So God asked him to do something. God asked him to go outside every day, early in the morning, and stand in the street right in front of his house with folded hands, and ask every person he saw to become his disciple. From morning until evening he was to do this, for God had asked him.
Every day, in front of his house, a few hundred people went by. As they walked past him along the street he said to each one, "Would you kindly become my disciple?" He spoke sincerely, but the people did not respond. They ridiculed him. Young boys, girls, grown-up men and women laughed at him or pushed past, ignoring him. Nobody paid any attention to his plea. Some even taunted him, asking, "How is it that you are crying for a disciple with folded hands? A realised soul does not cry for ordinary human beings."
A full year passed in this way, and the Master did not get one single disciple. At the end of the year he said to God, "God, you wanted me to have disciples. I tried my utmost. You asked me to beg the passers-by every day with folded hands to be my disciples, and I did it. But nobody wanted to be my disciple. What can I do?"
God said, "This time you have to touch the feet of everybody, and say, 'Would you like to be my disciple?' To children, men, women, everyone, irrespective of age, you must do this. You must touch their feet and beg them to become your disciples."
The following day the Master went out and started touching the feet of everyone who passed. He was on the street from morning until evening. Again people laughed at him or ignored him. Sometimes he even got merciless kicks from young men who said, "Why don't you leave everybody alone? Who wants to be your disciple?" And when he touched the feet of the women, they felt uncomfortable and embarrassed. Some of them suspected that he was not sincere - that he was perhaps playing some kind of trick. So he was ignored or insulted by many women. But he persisted in doing as God had asked him to do.
His efforts brought no result. With folded hands he had not got any disciples, and by touching the feet of people who passed him during the day he did not get a single disciple - not one in the whole year. People only misunderstood him in their own way, according to their own standard.
The third year God said, "This year you have to go out and touch everybody's head without any fear."
The Master said, "How can I touch everybody's head? If I touch somebody's feet, he may at least show me an act of compassion. But if I touch people's heads, especially women's, what will they think of me? They will all misunderstand me and insult me. They will probably do many horrible things. Many unspeakable things will happen."
God said, "No, you have to touch everybody's head with your divine pride." The Master had to do as God asked.
When he touched the head of the first man he saw, and said, "Would you like to be my disciple?" to his amazement, the man immediately said, "Yes, I would."
In this way, in one day he blessed two hundred people — children and adults. The moment he touched their heads and asked, "Would you like to be my disciple?" they said, "Yes". Children who did not even understand the meaning of 'disciple' felt that it was something nice to be. And grown men and women who did know the meaning wanted to be his disciples.
Among the people who accepted him that day, there were seventy whom he had begged in previous years with folded hands, and by touching their feet, but they had refused him, ignored him, mocked him. Now, when he touched their heads, they all became his disciples.
The Master asked God, "How can it be? When we show modesty, humility, when we fold our hands, when we touch their feet, we do not get disciples. But when we touch their heads, when we bless them with our divine pride and divine authority, then they accept us."
God answered, "When you see ordinary human beings and deal with them, if you fold your hands, they immediately think, 'This fellow is inferior, otherwise why is he folding his hands to me?' And if you touch their feet, they think, 'O, he is really inferior. He is just like a slave.' They feel that nobody wants to stand with folded hands in humility; nobody wants to touch others' feet. When you touch another's feet, he will immediately feel that he is superior and you are inferior. And even when you touch somebody's head, an ordinary person may recoil and say, 'What right have you to touch my head?' But when you deal with your divine majesty, divine power, divine light, and touch the heads of people who are really spiritual, they will feel your divine majesty. When you bless them, immediately they will think, 'Perhaps he has something, otherwise how could he dare to touch my head? In this world nobody dares to touch my head. How is it that this man comes out of the blue and dares to touch my head and bless me?' "
God continued, "Unfortunately, most people do not know what a spiritual Master does. When a spiritual Master stands in front of someone with folded hands, he tries to make the seeker feel that he has someone inside his own heart who is really great. Otherwise a spiritual Master would not stand in front of him with folded hands. When a Master touches his feet, he must feel, 'Really, I have Divinity within me. That is why he is touching my feet.' When the seeker goes one step forward, he feels, 'The Divinity that the Master is seeing inside me is also inside him, otherwise he would not have touched my feet. For him to touch his own feet is no embarrassment, because he is all one - his head, his feet, and his hands are all one. When he goes deep within, he feels that he and I are one, and then who is touching whose feet?' This is what a spiritual seeker is able to understand about the Master.
"But most people will always misunderstand. When they misunderstand, it is necessary for the spiritual Master, on the strength of his divine authority and his God-ordained pride to show them divine light. This pride is not ego-pride. This pride is founded on his Universal Oneness. Other pride comes from the sense of separateness, the feeling that 'You are yourself and I am myself. You are totally different from me, and I want to maintain my separateness. I am stronger than you, so why should I bow down to you?' But the divine pride is not like that. Divine pride comes from the universal feeling of oneness. 'He and I are one, inseparably one. Who is touching whose head? Who is touching whose feet? We are all one. Our oneness has come from the Source. We are in the Source, and we are for the Source.' "From:Sri Chinmoy,In search of a perfect disciple, Sri Chinmoy Lighthouse, New York, 1972
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