"And when I offered friendship, it was not a gratitude or reverence that grew in their heart but a deep and long-awaiting ego that was fulfilled.

"Now they could declare that they have the same status as I have, that their experience is the same as my experience. So my declaration of friendship was to them the end of their discipleship – and not the beginning of friendship either; it was simply the end of the road.

"But to Premda the situation is different. He has not been around me for many years, and he has not for a single moment thought of being a master. His whole desire has been to be closer to me, to be intimate with me. So when I declared that I am your friend, this desire was fulfilled, and it has created a loving intimacy and reverence. And you can see it from the question. I call myself your friend, but he says he started feeling a reverence towards the master.

"To those who have been calling me 'master,' the declaration of friendship ended their discipleship, and to one who was simply longing for intimacy the same declaration made him a disciple. And the people who were longing to be masters were not many; they belonged only in the category of therapists – just a few therapists, not all. And those therapists got this longing because I was sending people to their therapies and they started thinking that they are some kind of masters, and they are helping people to grow.

"The reality was, I was sending these people to their therapies because these people were so full of rubbish that they needed some dry cleaning, and those therapists were nothing but dry cleaners. But thousands of people passing through their therapiesit is very human and very natural to get the idea that, 'We can be masters on our own.' They were just waiting for the opportunity.

"It is not true about all sannyasins; it is only true about a special small group of therapists. Their work destroyed them. They may have helped many people come closer to me, but they themselves went on going farther and farther away."