Truth cannot be taught.

Truth cannot be taught... but it can be learned. And between these two sentences is the key of all
understanding. So let me repeat: truth cannot be taught, but it can be learned – because truth is
not a teaching, not a doctrine, not a theory, a philosophy, or something like that. Truth is existence.
Truth is BEING. Nothing can be said about it.
If you start saying something about it you will go round and round. You will beat around the bush,
but you will never reach the center of it. Once you ask a question ABOUT you are already on the
path of missing it. It can be encountered directly, but not through about. There is no VIA MEDIA.
Truth is here and now. Only truth is. Nothing else exists. So the moment you raise a question about
it the mind has already moved away. You are somewhere else, not here and now.
Truth cannot be taught because words cannot convey it. Words are impotent. Truth is vast,
tremendously vast, infinite. Words are very very narrow. You cannot force truth into words, it is
impossible. And how is one going to teach without words?

Silence can be a message. It can convey, it can become the vehicle. But then the question is not of
the master’s concern to teach it. The question is of the disciple’s to learn it.
If it was a question of teaching, then the master would do something.
But words are useless – nothing can be done with them. The master can remain silent and can
give the message from every pore of his being – but now the disciple has to understand it. Unaided,
without any help from the master, the disciple has to receive it.
That’s why in the world of religion teachers don’t exist, only masters. A teacher is one who teaches,
a master is one who IS. A teacher is one who talks about the truth, a master is truth himself. You
can learn, but he cannot teach.
He can be there, open, available – you have to drink him, and you have to eat him. You have to
imbibe him. You have to become pregnant with him. You have to absorb.
A master is one who has become the truth and is available for all those who are ready to absorb
him; hence Jesus says to his disciples: Eat me. Truth can be eaten; it cannot be taught. You can
allow it to reach you, but it cannot be forced on you.
Truth is absolutely nonviolent, it will not even knock at your door – even that much will be too much
aggression.
If you allow, if you are receptive, it is all there. If you are closed, if you are not receptive, for millions
of lives you may search for it and you will go on missing it. And it has always been there, it has
always been the case. Not even a single step was needed. Not even the opening of the eyes was
needed. Not even a single movement towards it was needed. It was already there: you had to be
receptive.
Truth cannot be taught, but still, you can learn it. So the whole art depends on how to become a
disciple.
Humanity is divided in three parts. One part, the major part, almost ninety-nine percent, never
bothers about truth. It remains oblivious. It is completely asleep. It has no inquir y. It lives a
somnambulistic life. The question of, What is truth? never arises. This is the greater part of
humanity.
They live in ignorance, completely unaware that they are ignorant, not only unaware that they are
ignorant – they may be thinking and dreaming that they know.
In fact this is part of their sleep, that they think they know. And what is the need to learn? To
DESTROY the need to learn, this is the best thing to do: to go on feeling that you already know.
Then there is no question of learning, no need to become a disciple. You are satisfied, in your grave.
You are dead.
This is the greater part of humanity. Even if you approach people of this fragment and tell them
about truth, they will laugh. They will say you are talking nonsense. Not only that, they will deny that

there is anything like truth or God or nirvana. If you give them the message of an enlightened being
they will say there never existed such a being, and he cannot exist: ”We are the whole of humanity.”

Somebody asked Voltaire about the origin of religion, and Voltaire is reported to have said, ”Religion
was born when the first charlatan met the first fool on the earth.” In the encounter of the charlatan
and the fool, religion was born. This has an element of truth in it. It is true in a sense, but it is true
not about religion, but about pseudo-religion.

religion
is born between a master and a disciple. Religion is born between a being who has attained and a
being who is authentically in search to attain it. Religion is born between truth and a disciple.

But the first part of humanity remains completely unaware, blissfully unaware, because when there
is no inquiry, no search, they live a comfortable life of no effort. They go on falling down. They never
rise high, they never reach the peaks. And they don’t know. They not only don’t know, they never
dream that there are peaks of experience, heights of ecstasies.
They remain almost like animals: eating, sleeping – and confined to such things. A life of routine,
moving like a wheel; they are born, they live, they give bi th to others, and they die. And the wheel
goes on moving: they are born again, the same thing is repeated again and again, ad nauseam.


Then there is the second part of humanity: a few, who inquire. But they don’t know how to learn.
They search, but they don’t understand that this search needs an inner transformation, only then it
becomes possible. An inner mutation is needed.

In this dimension, learning is not like other learnings. You can learn chemistry, physics, mathematics,
without any change in your consciousness. There is no need to change your consciousness; as you
are, you can learn. But religion is a learning in which a basic requirement is: First change your
consciousness.
Even before the learning starts you have to be prepared for it. A long preparation is needed,
otherwise learning cannot start.
The second part inquires, but is not ready, so it goes on round and round in theories, hypotheses,
human mental projections, inventions of articulate people, verbalizations, philosophies, metaphysics
– there are thousands of theories available for this type of person.

