocent; it knows no discipline, it knows only spontaneity.
Then, close to a Master people start gathering. That is bound to happen -- a magnet is there, people start gathering. The second stage comes: the stage of organic religion. The first stage is individual, rebellious, spontaneous; there is no question of any effort, any discipline, any scripture; God is in the nude, truth is as it is no camouflage, no dressings. Then people start gathering. The second stage is not so rebellious for these people, and, because of these people, by and by discipline arises. The Master goes on talking of spontaneity, but the followers cannot understand spontaneity; they translate it in terms of disciplining themselves. The Master says 'Just be'. they ask 'How to be?' Their question of the 'how' by and by brings in discipline; they create the discipline. Let me say it in this way: the Master brings spontaneity, the disciples bring discipline.
The words 'disciple' and 'discipline' come from the same root When disciples have gathered about a Master, they start translating what he is saying, what he means. They start interpreting, and of course they interpret
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