“Truth cannot be taught. But it can be learned. And if you think that it can be taught, you will go on wandering and wandering and wandering. You may meet many teachers and masters, but you will not meet truth because from the very beginning you have taken a wrong step. The emphasis should be that truth can be learned. The emphasis is on the disciple, and if the disciple is ready, the master appears.

“And what is disciplehood? It is openness. It is receptivity. It is a welcoming attitude. It is trust.

“Have you ever watched a roseflower? In the evening when the sun is setting and the day is over, and the roseflower has had its day, and now it is time to dissolve, the petals of the roseflower start falling slowly toward the ground with no hesitation. A rose petal, so delicate, but so strong, doesn’t hesitate about where it is falling, where it is going, whether there is any earth to find, to rest, to go to sleep, to die – or is it falling into a bottomless abyss? Who knows? But no hesitation. So soft, so delicate, but so strong, no uncertainty, no clinging to the flower anymore. The time has come. It simply leaves the flower and falls to the ground.

“A Sufi master used to say to his disciples, ‘Simply trust. Do not the petals flutter down just like that?’

“When you come to a master, be like a rose petal. Fall into the master, fall unto the master, just like that – as a rose petal falls toward the earth unhesitating, absolutely in trust that the earth must be there – to rest, to die, with no effort of its own. The very gravitation of the earth does the work; it has just to trust. If it trusts, it doesn’t cling to the plant, it trusts and flutters down.

“Simply trust. That is what disciplehood is. Do not the petals flutter down just like that?”