He can choose – the market is vast, and he can go on changing from one theory to another, because
no theory can give you the right thing. Theories can’t give, so you get fed up with one theory, then
you choose another ; you get fed up with one teacher, then you move to another teacher – and
people go on, they become wanderers

 they have
been to that, they have been to this teacher and to that, and they have been moving from one to
another : nothing satisfies. But they are not aware that it is not a question of the teacher, it is the
basic preparation that they are lacking. They are not yet ready to be disciples, and if you are not
ready to be a disciple, how can you find the master? Tradition has it that when the disciple is ready

the master appears on his own accord. You need not even search for him, he will come. Whenever
a disciple is ready, the master will appear immediately. You go on searching for him, and he never
appears. Something is wrong within you. Something within you frustrates the whole effort. You are
not ready.
You cannot meet a master on your conditions, you have to fulfill HIS conditions. And they are eternal,
they have never changed, they remain the same. One has to learn how to be a disciple.
This second part of humanity becomes a wandering mass of inquirers. They never gain much. They
become rolling stones, which never gather any moss. They move on... rolling.

That third part is those who seek, who inquire; but the inquiry is not intellectual, the inquiry is total.
The inquiry is not like learning any other subject; the inquiry is so total that they are ready to die for
it, they are ready to change their whole being for it. They are ready to fulfill all conditions. Even if
death is a condition, they are ready to die. But they want to learn what truth is, they want to be in the
world of truth; they don’t want to live in the world of lies and illusions and dreams and projections.
This third type can become a disciple. And only this third type, when they have attained, can become
masters.
That’s why I say truth cannot be taught but it can be learned. But then the whole thing depends on
you.
A master exists – you have to be in the presence of the master completely empty of yourself. That is
the meaning of death. A disciple comes and dies before the master. That’s what surrender means.

He comes and leaves himself outside the door. Where he leaves his shoes, he leaves himself there
also. He comes to the master completely empty. In that very emptiness, truth is possible. In that
very emptiness the master star ts flowing. The master becomes like a tremendous waterfall, falling
into the valley of the disciple. From his peaks of being he reaches to the bottommost depth of the
being of the disciple. And remember, he is not doing anything, it simply happens. When the valley
is ready the waterfall happens of its own accord. The being of the master starts flowing towards the
disciple.
It is not something that the master is doing, it is not something the disciple is doing – nobody is
doing anything. The master is present to the disciple, and the disciple is present to the master, and
the phenomenon happens of its own accord. It is a jump of the flame of the master into the heart
of the disciple. But that needs to remain open, and the disciple needs to remain empty – just the
receiving end.
That’s why I say again and again that the art of disciplehood is the art of being a feminine
consciousness: receptive, allowing, not creating barriers, not closing doors, not trying to be safe
and secure. Trusting.
Trust is the word. And in trust, truth happens. To trust is to be ready to learn. Yes, trust is the word.
To trust is to be a disciple.

if you are still thinking, then you are still in control. You have not surrendered. If you are still saying
this is right and that is not right, then your mind is there, then you belong to the second part of
humanity, not to the third.
Now, let me divide these three parts again from a different direction.

The first par t of humanity has
doubt as its soul, and the doubt is so strong that it is almost like a trust in doubt, believing in disbelief.
It is so strong because the first part of humanity – the greater part – the major part, never doubts its
own doubt. It tr usts doubt.
If you are so much in doubt, so certain in doubt, you will be completely closed. Not even a single
window will be open. To be a disciple is very very far away; even to become a student is difficult
then. Even the idea that somebody knows more than you is impossible for you to entertain.
This part remains foolish, stupid. It is a stonelike part, dead, with no life, because unless energy is
moving continuously into the unknown, you can’t have life.
When every day you move into the unknown, only then you are alive, throbbing. Your heart is
beating. You are growing. Growth is always from the known into the unknown.
The second part of humanity inquires; its doubt is shaken. But its trust is not yet grounded. No more
is it part of the greater humanity, it has moved away from them a little bit – even that little bit is too
much to allow them to go back – but it is still in limbo, just hanging in the middle. It has no trust

The first part trusts too much in doubt, the second part has come to doubt its doubt, but a trust is
not born. The third part is trusting in trust. The trust is absolute. The people of the second part will
call you blind.The first part
of humanity will call you mad. Your trust will look just like madness. How can a person who thinks
believe so totally? It is impossible. But to the third part, to whom trust has happened, the blindness
will be the only capacity to see. And madness will be the only sanity.
These three different humanities have different languages. They don’t communicate with each other
– it is almost impossible. It is just like when you are talking to somebody who does not know your
language, and you don’t know his language – at the most through gestures a little communication is
possible, but not much.
Sufis say that only the third part of humanity can lear n. Sufi masters are very choosy. It is very
difficult to be accepted by a Sufi master, very very difficult. They create all sorts of obstacles around
them.

First, they live in such an ordinary way that you cannot suspect that here is a master. They live
in absolutely ordinary ways. For example, the master may be a blacksmith or a shoemaker or a
carpetmaker or a butcher or a carpenter – just the very ordinary wor ld. You cannot suspect that
the man who makes your shoes and repairs your shoes is a master. He won’t allow any suspicion;
that is the way he protects himself from those who are not ready but think themselves ready. From
intruders he protects himself in this way.
You will never see a Sufi master going to the mosque or the temple – to any public place – to pray.
No, he prays when every body is fast asleep, in the midnight. Even his wife may not suspect that this
man has attained. No, this is part of the Sufi method – not to allow anybody to know.