'God' leaves the Master's ashram

There was once a spiritual Master who was a real fake. Nowadays we talk of fake spiritual Masters, but I wish to say that this fake Master topped the list. No spiritual Master was as unillumined, imperfect and undivine as this one. He did not have even an iota of the realisation of Truth, but he had the realisation of deception in infinite measure.

This Master had a small ashram at the foot of the Himalayas. There were ten or twelve disciples living there. One of them was extremely beautiful. Perhaps he was the most beautiful young man on earth. His beauty was overwhelming. The Master could not bear to see it go to waste and he often wondered how he could put it to good use.

One day a brilliant idea struck the Master’s mind. He thought that he would be able to play a trick on all the sincere and insincere seekers in the countryside and make a lot of money. So the Master proclaimed that he would be able to show God to anyone, regardless of how many years or how many months or how many days that person had practised Yoga. He claimed that he could show the Face of God to anyone on one condition, of course: that the seeker would pay a rather large sum of money in advance. The fee he settled upon was one hundred rupees.

Every evening the Master showed ‘God’ to those seekers who were able to pay the fee. What he did was this: in a dark room he had his most beautiful disciple, arrayed in gorgeous attire, stand behind a screen. One person at a time entered the darkened room. Then the Master chanted “Aum” a few times and “Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva” a few times. Then the Master lit a very dim light and the disciple stepped out from behind the screen. There in the flickering candlelight, surrounded by flowers and burning incense, about twenty feet away, they saw a being so beautiful that they did not doubt that it was the living Presence of God. The unimaginable beauty of the young man convinced everyone. This deception went on for many months and the Master accumulated a large fortune. Every day twenty or thirty people came to see ‘God’ face to face and from each person the Master himself collected one hundred rupees. The Master gave the disciples who helped him arrange everything a very small amount of money to keep them quiet. And they believed that their Master knew what he was doing, which he did indeed.

“The Master knows what is best,” the disciples always said. “If he deceives people, what does it matter? They are fools to think that they can see God without following the spiritual life. We should maintain faith in our Master.” This was their conclusion.

The disciple who posed as God naturally got a little more money than the other disciples. The other disciples helped the Master create the proper atmosphere, but of course the beautiful disciple was the indispensable one.

After almost two years had gone by, the false ‘God’ became a little bit conscience-stricken. “How long am I going to deceive the world?” he asked himself. “I am not making any spiritual progress or even any worldly progress. I am only making my Master rich. Since my spiritual life is a failure, let me take some money from my Master and go away from here.”

The next day he went to the Master and said, “I don’t want to deceive the world any more. Please give me some money and let me go away.”

The Master said, “Money? Why should I give you money? You will take away my little savings and leave me here to starve. You ungrateful creature! After all the things I have done for you! After all the money I have lavished upon you!”

The disciple replied, “And where did this money come from? It came from me, from my beauty.”

“No, it is my occult power that brings people and it is my occult power that makes people see in you the Presence of God. It is all my occult power.”

The disciple did not believe it. “All right,” he said, “if it is your occult power that makes others see God in me, then use your occult power to make them see God in somebody else. Meanwhile, I shall walk around the countryside and show myself to everybody and they will see how badly they have been deceived by you.”

The Master said, “No! You must leave here. You must go very far away!”

“I will leave,” said the disciple. “If you give me a large amount of money, I will go away peacefully and quietly. If not, I will expose you.”

“No! You must go away immediately!” the Master shouted. “And I will not give you a single rupee!”

“Then I am going to stay around here and tell people what you have done. You are a fake and I was a fool. Now I know and I will expose you to the world. If you don’t give me two thousand rupees, you will soon lose everything,”

“Don’t threaten me,” said the Master. “Tonight I shall use my occult power and make you leave here tomorrow morning.”

The disciple laughed. “All right, you use your occult power. In three days if you cannot get rid of me, then you will be ruined.”

The next morning arrived and nothing happened. The Master could do nothing with his occult power. Reluctantly, the Master said, “I am ready to give you one hundred rupees.”

“No,” said the disciple. “I have changed my mind. You have to give me at least four thousand rupees. If you don’t, I will tell the world about your deception. I am not God. God knows how many incarnations it will take me to see God, now that I have become such a rogue by mixing with you. I have delayed my own spiritual progress by mixing with a fake like you.”

The Master grew furious again. “Don’t call me a fake! Get out of my ashram! Get out! If you don’t get out today, I will use all my occult power tonight and destroy you!”

“Destroy me,” said the disciple nonchalantly. Nothing happened that night. The following day the disciple went to the Master and said, “Master, be sincere at least once in your life. You have no occult power. Admit it. Confess that you have nothing and that you have deceived the world badly. God will forgive you, I am sure. But I will not forgive you. I have wasted my time with you for six or seven years. Now please give me the four thousand rupees and I will go away peacefully, without telling anybody about your deception.”

Then the Master said. “I can make you leave this place immediately. Come here. I have something to tell you.”

“There is nothing you can tell me that will compel me to leave. If I want to leave, I will leave, but I want money from you first. If you do not give it to me, I will not leave this place.”

But the Master insisted, “Come here, come here, I have to tell you something.”

The disciple finally came and the Master whispered something in his ear.

The disciple turned pale and began to tremble. “Inhuman! My mother! Unthinkable! Unbearable! How foul your tongue is! I can’t stand the sight of you! Keep your money, you rogue, you scoundrel. I can tolerate anything in this world, but how can a son hear such bad things about his mother from a spiritual Master? You came into the world with an unbearable nature, unbearable character, unbearable life, but of all your unthinkable, unbearable, undivine qualities, the worst, absolutely the worst, is your tongue. I leave you! I leave you for good. Your occult power could not destroy me, but your evil tongue-power has literally destroyed me. My mother, the soul of beauty, the soul of purity, the soul of love, the soul of compassion, Mother of everything, I am returning to you — my mother, my all.”

With these words, the disciple left the Master’s ashram and was never seen in the vicinity again. But the Master was soon seen in the vicinity and, in fact, all over India sporting flashy clothes and expensive jewelry, cruising up and down the coast in a luxurious yacht and speeding around the countryside in a custom-made sports car. The money that the Master did not immediately lavish on material possessions, he invested in a prosperous steel factory. And so he lived comfortably to a ripe old age, supported by the ignorance of thousands of lazy, idle and curious seekers who were ready to do anything for their God-realisation except work for it.