My observation has been this: that Krishnamurti is surrounded by the most egoistic people of this world, and the reason is because there is a safe place – no need to surrender, no need to drop your ego, no need to follow anybody. Your ego feels very strengthened and your ego feels that many rationalisations are given to you. So you protect yourself with those rationalisations.
His compassion is infinite, but it has not worked. My feeling is that if a person is egoless no guru is needed. But this is the paradox of life that the only people who become interested in the teaching that ’no guru is needed’ are the egoists. If a person is an egoist, then the guru is a must. But the egoists never come to a person to surrender. This is the problem, the dilemma. The egoist becomes interested in the teaching of Krishnamurti and the non-egoist becomes interested in the teaching of Meher Baba.
For the non-egoist there is no need for the guru because the whole need consists in cancelling your ego – the guru is nothing but a cancellation of your ego. You surrender unto somebody’s feet and you say ’Now I will listen to you and I will not listen to myself. Now my will is surrendered and your will will be my will. Now even if you tell me to jump into the abyss I will jump without thinking about it. Now I am no more the controller of my life. You will control.’ This is a way, just a way, to drop the ego. If the ego is there, then a guru is a must, because the guru is just a device. If the ego is not there, then the guru is not needed at all. When you are ill, the medicine is needed. When you are not ill, the medicine is not needed at all.
Krishnamurti is talking to ill people and telling them that the medicine is not needed. And only those people who are afraid of taking the medicine come to him, and they are the people who are most in need of medicine. If the people who surrounded Meher Baba were with Krishnamurti there would be no trouble – much would happen. But they never go to Krishnamurti, they go to Meher Baba. They are egoless people, they can surrender. And the people who are surrounding Krishnamurti, had they gone to Meher Baba would have been tremendously benefited… but they never go. This is how life is – a dilemma: the ill avoid the doctor and the healthy go to the doctor.
-Osho
Excerpt from Tao: The Pathless Path, V.1, Chapter 12, Q4
Copyright© OSHO International Foundation
An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.
Many of Osho’s books are available online from Amazon.com and in the U.S. from OshoStore-Sedona and Osho Here and Now.